coast_pole Eben Goff

coast / pole 2, washed out to sea
xerox

All material courtesy Eben Goff

I stumbled, happily, across this arresting art project by Eben Goff. I found it haunting, but at first I didn’t delve into why, I just enjoyed it on it’s surface, letting it tug at me but not wanting to analyze too much. I’d revisit it every few days. Recently I directed a friend who shares my interest in art to it. In trying to answer her questions I found I was looking more deeply into the work, and simultaneously into my response to it. It was a fruitful endeavor. I had originally contacted Eben to ask his permission to share this piece with my readers, but he was traveling over the summer and we had only a little dialogue. After digging into it with my friend, I had a set of responses to the work and sent them to Eben to see what he thought, and his reply surprised me, I don’t usually get this stuff right but he confirmed my reading and elaborated on it. I’d like to share the ‘conversation’ with you, but not just yet. What I plan is to give anyone interested a chance to do what I did, to work with this piece and arrive at your own conclusions and discoveries. In short, right now I want to share it, but not spoil it for others by laying my interpretation and Eben’s response all over it just yet. This will allow you to have an unmediated response of your own. In a week or two or so, I’ll re-post this with a transcript of our exchange. Should be fun, stay tuned. And great thanks to Eben for being open to a dialogue, and to my friend Lisa Obrecht who got me really thinking about this piece and helped elucidate our responses. A portal to Eben’s masterful work, and other pieces, can be found here.