Amy Globus, “Sculpting in Time .” Flash Art International 38:242 (May-June 2005): 95
AMY GLOBUS: Sculpting in Time
February 19th - March 26, 2005
D’Amelio Terras
Reviewed by Melissa Friedling
For Amy Globus’ first solo show, she offers a video centerpiece, Electronic Sheep (2003-2004), that revisits her earlier material, combining images of the artist’s two pet octopi with found footage of their kin undulating in tanks that show off the invertebrates’ talent for pouring their bag-like heads and eight legs into impossibly narrow spaces. Globus follows the rhythmic movement of the pulsing creatures, dissolving and fading to black between tentacle-filled compositions shot against the murky darkness that the animals prefer. The hypnotic images are accompanied by over-modulated electronic sounds mixed under This Mortal Coil’s “Song to the Siren” which featured prominently in David Lynch’s eerie film, Lost Highway (1997).
Globus’ movie references are scattered all about her work. She has titled her show after another cinematic innovator, Andrei Tarkofsky, borrowing his metaphor of “sculpting in time” which describes his belief that rhythm is the structuring element of cinema. Indeed, her video organizes itself around its own “varying rhythmic pressure” but Globus further pushes Tarkofsky’s metaphor towards the literal by including sculptures in the show that were created when salt crystals started growing on the tank’s filters after her octopi died. The sculptures are part new-age-y, part goth., and poignant memorials to her deceased pets. Globus appears more than willing to give herself over to the organic possibilities of her subject matter and, seeded with her darker cinematic sensibility, the work offers mysterious promise and possibilities.