The Brooklyn Rail

For those committed to the act of looking, those delighted by the parsing of layers, and those intrigued by the hypotheticals of time itself, the recent exhibition of Nancy Goldring’s work at a83 offered a wealth of satisfaction. Goldring developed her singular body of work, which she calls “foto-projections,” beginning in the 1970s. Originally interested in architecture (she was a co-founder of the influential group Sculpture in the Environment [SITE], which imagined radical disruptions of building and public spaces melded with sculpture and public art), Goldring retained this interest even as her own studio work increasingly took her in other directions.

An affinity for architecture is apparent in many of the works included in Distillations, a show that spanned forty years of the artist’s career. Iterations of both Isurumuniya and Amaravati (each dated 1997), drawn from Goldring’s experiences during extended visits to Sri Lanka and India were representative. A habitual and committed traveler, she is sensitive to the ways in which the architecture of a place helps shape its identity and comes to epitomize culture. Isurumuniya in Sri Lanka and the Amaravati Stupa in India are two of the world’s most important monuments to Buddhism. Each of Goldring’s works were delineated by a graphite drawing of the site and a frieze-like model on a light box that hung from the wall, the architectural elements as delicate paper cutouts. To traverse from two-dimensional drawing to the three-dimensional model was an entryway into understanding Goldring’s complex layering. Though an element of her larger process, the light boxes function on their own as sublime works of art, quite literally illuminating the intricate measures Goldring undertakes to complete a foto-projection.

Also instructive was an alcove gallery featuring a short film of the artist at work in her studio, projected on the wall alongside the light box models. Goldring begins her foto-projections by projecting and enlarging one of her own photographs, upon which she then overlays drawing and sometimes three-dimensional elements. Considering the striata of her individual works invites the viewer to consider the unfolding of time.

Her various foto-projection series, when viewed in sequence, elucidate passage. When she isn’t traveling, Goldring’s subject is often what she sees through the windows of her Manhattan home, where she has lived for decades. Many of the foto-projections capture a window’s unique framing device, creating an intimacy with their subject that suggests a personal, emotional experience, and eliciting an emotional response from the viewer in turn. Shadows modell from 1997 exhibits Goldring’s collaged elements of cut paper and Mylar, accentuated with pencil and gouache. From this model, she produced a vibrant series of “Shadow” foto-projections, made in 2017, a full two decades after the original model. Tightly framed, one detects Goldring’s original shadow forms now transposed by her images. Across three images titled Shadows’ Shadow, the photographic element shifts between verdant green foliage, the silhouette of the plant, and a stone edifice. A withering of the natural world, to make way for the manmade one, seems implied. In another series, “Machinations” (2022), Goldring’s constructed elements take on radically different characteristics across four different foto-Projections, again dependent upon the image that is overlaid. Machinations, Fresco Rose seems almost Constructivist in composition; a jamb-like protrusion and a triangular cut definitive lines and angles into the work’s anatomy. But in another, Machinations, Bronze Elgreco, these same shapes seem to recede into the background, nearly fading away at their edges as the image of a shingled roof and a periwinkle sky beyond it press their way to the forefront. Goldring’s stratifications seamlessly coalesce, compressing time and experience into a universal anamnesis.