Some Metals Are Precious, But This Art Is Golden

What do the Kaaba, James Bond, and glitch art all have in common? The artwork of Sarah Meyohas.

August 4, 2014, 9:50pm

Gold Glitched 1

Despite gold’s steady decline in monetary value, the precious metal is still quite a precious thing to have. A universal symbol of wealth, luxury, and beauty, while the aesthetics and economics of the metal are held in high regard, its artistic merits are usually absent fro contemporary art. Sure, there’s symbolist legend Gustav Klimt, who utilized gold leaf in some of his paintings, and Hubert Duprat's caddisfly bio-artworks, but besides the respective Austrian and French artists, the more memorable uses of gold in art date all the way back to the Byzantine era.

Currently in her second year at Yale’s Sculpture MFA program, Sarah Meyohas is gold’s potential resurrector. Using it as a medium more than an ornament, through her two diverse bodies of work, Gold Glitched and Celestial Gold, the artist applies the medium in ways quite different than Klimt ever imagined. From James Bond iconography, through glitch art, vintage TVs, and other elements, gold’s cultural components come to the forefront of Meyohas' creations.

We talked to Meyohas to discuss the ways in which she unites multitudes of seemingly opposing concepts with gold, and where this fascination with the precious metal originates.

The Creators Project: You currently have two projects centered around the numerous, varied facets of gold. Why the repeated use of this material? What is it about the element that entices you so much?

Sarah Meyohas: Gold is a reflection of value. A commodity expresses its value in the body of an equivalent commodity akin to a specular relation. The alchemy that reconciles body and essence leads us to prize gold as a universal equivalent of value. From its material use in iconography to its metaphoric use in abstract expressionism, gold is in art. But gold as art— that entices me. It is the material with the greatest imaginative reach and as such, a great possibility of representations.

These projects, however, utilize different mediums to tackle different aspects of gold.

Do you think you would work with gold again in the future? Would you approach the subject differently than before, with different mediums as well?

Gold will remain a subject. It is timeless. I’ve touched upon this issue, but haven’t really grasped it. Perhaps with my voice, words in time, I can get closer.

Gold Color Study

While you are currently working on a photography MFA at Yale, your BFA is in Finance and International studies. Do you think this traditionally 'non-art' background has had an influence on your works? Has it lent you advantages beyond a strictly art-school BFA?

Undoubtedly. My academic choices have shaped me. Whether it was pattern making in Florence, philosophy in Havana, or finance in Philadelphia, these disparate experiences are all part and parcel of the same pursuit. It has now taken the form of art, as a single lens through which to see a constellation of bodies and ideas. In this way, art is a means of expression rather than expression itself. A certain poetry emerges when, for example, gun shots through bulletproof glass come to stand for financial trades faster than the speed of light. The art reveals itself in the reduction to something at hand.

The incorporation of gold with religious iconography, such as replacing the Kaaba with gold foil, could be seen as a controversial choice. Can you explain this inclusion?

In 1915, Malevich displayed Black Square in an upper corner of the room. In Russian homes, that is the place reserved for an icon in Russian Orthodox tradition.

When I found out that all of the gold in the world could fit in a cube almost the size of the black cube of the Kaaba, I couldn’t help myself.

The Bond, Bond, Bond, Bond, Bond, Bond portion of Celestial Gold sticks out, particularly as it is the only one that does not deliberately involve the metal. Many Bond films, however, directly do (Goldeneye, Goldfinger, The Man With the Golden Gun…) Could you explain this exclusion?

The Bond photographs are indebted to the rest of the installation. They are visually and referentially tied to the rest of the pieces, whether through the gun and the shots, the Goldfinger victim, the exploding car from a Hollywood set, etc. The medium is malleable.

On their own, though, the Bond photographs are about an image of desire so strong that it transcends any single actor. In a sort of alchemy, the light becomes solid and an opaque body becomes luminous as the same woman gives form to the different images.