We are huge fans of miniature artist Abigail Goldman’s complexly provoking 1:87 scale dioramas. Merging everyday situations with often-gory scenes, you’ll double take her instantly recognisable works, encouraging you to reflect on the deeper meaning behind the brutality and darker side of humanity on show. Seriously: there’s a lot to unpack in her tiny dramas. Aptly referred to as “die-o-ramas” by the artist herself, there’s something in the effortlessly cute miniature scale and at-first-glance everyday scenes which offers a blanket of additional charm through which to process her surreal narratives. Juxtaposition is a fine tool to encourage further reflection, and Abigail Goldman wields it beautifully.
As well as her Quick Q+A feature in the upcoming September issue #46 of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Abigail is currently enjoying her latest solo show at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York. Her solo State of Nature runs until 31st August, so there is still time to catch her works in person and enjoy her latest series of works.
State of Nature is “brutally honest about taboo violent fantasies buried under social contracts”, inviting us to explore what our own actions may be like without societies’ laws stabilising the world around us. How moral are we, really? How much may our behaviours change if laws collapsed, and our current reality fell to total chaos? Complete with interactive lights – even in a cooking fire slow roasting a body – Abigail’s die-o-ramas are a darkly entertaining treat.
State of Nature with Hashimoto Contemporary explores the brutal impulses typically suppressed in everyday life on a 1:87 scale. Goldman uses her bloody miniature die-o-ramas not to shock, but to present complex and seemingly absurd narratives of human compulsions that bubble below the surface.
Abigail Goldman : State of Nature
Exhibition Dates: August 10 – 31, 2024
Hashimoto Contemporary
54 Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002
Phone: +1 310-730-6164
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
For further information email info@hashimotocontemporary.com.
From press release //
Arguments about true human nature are a cornerstone of the Western philosophical canon. Optimists like John Locke believed life before governmental rule was a magnanimous paradise, while pessimists like Thomas Hobbes believed life before a ruler was “nasty, brutish, and short.” Washington-based miniaturist Abigail Goldman leans begrudgingly towards the latter.
Beyond the usual empty fields or rocky cliff sides, Goldman’s newest narratives of humans in their brutish natural state occur inside picturesque homes, fine dining restaurants, and even Buckingham Palace. Figures no larger than a pinky-fingernail spill and ooze blood, consume human flesh, and execute their houseguests among pleasant interiors. Perhaps due to their size or the elements of surprise, the gory incidents are laced with dark humour. There’s always something funny about elderly women in their Sunday finest breaking from expected composure.
Goldman imagines these images of ordinary, respectable people lashing out or giving into their urges as cathartic – it’s something you didn’t know you needed until you had it.
While the exhibition’s title refers to a time before human governance, Goldman clarifies that there are governing forces similar to ours in these miniature worlds:
“We’re generally polite. We stand in line. We signal to turn,” she writes. “We mostly follow the rules. But we’re fraying at the edges and a certain kind of madness is setting in. If people find any truth in my work, perhaps it’s seeing subterranean feelings suddenly come to the surface.”
About the Gallery //
Hashimoto Contemporary is a contemporary art gallery originally founded in 2013 by Ken Harman Hashimoto. In 2023 the gallery announced two new partners, Dasha Matsuura and Jennifer Rizzo. Their roster consists of an eclectic blend of emerging and mid-career contemporary artists. Hashimoto Contemporary provides a platform for artists whose identities and subjects have been historically relegated to the margins, as well as artists whose practices fit neatly into the canon of art history. You can find their galleries at the Minnesota Street Project (San Francisco), the Lower East Side (New York City) and Culver City (Los Angeles) where their three spaces organize new exhibitions monthly.
About the artist Abigail Goldman //
Abigail Goldman’s artistic practice centers around miniature scenes of gruesome murders in plastic and acrylic. Dubbing her works “die-o-ramas,” Goldman’s miniature sculptures are rendered in 1:87 scale -each tiny figure is well under an inch tall, making them grotesque but familiar, grim but cute. The work’s diminutive size contrasts with the larger-than-life tableaus of gore and mayhem rendered within.
Though many of the narratives in Goldman’s scenes seem like something pulled from fiction, the artist draws almost exclusively from her professional life, where she witnesses and researches the “escalating feedback loop of rage and violence” present in American culture. At once adorable and offensive, Goldman’s “die-o-ramas” explore our relationship to violence – its omnipresence and resulting banality, as well as our innate attraction to the grisly and macabre.
Abigail Goldman’s miniatures have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work has been featured by numerous media outlets, including the LA Times, New York Times, NPR, Atlas Obscura, Juxtapoz, and Huffington Post, and the September 2024 issue #46 of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. In March 2019, Goldman and her work were the subject of a documentary produced for Topic Magazine.
