Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Shadow Work, a solo exhibition by Abigail Goldman. The artist returns for her third solo show with the gallery featuring a new series of wickedly clever miniature dioramas resembling everyday sceneries of homes, storefronts and city streets. These seemingly innocent representations are clashed with murderous characters creating a strange, small universe where chaos reigns.

Shadow Work's collection of plastic sculptures are in 1:87 scale – part of an ongoing series of small works the artist calls ‘dieoramas’. The small tableaus feature figures under an inch tall that, at first glance, appear to be simple, suburban scenes – a bedroom, a bathroom, a bucolic backyard barbecue. On closer inspection, the ‘dieoramas’ are miniature mayhem: bodies are dismembered, blood flows, weapons are raised, forks are poised to dine on flesh. This juxtaposition – cute miniatures busy with savage and brutal cruelties – is meant to disarm the viewer with a surprise send-up of violence that has become almost banal in American culture. For many people, a jaw-clenching rage runs just under the surface, becoming an undercurrent that bubbles up through cracks and fissures in our culture, which is always more angry, more aggressive, more inured to the inhumane and vile.

Abigail Goldman - Shadow Work
Hashimoto Contemporary San Francisco

March 5th - 26th, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 5th from 1pm-7pm.
Appointments are encouraged, but not required. Appointments can be booked here