Guy Goldstein -

The installation comprises of an arrangement of plaster casts, organized on the floor. The white, empty nature of the plaster, as well as the mysterious symmetrical, vaguely mechanical shapes, have the accumulate effect of an urban cluster, a plan for a ghost town. In fact, Goldstein’s method for arranging the pieces follows a combination of random and organized strategies: unlike the functional concerns of the architect or urban planner, his primary concerns are composition, rhythm, and aesthetic relations between the shapes and the room they are in.

Goldstein created the shapes by casting the negative spaces of Styrofoam packaging of very delicate technological packing. These plaster “rocks” roughly replace the space carefully designed to protect the machine, which leaves no echo in the piece itself. The negative space becomes a ghost or spirit of the original product; previously the valuable air casing which protected the product, their spatial definition disappears the moment the package is opened. This shape-based, formal concern is also connected to the daily work in Goldstein’s studio, and represents a connection between his technological tools and sculptural materials. Though the technique is simple, it brings out multiple associations and visual references: the strangely concrete layout brings the viewer to imagine public structures such as imagines parks, schools or stations. The ghost towns, empty of any specificity, manage to speak both of the past, bringing to mind images of uncovered archaeological sand cities, and at the same time of the future, as apocalyptic, blank drafts for faceless technological cities.