www.kultureflash.net November 2004

Preview Stephen Freidman Gallery exhibition

One of contemporary art's steady burners, Dryden Goodwin uses intense digital editing to closely peruse documentary video. The installation Stay (2004) traverses three contrasting landscapes, canal, forest and motorway returning, revising and reviewing what has been and is being surveyed. As the camera zooms and retreats, the peripheral shoots into focus and the zenith disappears. Works in the back gallery prove him possessed by ghostly traces towards a picture's edge; an exquisite series of prints made this year by repeatedly etching portraits on the same plate wreath, each head in nebulous lines protecting and veiling the person within. Not many artists who approach their work with such a detailed eye still realise grand visions; Goodwin is one of the few.