The exhibition features a range of compositions through which Goodman interrogates the process and history of painting itself, within his own artistic evolution and experiences, by combining strategies of the modernist canon including collage, assemblage, and action painting. In addition, Geary Project Space will feature an on-site collaboration with David Goodman and James Powers.
Saul Ostrow, who contributed the essay for the exhibition catalogue and co-founded with Goodman Critical Practices Inc., an organization committed to critical dialogue, says: “For David Goodman, painting exists at the intersection of ideation and realization – a place where he attempts to self-reflexively interrogate his own psychological and corporeal engagement within a world of complex, contradictory, synchronic events.”
Goodman’s approach is comparable to archeology. Each work stands as an abstract contemporary object that reveals a physically and metaphorically compressed self- referential narrative through the layering of reconstituted elements that create the pattern and form of the artist’s paintings. The assembled compositions connect to systems of reading language, as well as to coding that envelopes mass communication and consumption. The skeins of content serve as a way to address function, power, comprehension, history and experience. Goodman’s re- contextualizing of previous artwork runs parallel to other famous purges of artwork such as John Baldessari’s Cremation Project in 1970, Michael Landy’s Break Down in 2001, and Bob and Roberta Smith’s Art Amnesty in 2002 /2014. However, Goodman creates from a holistic approach; recomposing and rebuilding rather than disavowing his history.
David Goodman is a New York born and based artist. A 2014 Whitney Biennial participant with Critical Practices Inc., Goodman’s work has been featured in exhibitions at LaunchF18, NYC, NY (2014); the Bronx Museum of Fine Arts, Bronx, NY (2013); The New Museum, NYC, NY (2012); District Foundation, Berlin (2012). Goodman is a Bronx Museum AIM Fellow (2012), Post-Studio Tales residency-as- exhibition recipient (Berlin 2012), and BoxoHouse Resident (Joshua Tree, CA 2012). He has curated exhibits at the Judd Foundation and Skowheghan School of Painting and Sculpture and has served as a Visiting Artist/Critic and Adjunct faculty at numerous institutions (RISD, Rowan University, Pratt, SVA). Goodman previously exhibited at Geary in the group show Barely There, curated by Vadis Turner (2014). This is his first solo show at Geary.