David J. Wilson

Not an Eternal Value Transcending Time and Space

Dates: August 11-August 30th

Recep'on: Friday, August 11, 6-8pm

Projects follows and extends the artist’s work and investigation into how sculpture may reflect upon, and critique, institutional oppression and with a specific focus on the carceral system.

For the exhibition Wilson obtained two black walnut trees located near Pennsylvania’s SCI Forest State Penitentiary. The trees were milled and brought to the ar2st’s Brooklyn studio where, over a nine-month period, he me2culously cut, carved, bent, turned, laminated, fabricated, and polished them by hand into the large sculptural installation located at the gallery space at 384 Van Brunt St.

There are various images conjured in the work: A floating fire escape balcony, prison bars, inverted water spigots, human anatomy, gravity impaired leather strapping, metal, flaccid cigarettes, and a rungless ladder affixed to the floor. All made from wood but mimicking other materials in a poe2c conflation of aesthetic and conceptual juxtapositions that create an uncanny visual experience that occupies a large swathe of space in the gallery.

Wilson uses techniques associated with expertise level crafting and design to create objects that are both alluringly beautiful while also creating unsettling images. The result is a push-pull relationship for the viewer as they navigate the space around the installation. Viewing the work takes substantial moments as the whole of the image is a series of intense detailed work and a slowing of time, thought, and movement is an intended experience. The work showcases and elevates the artist’s hand to bring questions of labor, economy, and the role of our corporeal existence in a country and culture that has traditionally controlled bodies by laws, indoctrination, and incarceration. Wilson is inspired by and uses Foucauldian concepts of power as reference points throughout the installation both in scale and positioning of the materials in relation to the viewer. Along with the more universally recognizable symbols, Wilson embeds the work with deeply personal images from his own memories and experiences with the carceral system and the result imbues a vulnerability into the sculpture that the artist believes necessary when crea2ng work. It is a complicated work about a complicated subject matter involving complicated psychologies, and through those complications the work becomes transformative and communicates a myriad of ideas and possible interpretations.