Fatty and Slender etc.

May 2010: Fatty and Slender; the Hanging Man’s House

 

images: Sarah Goffman and Peter Jackson “Fatty and Slender; the Hanging Man’s House” : From top to bottom: images 1 – 5 – installation views and details/ image 6 – Sarah Goffman (background) and sculptures by Peter Jackson (foreground).

Recently returned from a residency in Tokyo, Sarah Goffman presents new work that responds to her experiences there. More specifically, Goffman’s works for this show respond to her visit – with a group of local dancers – to the ‘Hanging Man’s House’ in Kunitachi, a suburb of the city. There, in the backyard of a traditional wooded Japanese house, the artist witnessed a particularly strange event; the performance of an old man who for the past ten years, has been hanging himself, ‘a couple of times a week’ often before a gathered audience.

This strange, literally ‘death defying’ act propels Goffman’s accumulative installation at I.C.A.N. informed generally as it is by some especially bizarre, and profound, sights and events (and possibly a nod to Hokusai). Goffman’s work will be complemented by a series of sculptures by Peter Jackson that bear a specific and close relationship to Goffman’s enveloping assemblage.