NYAB Event - “Karmic” Exhibition

“Karmic” Exhibition

Life on Mars Gallery

[Image: Brenda Goodman "Sciatica (15)" (2016) oil on paper mounted on rag board, 6 by 8 in.]

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Life on Mars Gallery presents Karmic, an exhibition championing the work of Glenn Goldberg, Steve DiBenedetto, and Brenda Goodman. Each artist has a different career arc: Goldberg an early meteoric rise; DiBenedetto, a steady and consistent path; Goodman the product of an uncompromising studio practice, creating work underappreciated for much of her career. Their decades-long commitment to painting, places them today at the forefront of the conversation about contemporary painting. Each artist’s work defies easy classification, and while different from each other, they share an important and individual vision that connects with an audience spanning generations.

Brenda Goodman takes the language of abstraction and bends it towards her will, creating a world of deep personal meaning. She creates imagery that is painful and powerful. Through her masterful use of oil paint, Goodman produces rich surfaces of bold and emotionally charged color and displays draftsmanship honed through decades of practice. Much of her skill and painterly persona is just as evident in her works on paper.

Glenn Goldberg creates beautiful, intimate drawings that are a function of his meticulous and rigorous practice. He combines playfulness ands patterning often found in Eastern art with formal pictorial spaces associated with Western abstraction.

Steve DiBenedetto, battles with his surfaces in order to reinvent them. In the words of Aldrich Museum curator Richard Klein, DiBenedetto, “has consistently rejected formalism throughout an era where both formal and conceptual approaches to painting have become de rigueur, taking a position where the canvas and the act of painting initiate a site for struggle, invention, and, ultimately, reinvention.”

In our project space, we will be featuring works by Alex Phillips, Jason Saager and John Smiddy, curated by Goldberg, DiBenedetto and Goodman, respectively. Selections reflect affinities the older artists have with the works of the artist they chose; their desire to “give back” to emerging artists a reflection of how they were helped and mentored early in their careers. The work of Glenn Goldberg and Alex Philips share the use of enigmatic imagery and delicate and precise use of materials. Steve DiBenedtto and Jason Saager create complex narratives through the direct physical use of paint. Brenda Goodman and John Smiddy build highly personal psychologically charged paintings; with surfaces that go though multiple adjustments to find resolution through a hard-fought process.

Steve DiBenedetto has had numerous solo exhibitions dating back to 1987, with an extensive exhibition history in Germany and Italy. He has shown with Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Derek Eller Gallery, and Daniel Weinberg Gallery. David Nolan Gallery currently represents him. His first major solo museum exhibition, Evidence of Everything, is on view now at the Aldrich Museum, through April 3, 2016. A Guggenheim fellow and winner of both a Rosenthal Award and an Academy of Arts and Letters prize, DiBenedetto has work in numerous private collections and in the institutional collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Glenn Goldberg, another Guggenheim fellow, exhibits widely across the United States and internationally. He debuted at the legendary Willard Gallery in 1985, and exhibited at the historic Knoedler & Co, Inc. He had recent solo exhibitions at Jason McCoy Gallery and Betty Cunningham Gallery. Goldberg’s work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the National Academy of Arts and Letters, the Nelson-Adkins Museum of Art, the Rose Art Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Whitney Museum, as well as in many other private and public collections.

Brenda Goodman received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Artists in 2015, she also received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. She has had solo exhibitions at numerous galleries throughout the country, including John Davis Gallery, Howard Scott Gallery, Pam Adler Gallery, Nielsen Gallery, Revolution Gallery, Marianne-Deson Gallery and Phyllis Kind Gallery. She had a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at Life On Mars Gallery in 2015. In late 2015, her work was the subject of a 50-year retrospective at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. Goodman’s paintings and works on paper have been in countless group shows, most notably at the Whitney Biennial and the New Museum.