GOLD LAB SYMPOSIUM ARTWORK 2026

“To proclaim something surreal in 2025 is to say almost nothing at all.” 

- Naomi Klein, Surrealism Against Fascism

Our conversation about the artwork this year began with Larry Gold sharing his recent exposure to an exhibition on surrealism. The Larrys and I talked about the anti-fascist roots of the movement and the imaginative work of artists and writers grappling with a fascist landscape in the 1930s. I agreed that surrealist art is becoming more relatable with every passing day, and I began to look back through the work of surrealists like Suzanne Van Damme, Meret Oppenheim, Claude Cahun, Lee Miller, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Valentine Hugo, and André Breton. 

This lens of relatability struck poignantly when I realized that the game of ‘exquisite corpse’ was a surrealist exercise in creative reach. This collaborative drawing exchange includes folding paper in thirds, drawing a section of a body, then passing it along to the next person to add more body until a being emerges. This game was developed to tap into spontaneity and possibility. Artists were looking for ways to express an embodied future without the oppressive constraints of authoritarianism, imperialism, patriarchy–actual bodies were a direct representation of limitless, expansive beings. 

This generated a sort of daydream image of a protective, watchful presence. A being that observes our daily experiences with the utmost humble and savvy awareness. It drifts alongside us, aware that our human tendencies may be inherently harmful and sees our struggle against self-annihilation. Somehow, the fantasy of this Observer felt like a comfort, like it could lead us toward connection and possibility - maybe even the possibility of renewed human thriving.

Of course, we know that the real tangible work toward thriving (or merely surviving) and any enduring stewardship of the planet and its inhabitants will be carried out by incredible leaders and thinkers like those here at Gold Lab Symposium.  The people presenting and sharing their work here have been contributing in inspiring ways to our communities and our hope. 

From my notebook while painting this piece:

These are totemic guardian monsters. They’re protective, elaborate aggregations of mammalian senses and emotion. 

Fearless and fearful. 

Vulnerable and stoic. 

They are witness to the harm inflicted human-to-human; they’re angry, rageful, furious. 

They are feathers fanned open by wind, 

moved as a shadow on a sundial. 

They are a fluttering heart of a rabbit, 

a hungry dog’s wet mouth. 

A stone’s lichen cloak in a hushed pine wood, 

Vernal pools, 

tidepools,

coral safe havens.

Inspiration/Research to Note: 

• Worry dolls (muñecas quitapenas), totem poles of the native people of Pacific Northwest Coast, milagros, pilgrim badges, gargoyles

• Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger and Surrealism Against Fascism

• Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 (from the Exhibition at Philadelphia Art Museum)

• Mysticism, Simon Critchley