*Thank you for coming to my reception on October 7th, 2023
Enjoy some documentation of your visit! -Chelsea Goodwin
The wolf, in this case appears to be emerging from the ground jaw first, with teeth cutting the horizon like a mountain range.
The teeth cast long shadows on the surroundings. Moving fast, confusing motion. In this iteration we wish you luck, “In Bocca al Lupo” like the Italians call to each other. To which we respond, Crepi!
This installation is made with a ceramic field based on lupine teeth, emerging from the ground in your neighborhood, glowing in stray light at night. What do you see coming your way?
Maybe they’re inciting the feeling of something you maybe sense but don’t understand, stirring the feeling that could be fear or exhilaration…
This installation is part of the 2023 Terrain Biennial.
Visit the website for further sites to find art in your neighborhood!
Download the PDF artist statement here.
About Terrain Biennial:
Terrain Biennial is the month and a half long public exhibitions of artists works in host locations in the neighborhoods where you live! Visit the Terrain Exhibitions website for an interactive map with sites and projects listed, as well as an archive of past Biennial works.
A little background about what inspired this project:
This project began as a proposal maquette for a larger, interactive site-specific installation for the paved entry at the gated entrance of the Real Bosco on the Museum Grounds of Capodimonte in Naples Italy. After a meandering visit through the grounds, the Museum, and past several buildings under construction, I decided that the place as a former hunting grounds, and with a rich history of the fine porcelain ceramics needed a contemporary sculpture in the tradition of the shadow theaters. A phantasmagoric display to mark the start of new era of use and activation, something to evoke a feeling, and cast long shadows.
“In bocca al lupo” called out at your acquaintance leaves you, is the type of remark to wish you well. Think of it as a way to give you hope, or luck, or a friendly warning. But to me, it invokes the reality of facing the world as a story, and all the characters whom one may encounter, players…
I had the feeling of the place. So after my visit, and a long while at home, I started to let my mind wander with all of the impressions from our visit.
The layout of the grounds upon arrival, and at several points inside, felt to me like standing in the palm of a giant hand, and the radiating paths into the woods and through the grounds like fingers reaching out. It may have been the heat, or exhaustion of traveling, that we were strangers and with no destination, and that “chance” felt like the primary guiding idea.
I imagined we were a set of dice cast out into the grounds for any serendipitous encounters we may have. A little like Alice in the wonderland? Maybe I was influenced by our host wishing us “En Bocca al Lupo” as we set out…
Some people told us that the grounds had been designed originally as hunting grounds for the sport of nobility, but in a fallow period, it became a place to meet illicitly, maybe for love, maybe for money? It certainly felt like a playing field. The canopy of old growth darkened paths dramatically, the way the light burned through open areas to reveal benches, sculptures, fields was simultaneously a relief and jarring to experience.
When we stepped into the shadows I felt the exhilaration and piqued sense of danger. I imagined the characters who had come before, left evidence of their trysts…
Find the installation a much different version than the one tested out and proposed with images made at my studio.
This one is in the neighborhood, no cement, after dark, lit to cast shadows which move, and all under a tree!
