Doug McGoldrick

(b. 1970; resides Chicago, IL)

On the image side they are things you stared at when bored in meetings or classes, the little things that you would not otherwise notice but can become enraptured in when your eyes do stumble upon them. On the text side it’s the lecture you don’t get or the talk you don’t care about. —Doug McGoldrick

Paired fields of image and text make up the pictures of Doug McGoldrick’s Interior series. The title, presumably, refers not just to the enclosed classroom and meeting spaces depicted but also to the internal state of mind one sometimes retreats to after spending much time in such spaces. The mental landscape McGoldrick suggests is minimal, marked by bold colors and salient objects sometimes interrupted by and sometimes blending with the lines of text that merge, converge, jumble, and stack in varying degrees of illegibility. Small clues in the text, perhaps no more than three crisp words in a tiny font, can prove more maddening than the pleasant numbness of giving up and zoning out. Indeed, when confronted with a barrage of information or the frustration of an elusive understanding, there is something comforting in narrowing one’s focus to a small, manageable band of sharp detail where the arcing scratch on a tabletop or the pattern of wood grain laminate is intelligible and absorbing.

Doug McGoldrick studied at Iowa State University, Ames (BFA, 1992); The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Post-Baccalaureate Studio Certificate, 1993); and University of Wisconsin, Madison (MFA, 1996). His work has been exhibited at Brogit Gallery, Barcelona, Spain; Los Angeles Center for Digital Art; The Center of Contemporary Arts, St. Louis; and Schneider Gallery, Chicago. It is also part of various public and private collections, including those of Deloitte, Chicago; Strawberry/Fields Productions, Minneapolis; and the Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison. He has taught at Columbia College Chicago since 2001.