Past Resident
Robert Goodman
Robert Goodman makes abstract works that explore the relationships and tensions between spaces, bodies, and materials. His works engage the properties and histories of painting, while working across a range of formats that include traditional studio painting as well as public works and installations.
“My artworks suggest cascading, collapsing, and overlapping environments that are saturated, extensive, expanding, dangerous, and exciting. Bold colors and sharp graphic lines suggest dynamic movement, while the intricacy, delicacy, and small scale of the painted marks undermine the certainty and authority of those broad gestures.”
Q&A with Robert Goodman (from Crosstown Arts newsletter, July 23, 2020)
Philadelphia-based artist Robert Goodman was a Crosstown Arts resident artist during the Spring 2020 session. His work explores the relationships and tensions between spaces, bodies, and materials in painting, as well as public works and installations.
Goodman received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and his MFA from Tyler School of Art. His work has been shown nationally at ZG Gallery in Chicago, Peter Fingesten Gallery and Anna Kustera Gallery in New York, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, and Vox Populi, Seraphin Gallery, and The Galleries at Moore in Philadelphia. Goodman has presented his work at Pace University, Sarah Lawrence College, Emery and Henry College, and Rutgers University, and his work was recently acquired by the Woodmere Art Museum. Robert is an Associate Professor at Moore College of Art and Design.
Crosstown Arts registrar Jesse Butcher caught up with Goodman to discuss his paintings, his public artwork, and what has been inspiring him lately.
Jesse: In some of your newer works, you are exploring a breaking of the conventional picture plane by bringing the canvas to its own acknowledged level of objecthood. Do you still think of them as paintings, or do they have a different meaning to you now?
Robert: I do consider the works to be paintings, but I have a fairly broad sense of what a painting is and can be. The history of painting is so vast that, despite being defined by material, I find the medium rewardingly malleable. I also find that the limitations that define painting are uniquely suited to interrogate the relationship of space to material, the body, images, and objects. Somehow painting is able to be both the thing being considered and also about the thing being considered. I’m really intrigued by that duality.
The triangular shape also seems to be fairly recent in your paintings. Do you think that is coming from your interest in public work? Like the architecture of the city seeping into the elements on the canvas?
You’re right, the triangular forms did emerge out of my public works; in particular, a piece that was installed in a reflecting pool here in Philadelphia. In that installation, those forms were a direct response to both traditional garden follies and also to an adjacent greenhouse. In more recent works, the triangular form isn’t so much a response to the city as it is a response to the constructed environment. In “Future Valley” (a project that included two murals and a plaza), the triangular shapes emerged as a way to map the building. For instance, edges were determined by connecting features of the building, like windows and doors. As these edges combined and overlapped, a geometry emerged that determined the image and its boundaries.
Utilizing the built environment as the starting point for a painting (as opposed to a secondary consideration) is something I’m starting to explore in studio-based and interior settings. How can both interior and exterior architecture animate painting, and how can painting animate architecture? How then do the paintings engage with the inhabitants of those spaces? With the furniture in the room?
I am interested in your studio process. Your work in the studio clearly delves into your unique constructs of painting. However, many artists have not delved into the world of public works. How did you begin that process? Do you have any advice for other creators who are apprehensive about undertaking public art projects?
The two really are very different. When I’m painting in the studio, I have a general idea of what I’m hoping to achieve. But the process evolves and clarifies as I work. Public works are very planned and also involve a layer (or multiple layers) of bureaucracy that might be surprising to people. However, the first public work I created actually involved no bureaucracy. A friend of mine who is a muralist approached me about a project he started called Freewall. His idea was to invite artists with painting practices but no experience with public works to create something on a monumental scale. The project was crowd-funded and the materials were donated, so the only constraint I had was time (we had the lift for a month). That experience felt like a really meaningful way to engage with public art on my own terms.
I’m interested in public work that aligns with my own artistic interests. I’m not someone who is always pursuing public art opportunities or is interested in working in ways that don’t support the goals of my broader practice. When something aligns with my interests, I pursue it (usually in the form of a collaboration). That said, mural painting and public installation involve complex skill sets and professional best practices. It’s important to have a good network of friends and colleagues who can help you navigate the terrain and answer questions. In my admittedly limited public work practice, I’ve collaborated with artists, landscape architects, lighting designers, theatrical set designers, real estate developers, and city non-profits. As an artist, you can’t know everything, so you need to be able to find the right people who can help and support you.
Are the works on paper a looser form of release? Like a daily meditation to free yourself from the permanence of canvas?
The works on paper offer a nice opportunity to deviate from the very slow process of making paintings. While the works on paper can usually be competed in one or two days, a larger painting takes around three months to complete. I also find that I’m much more experimental in these smaller pieces because, I assume, I’m less precious about the outcome. Almost every advancement in my work has developed out of this practice. I use these works on paper to exhaust my most immediate ideas so I can move into a more unusual approach to form, material, and concept.
I am also very interested in artist’s places of inspiration. Do you have any go-to places of interest (mental, physical, books, film, music)? Have you found anything inspiring lately? What have you been watching?
I grew up in South Florida, and I’m pretty inspired by the tropical colors, shapes, and environment that surrounded me when I was a kid. It is an incredibly physical place that is extreme in almost every way. I am often drawn to experiences that elicit that same sense of physicality; things like horror movies and baroque painting.
I also think that my experience as a gay man informs the work I make. There is a really great essay by Dave Hickey called “A Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz” that I often reread. It is a reflection on Liberace and the nature and authenticity of his artifice. I’m very much struck by the idea of the performance of an obvious lie; in Liberace’s case, the lie being his sexuality. Hickey’s essay reminds me of how I experience both making and viewing paintings – as this kind of performance within a category.
Currently, I’m watching and listening to nothing that I’m proud of! COVID-19 has given me an excuse to indulge in some truly questionable popular culture consumption. But in the studio, I’ve been thinking about the Crystal Shrine Grotto in Memphis. I took a bunch of photos there, and I’m going to use those photos as source material for some new paintings. I don’t have it all worked out, but I’m intrigued to see where things are going.
Thank you for taking a studio break to speak with me. Crosstown Arts looks forward to seeing the work you make in the future.
