Jonathan Goldman"Now, out loud"Feinberg Graduate School / The David Lopatie Hall of Graduate Studies, Weizmann Institute of Science1
Jonathan Goldman is interested, conceptually, in the transformation from sound to image. Like a scientist researching such phenomena as metamorphosis or phase transition, Goldman begins his study with one state, allowing it to transform, slowly, until it arrives at a pure moment of transmutation. Like the scientists in the Weizmann Institute of Science, Goldman engages in a sort of basic research, driven by curiosity alone, without a “practical goal.”
The works that are displayed in the new exhibit in the Feinberg Graduate School / David Lopatie Hall of Graduate Studies, in the Weizmann Institute of Science, curated by Yivsam Azgad, start out on the Western border of Israel: the Mediterranean Sea. To be exact, he begins with the wave breakers and the sound of the waves hitting them, battering the shore endlessly. The sound of the waves is then converted through a microphone to electromagnetic waves, broadcast and received, altered through various processes, passed through loudspeakers that reconstruct and transmit sound waves that appear to be the “real thing.” Goldman, who knows that his “product” is, indeed a facsimile, investigates the similarity and difference between the two sound waves, the length of the silences in between.
Diagrams of the sound wave intensity also undergo a transmutation in his hands. A “hilly” diagram, newly minted, slowly transforms until it is a real mountain – one that is cut off from its background, floating, fleeing from the other noises that fill its surroundings. Like the internal dialogue of Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan, the isolated image represents a single, distilled note that is, possibly, a state one can aspire to attain – now, out loud.
Jonathan Goldman is a graduate of the Multidisciplinary Arts Department of Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. He lives and works in Tel Aviv. He work, including paintings, sound and video installations, have been shown in the West Border, Dana Gallery for Contemporary Art , Yad Mordechai, Gordon Gallery 2 , Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Wilfrid Israel Museum, The Artists' Residence, Herzliya, Zemack Gallery, Artstation Gallery and others.
