BRENDA GOODMAN
Hop Skip Jump
New Work 2022
February 3 – March 11, 2023
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present Hop Skip Jump—New Work 2022, a solo exhibition of oil and mixed media paintings by Brenda Goodman. This presentation centers on the shifts and developments in Goodman’s newest work, and her continued exploration of the painted medium. Hop Skip Jump—New Work 2022 will be on view February 3 through March 11, 2023. An exhibition catalogue featuring an essay by David Pagel will be published by the gallery.
Spanning nearly sixty years, Brenda Goodman’s artistic career is defined by her resistance to any singular definition under medium, subject, or mode of representation. Vacillating between periods of pure abstraction and perceptible figuration, her works illuminate profound spaces of psychological expression and physical evocation. Joy, grief, humor, and vulnerability imbue the spirit of her paintings, oftentimes reflecting the conditions of Goodman’s own life at the time of their creation. The presence of the body—in flesh and in paint—resonates deeply: from her viscerally representational self-portraits of the 90s and early 2000s, to the organistic structures seen in her abstract compositions. Embracing the full material and conceptual capacities of paint, Goodman delves into the depths between form and meaning, cultivating new visions of interiority and terrains of perception.
The paintings featured in Hop Skip Jump were all produced by Goodman within the past year; shown collectively, they display a chronology of her recent practice and the evolutions in her visual methodology. While distinct geometries and textured chromaticism remain foundational to her abstractions, the intermittent “jumps” in her style and technique can be seen in her experimental applications of paint and lucid tonal atmospheres. Gauzy brushstrokes build up veneers of color, leaving behind perceptible brush marks and intimating the movement of the artist’s own hand. Shards of vivid yellows and glinting reds configure themselves against muted fields of taupe, gray, and pale green, attuned together by palpable veils of paint.
Goodman’s characteristic method of incising lines directly upon her panels is no longer ubiquitous; in many of the new paintings, spatial and emotional complexity are created in part through cropped and printed sections of older works, and thin veils of oil washes on tracing paper which are then pasted onto the panel surface. Diminutive areas of patterning and mosaic-like fragments become portals into their own worlds, framed and activated by the angular edges of adjoining formations. Balancing the fluidity of improvisation with technical surety of the medium, Goodman’s new paintings reveal shared realms of experience, invoking moments of reflection and dynamic conversations of shape, line, and color—conversations in which the viewer is invited to join.
Brenda Goodman (b. 1943, Detroit, MI) received her BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, from which she also received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 2017. In 2015, a 50-year retrospective was presented at the Center for Creative Studies and Paul Kotula Projects. That same year, her work was included in the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual invitational, where she received the Award in Art.
Recent solo exhibitions were presented at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY; The Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; M. David & Co., Brooklyn, NY; and Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY. Her work was featured in the recent group exhibitions: Come a Little Closer, DC Moore Gallery (2023); Feminism and the Legacy of Surrealism, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY (2022); and Kick Ass Painting: New York Women, Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2020). Public institutions holding Goodman’s work include the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA; the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; and Birmingham Museum of Art, AL. Her work was included in the 1979 Whitney Biennial, and she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.