27 Sep 2018

Will Corwin: The Old Gods

Geary Contemporary

Reviewed by Saul Ostrow

Will Corwin's works negotiate the trinity of image, form, and materiality. The result is that each component of his recent show at Geary Contemporary renders up various narratives of creation and decay, referring to a mythological past and a godless present. Evoking Art Brut, his forms tend to be chunky, his images crudely modeled, his casting DIY. The pieces are presented unchased as if they had come directly from the mold or sand pit in which they were cast. Their initial impression is that of faux artifacts of a fictive ancient civilization.

A large sandbox occupies the center of the room. In it is what appears to be a model of the ruins of a grand thoroughfare leading to a city gate. Architecturally it is reminiscent of a collapsed Gothic cathedral, or the gigantic skeleton of the Navigator from the Alien franchise. Shelley's "Ozymandias" comes to mind: "Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away."