June Mattingly's - Special "EYE" to watch

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moderndallas.net
Special “Eye” to Watch
June Mattingly // contributing art writer

Joshua Goode ..... "What the Thunder Said"

“What the Thunder Said,” is a disconcerting portrait of the life of a close, youthful family member
with a life-enduring physical incapacitation for whom Josh Goode feels tremendous affection.
A withered plaster female figure covered in rich gold leaf, a symbol of endearment and esteem,
rests on a mattress above a crude platform, with a hole in her stomach out of which plastic
tubing protrudes to connect to a ceiling fan and like the bed fashioned from fence posts.
The small size of the space, a “hospital tomb,” symbolizes a feeling of disconnection from the
rest of the world. Her toys and Josh’s own hair personalize the emotional impact.

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“What the Thunder Said,” 2010, an installation at Guerilla Arts, Dallas

LORRAINE TADY - Yellow/Black, 2010 - oil on canvas 24 x 20"

My newest discovery in the class of emerging Texas artists is Josh Goode. Standing in
line recently for a glass of wine at a Valley House opening I stood behind Barnaby
Fitzgerald (my gallery gave Barnaby’s first show). He introduced me to young man
to interview who happened to be Josh. The connection - Josh studied under Barnaby
at SMU where he received his BA. Josh got his MFA from Boston University in 2005.

Last week, I visited Josh’s studio in North Dallas with Savannah, his “assistant,” his
almost three year old daughter in his care (while mom is at work). He told me that
when completing one of his paintings she pointed to an incomplete area and said
“yellow” and “she was right!”

This is a very solid, serious artist. The studio where he creates unassembled components
of large scale installations and paintings is in his garage. Drawings of a\proposed
installation of a compartmentalized ship requiring gallery space with 16-foot ceilings
were attached to one small wall. A press he prints related hand-designed, hand-held
books rests in a corner while a close to wall-size painting produced a powerful
presence in the confined workspace.

Photographs of his work and comments specifically written for this blog by his
renowned professor at SMU Bill Komodore describe how Josh’s brilliant mind works.

“Joshua Goode’s work evinces the complexity of opposing forces. It can be sensitive
and wild, tender and violent, fresh yet evoking an ancient mastery. His work explores
the human condition, focusing on the family and the limitations of the physical body,
with a rawness and directness that is refreshing in a time when the communication
arts are stagnating in a superficial mix of celebrity gossip, sound bites and reality TV.”

“His small prints and drawings are unique for their beauty and sensitivity. The larger
works offer arenas that echo the struggle of our lives. Certainly, this work constitutes
an alternative language for our time.”
Thank you, Bill.

Non-profit spaces Josh has been in solo shows in the last two years includes CoLab
in Austin, the Ice House, Brookhaven College and Guerrilla Arts in Dallas, Art Storm in
Houston. Group shows he’s been included were in Shanghai, Madrid, Seattle, Boston,
Zurich and K-Space in Corpus Christi is coming up in 2011.

Guerilla Arts

Guerrilla Arts is located on Haskell Avenue in the old Viet Nam Veterans biker gang’s
ram shackled headquarters; its passionate, energetic founder/director Patrick Short,
an artist himself, finished it out in turn for one year free rent. In spite of inadequate
backing, Short provides Dallas an independent non-profit space for ambitious
unconventional, non-establishment art, (a) “mixture of an artist-run gallery, an
artists’ residency, an arts education center, a home base for an artists’ collective…”
Patrick concludes, practically no Dallas gallery takes chances on experimental,
virtually non-salable art. Non-profit spaces like the McKinney Avenue
Contemporary and the Dallas Contemporary reach out to more known artists
than Goode or to non-Texans, leaving cutting-edge artists’ main recourse to local
university or artist-run galleries or to run to other cities, making Guerrilla Arts a
marvelous addition to our art scene.

As per Josh at his opening for his show at Guerrilla Arts, “people crowded into the
space openly engaging with the art and launching into a critical dialogue free of
the usual Dallas pretension…I am enjoying working near home and not worrying
about how to ship plaster figures, large wooden structures and stacks of paintings.”

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