ARTISTS

ART ZEALOUS : Inside Clark Goolsby’s Colorful, Geometric, & Energetic World →

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Inside Clark Goolsby’s Colorful, Geometric, & Energetic World
March 9, 2016 by Caitlin Confort

As the Art Zealous team poked around the Art on Paper fair this past weekend in New York, we were show-stopped by the radiant and luminous work of Clark Goolsby in FMLY Gallery’s booth. We were engulfed by Goolsby’s world of illuminating shapes splashed with color and delighted by the quirky names of his pieces (i.e. Boogie Woogie).

Goolsby has drawn and painted his entire life – he couldn’t imagine a life where he wasn’t making art every day. His hard work and passion have certainly paid off as his work has been exhibited in: Johanssen Gallery Berlin, Germany; Mirus Gallery, San Francisco; Contemporary, Dallas, TX; and POVevolving Gallery, Los Angeles.

Art Zealous sat down with Clark Goolsby to discuss his Art on Paper experience as well as his creative vision.

Art Zealous: Hometown?
Clark Goolsby: I grew up in a small town in Northern California called Santa Rosa.

AZ: Coffee or tea?
CG: Coffee. In large quantities.

AZ: What is your creative process like?
CG: I primarily make paintings, but also dabble in sculpture as well. My paintings are very time and labor intensive. I paint directly on canvas and also on paper that I later cut up and collage back into the paintings. Contrary to the aesthetic, my painting process is pretty fluid, and I try to leave a lot of room for evolution and happy accidents in the process.

AZ: I love the use of color in your work – why do you gravitate towards such bright colors?
CG: I want my paintings to balance on the line between order and chaos. Whether used harmoniously or discordantly, color can help to create both of those feelings in a painting. Also, I just really love color.

AZ: How do you use lines and shapes to contribute to the mood or meaning?
CG: Lines and shapes play a similar role to color in my paintings. I love playing with shape and perspective to create paintings that feel solid and tangible, but also totally implausible at the same time.

AZ: If your artwork were music, what would it sound like?
CG: Like the love child of Prince and Animal Collective.

AZ: Tell us about your exhibition at Art on Paper this past weekend, we loved it!
CG: It was really a great experience. Working on paper or with paper has always been a huge part of my practice, so Art On Paper felt like a natural fit for my work. I exhibited with FMLY gallery for the first time, and they have a program I really admire. They only do solo shows at fairs, which I think is the best way to present work in that context. Since it was going to be a solo booth, I made a body of new work specifically for the fair. I was really happy how the pieces turned out.

AZ: What can we expect to see from you in the future?
CG: I’m opening a solo show of new paintings at Mirus Gallery in San Francisco on March 19th. I’ve been working on the show for the last year, and am very excited to share the new work.

JUXTAPOZ MAGAZINE Clark Goolsby at Art on Paper →

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CLARK GOOLSBY @ ART ON PAPER Mar 03, 2016 - Mar 06, 2016 FMLY, New York City

We have been checking out the schedule of events coming up during Armory Week in NYC (March 3—6, 2016, and we will have a booth at Armory, come see us), and the Art On Paper fair is always something we check out while out there. Clark Goolsby will have a solo show at the FMLY booth at Art On Paper, and he was kind enough to show us a preview of the work. . .

Obscura Magazine →

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The anonymity that people can retain in the digital world has given them courage to express themselves in a way that they would not have dared in real life. “The keyboard warriors”, as they call it, are those who make judgmental statements online, claiming on what they feel to be justice and righteousness. This has doubtlessly created interesting pools of dialogue, but it has also, inevitably, caused people to go hyperactive in the sharing of taboos, particularly, on the sharing of sexual materials which are provocative and at times outrageous to look at.

 

But as I see it, the truth always resides in the perspective of the perceiver, and artist Dan Gluibizzi has perceived such information as his gold mine. By taking full advantage of these pools, he has transformed them into his source of inspiration. Based in Portland, Gluibizzi is obsessed with Tumblr. As he told Juxtapoz, he sees these Tumblr users as being “wonderfully obsessive”, as they “meticulously organize digital scrapbooks of their favorite sub-genres of pornography. Many offer the widest range of poses and body types I have ever found.” This has allowed him to fully utilize the information age, and at the same time, exercise his analog creativity.

 

The reason why his works are not as challenging to look at as their sources might be, is not only because he renders them in a transparent-like texture, but also because he extracts these figures from their contextual forms, shifting them into pure subjects instead. He further enhances these images with intriguing colors in pastel. Even though some of the figures that he depicts are really interacting in “animalistic acts”, the details that he includes attract viewers, just like the sweet juices from a piece of bubble gum. His works allow people to visually ‘chew’ on them for a very long time, so that these lifeless depictions are given with more than just the connotations of promiscuity and physical desires.