Brenda Goodman: Back on Willis Street
April 21 – June 10, 2023
Brenda Goodman:
Back on Willis Street
April 21 – June 10, 2023
Matéria is thrilled to present the solo exhibition, BRENDA GOODMAN: Back on Willis Street, including 15 new works created by the artist in 2022 and 2023. After 50 years since her very first solo exhibition which took place at the Willis Gallery in Detroit in 1973, Brenda Goodman will be returning to Cass Corridor for the opening of her newest solo exhibition.
“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.”
BRENDA GOODMAN
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.