GENEVIEVE GOFFMAN

By Magnus Edensvard

Genevieve Goffman (b. 1991, Washington D.C., US) is a New York-based artist whose work taps into the potential of 3D printing, bringing rich, speculative narratives to life by reimagining historical events with a fantastical twist. The Yale MFA graduate’s approach feels akin to the sci-fi hyperbole of Philip K. Dick’s storytelling, creating alternative realities and what-if scenarios that ask unexpected questions about history, memory, and the structures that shape our understanding of the past as well as the present.Genevieve’s sculptures, crafted in pre-dyed vinyl, resin, and bronze, often take on the form of intricate, miniaturized worlds. Her works blend gothic architectural elements with a playful, stage-set quality reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s meticulous dollhouse aesthetic. There’s also a posthumous nod to the subversive spirit of Mike Kelley—each piece feels as if it exists within a reconstructed historical affair, where reality is twisted, reassembled, and given new life. Her cast of characters includes monks, house mice, and occasionally US patriarchs from the Civil War era, each caught in a world where history has turned topsy-turvy.

MAGNUS EDENSVARD: Genevieve, tell us about the origins of the Vineyard Sculpture you are currently working on.

GENEVIEVE GOFFMAN: Well, it all started with my brother. He’s obsessed with vineyards. When we travel together, he insists on touring them—comparing wines, learning about the process. I’m not that into it, but during one of these tours I discovered a tool that sparked something in me. It’s called a refractometer. You squish a grape inside it and it measures sweetness. That got me thinking about Geiger counters, which I collect, and how they measure something entirely different—radiation.I started imagining a vineyard in the future where the earth is irradiated and grapes are radioactive. The more radioactive the grape, the more potent the wine. There was something poetic in that comparison.

ME: That’s such a striking juxtaposition. How did the narratives evolve from there?

GG: After that vineyard visit, I remembered reading about monks in France who’ve been making wine for hundreds of years in the same monastery. That led me to imagine this alternate history where a group of monks, isolated in the French mountains during WWII, are watching the world outside fall apart. They’re distanced from the violence, but they’re still aware of it. Instead of engaging, they keep making wine, and in my narrative, the wine becomes their way of recording history. It’s like their entire purpose shifts from religious devotion to winemaking as a method of documentation. So, this sculpture imagines wine as a kind of record of destruction. But, like all attempts at recording history, it’s imperfect—flawed. The monks aren’t actively involved in the chaos outside, yet their wine still attempts to capture it, almost like a timepiece. But the time it records is muddled, impossible to pin down.

ME: Can you describe a little more your thinking for the formal aspects of this new piece?

GG: It’s a wall-hanging sculpture that mimics the form of a clock, but one that doesn’t work. The dial is turnable, and it shows different phases of grape harvesting—some real, some I made up—but none of it lines up. The whole piece is framed by vines that weave through the structure. The vines symbolize how the monastery’s purpose has been overtaken by winemaking. In the center of the piece is the figure of a monk, looking out at the world, but all he sees are these vines and a system of record-keeping that is doomed to fail.

ME: There are themes running through your work amounting to some sense of disruption and failure. How do such ideas factor into the Vineyard Sculpture?

GG: The idea of failure is essential to this piece. I’m drawn to how we try to measure, record, and make sense of things like time and history, and how often those systems fall apart. It’s about how history is often imperfectly remembered. We think we can record events with accuracy, but we can’t. It’s always fragmented, incomplete. There’s something almost funny about that—setting up these grand systems, only for them to crumble under the weight of their own ambition.

ME: This piece feels like part of a larger narrative. Is it connected to any other future works?

GG: It’s the first in a series of three. The story is still unfolding. I can’t wait to see how people engage with this idea of a failed timepiece—a clock that doesn’t tell time, and a wine that records nothing.