(Un)believable discoveries
Joshua Goode is an American sculptor and amateur archaeologist. Fascinated by deliberate historical manipulations he is researching and developing his own satirical history in an effort to expose the malleability of our past, present, and future. Working with the community to discover his unbelievable artefacts they also discuss and rediscover the true shared histories of the location. He has completed these public projects in Spain, Germany, Russia, Croatia, Egypt, England, China, Belgium, Finland, and the USA. His ‘artefacts’ have been exhibited in solo exhibitions in international venues such as Capellades Museum (Barcelona), Highlands Museum (Shanghai), Darb 1718 (Cairo), LaSala Gallery (Zaragoza), Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb, James Freeman Gallery (London), and Ivy Brown Gallery (New York).
(Un)believable discoveries is a series of 11 works by the American artist Joshua Goode. Each of the works presents a proof of discovery of a quasi-historical artefact: a Palaeolithic Marge Simpson, Bronze Bartosaurus or a full-scale Mammoth are covered with dust and envisaged in hands of the scientist. Importantly, these very believable scenes of discoveries don’t show museum versions of the artefacts representation, but rather a technical document of an ethnographer. The cultural facts in these works are given in the raw materiality of soil and are inseparable from the body of the artist, which makes them even more real. The сunning manipulation created by Joshua Goode is based on our beliefs and addresses some good questions about crypto art that are yet to discover. First, the hypertrophied materiality of the works plays with the missing materiality of the NFT and the issues of its institutionalisation. Secondly, the artefacts combine icons of popular culture and a dimension of historical heritage or even antiquity, referring us to the question of whether crypto art has a past and how is art history possible in this case?
