Susan Goldman
Title upon request
April 6 – May 5, 2002
John Connelly Presents
526 West 26th Street, Suite 1023
New York, NY 10001 t. 212-254-4082
Hours: Friday – Sunday, 12-6pm
Opening: April 6, 6-8 pm
Susan Goldman, Natural Beauty 03, 2000.
SUSAN GOLDMAN (1964-2001)
John Connelly Presents is proud to announce an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture by the late artist Susan Goldman. Working with the idea of creating a system and then packaging it, sometimes literally, sometimes conceptually, or a combination of both Goldman created a diverse body of work that exploited existing codes in language and design to forge an enigmatic vocabulary of logos, shapes, numbers and letters. Her often meticulous output forged the symbolism of architecture and technology with an alternately ambivalent/ captious/ passionate view of modernism, economics, art, fashion and nature.
Goldman’s Paint by Numbers series exploits the hobbyist phenomenon that began in 1952 by isolating geometric grids within the familiar neutral blue and white patterns for painting “pictures” according to a numbered system. By painting small sections of the undulating diagrams in bright neon palettes Goldman organized squares and rectangles of camouflage like patterns within the sprawling “organization” of the paint by numbers surfaces. While Goldman’s organization of these colored areas recall architecture or mathematics in their presentation, by retaining the original “paint by numbers” titles like “Country Scene”, “A Day on The Greens” and “Natural Beauty 03″ Goldman firmly grounds the work in the more polar rhetoric between nature and culture.
Like Goldman’s Logo/Number Drawings series the elements in Airspace 01, 02, 03 and 04 (all acrylic on aluminum) are often inspired by corporate logos, numbers from financial market listings, and various buildings. Like the drawings these paintings are compositional exercises whose elements are used as a kind of raw material, replacing their intended origin or function with a visual emphasis. The result is a playful dialogue as small bits of color dart between obsessively scrawled numberings and floating shapes across a sweeping taupe background.
Also on view will be two of Goldman’s sculptural works, large matte-gray hexagon boxes containing the artist’s discarded seasonal wardrobes over the period of one year. While Goldman circumscribed each season by choosing a strict palette of clothing to wear for certain months she intentionally subverts this choice by encasing the clothing in a tomb-like structure whose somewhat ominous visage reappears throughout Goldman’s work. Like the gorgeous grids in her Paint by Numbers series Goldman uses the geometry and content of the sculpture to create a virtuoso microcosm of expressive frustration. Using a wide range of mediums and broad tactics ranging from humor to pathos Goldman forged often stirring artistic metaphors for our ongoing desire to create or experience something unique in a culture consumed with the demands of presentation, packaging and mass production.
Susan Miriam Goldman, born on January 9, 1964 took her life on April 26th, 2001 at the age of 37. Raised in Suffern, she was a graduate of Hotchkiss School, class of ’82, Bennington College, class of ’86, and Hunter College, MFA Fine Art, class of ’93. A resident of Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 1988, she was a fine artist who had exhibited in New York and internationally. Her work was recently featured as part of “Transcendent & Unrepentant” at the Rosenwald – Wolf Gallery/University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Concurrently, the work of Susan Goldman can also be seen at:
Momenta Art: March 29 – April 22, 2002
72 Berry Street: Brooklyn. NY 11211
Tel/Fax: 718-218-8058
and on the web at: www.thing.net/~sg/
