news — David J. Wilson

My work, Dear Justice is included in an amazing show at the Museum For Art In Wood curated by Jennifer-Navva Milliken.

In this exhibition, the phrase “A Usable Past” describes how we draw meaning from history to navigate the present. “A Usable Past” will bring together sculpture reckoning with America’s layered histories. From family lineages and ancestral myths rooted or shifting values, probing how the nation’ss past continues to shapeour experience of the present. Drawing from the metaphorical power inherent in the material of wood, this exhibition translates inheritance into form, giving “shape and substance to national identity.” Wood holds its memories in its fibers—growth rings that record time, witness events, and adapt to environmental change. Like families, like nations, trees inherit traits that strengthen and sustain them. In the artists’ hands, this living archive becomes a site for reflection on what is passed down: liberty and revolution, labor and belonging, resilience and repair. On view at the Museum for Art in Wood Main Gallery from November 7, 2025 – February 15, 2026

Please consider donating any amount so I may realize this project in 2023. Please click on the below button link:

Donation Page

Project description:

I am a visual artist, and this project is a sculpture and sound installation that will exist in either a gallery or performance space located in Manhattan New York in 2023. It is research based and part of an ongoing series of works I have been making for the past several years that incorporate sculptures that are created to raise questions about our relationships with institutions and organizations that wield power and command influence.

The research for this project started while participating in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace 2022-2023 residency program. The residency studio is in the Financial District of lower Manhattan, and I became interested in the physical and architectural environments that surround its location. Specifically, I began to research the histories of the multitude of Art Deco buildings and their relationships with financial institutions. Some housed banks, investment and trading companies, and others the employees of these institutions. As these monoliths to capital were built in the early twentieth century, it coincided with the popularity of Art Deco and its complicated history with the rise of surveillance states. Art Deco began to be used as a symbol of luxury and wealth while being crafted by a diminishing, and underpaid, skilled labor force. The laborers and materials were extrapolated from Europe and parts of North America to build the aesthetics of the financial capital of the world. The architectural ornament came to define a concept of beauty that is visually alluring but contradictory to the wealth gap that was being wedged by the institutions where the objects and materials are located. They were built at the apex of high modernism and incorporate many of the problematic themes inherent to that movement. This chasm may be unique to the time, but its effects have only become more exaggerated and wider spread in its impact on the global economy. The financial district buildings have recently become sparser in their occupancy due to the shift from physical spaces to online trading, so while this transition is a metaphor for the way traditional finance has shifted into the murky and hidden world of crypto currency, this project will bring attention to and re-imagine the physical objects that are still located in these buildings.

For the visual and physical component of the installation I have picked eight oversized, overhead art deco lighting fixtures from the lobbies of buildings located in the Financial District. Each of these are unique, built from glass, steel, and brass and have significant visual and spatial resonance. Most are inverted dome shapes that reflect light off ceilings made of inlayed wood or plaster. A few are cylindrical and cannon shaped and hang in an elongated vertical orientation. I will build exact to-scale replicas of these light fixtures carved out of hardwoods; walnut, spalted and ambrosia maple, ebony, and other species (please see website images for visual reference to how this is relevant in my practice). This act removes any utility formally associated with the object and changes our semiotic understanding of the images while also alluding to the handmade as an afront to the hegemony of mass production and the dominance of technology. After these sculptures are finished, they will be inverted and installed horizontally in two rows of four on two walls that directly face each other at approximately eye/ear level. The size of each sculpture will be between 2-3 feet in width/height and 3-6 feet in depth. The ideal gallery space will be approximately 1000 square feet.

For the sound and acoustic component of the installation the shape and form of the inverted sculptures form a perfect physical mechanism to emit and disperse sound. These shapes, combined with the resonant frequencies of the woods, will act as speakers. Each sculpture will emit a unique sound. Four sounds created from the data of the volatile fluctuation of stock markets during historical events. And four sounds created by the movement of visitors to the public/gallery space as they walk in and between the installation. There will be sensors that are activated by the visitor’s movement, and these will create audio feedback loops that will intertwine with the financial data from stock market reports to create wholly unique compositions. The sound is directional, from sculpture to sculpture, but will also create a larger and more complicated sound installation that occupies the entirety of the gallery space and operates as a composition, mapping intertwining narratives.

The intention of combining these sculptures with the sound components is to create an environment for visitors to explore their own individual contingency to the things and systems being referenced by engaging in the multi-sensory experience.

Ornament and Crime? is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Ornament and Crime? must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.