Nemo Gould
"What makes a thing fascinating is to not completely know it. It is this gap in our understanding that the imagination uses as its canvass. Salvaged material is an ideal medium to make use of this principle. A “found object” is just a familiar thing seen as though for the first time. By maintaining this unbiased view of the objects I collect, I am able to create forms and figures that fascinate and surprise. These sculptures are both familiar and new. Incorporating consumer detritus with my own symbology, they are the synthesis of our manufactured landscape and our tentative place within it– strong and frail at the same time."
With years of accumulating post-consumer waste and a lifetime of absorbing pop culture imagery, Nemo Gould has been creating his signature style of kinetic metal and found object sculpture for over 20 years. Old vacuum cleaners, dead bugs, used dentures and sewing machine motors all find their unerringly rightful place in his surreal creatures and abstract sculptures, which have attracted museums, galleries and eccentric art collectors throughout the Bay Area and abroad.
Born in Minneapolis, MN and raised in Nevada City, CA, Nemo Gould earned his BFA in sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1998 and his MFA at the University of California at Berkeley in 2000. His work has been shown in the San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum and the Arizona Museum for Youth.
