'Eve Biddle: I have time for death and rebirth,' at Geary Contemporary / 'Brenda Goodman: A Long Journey—Paintings from 1989-2024' at Pamela Salisbury Gallery.
Eve Biddle: I have time for death and rebirth, to Geary Contemporary , Millerton, N.Y. through December 15, ‘24
This past summer, I was fortunate enough to visit Knossos and Heraklion, and get a first-hand view of the remnants of ancient Cretan Minoan civilization, where the Snake Goddess was central to the religious practices of this matriarchal society. Baring their breasts and holding a writhing snake in each hand, these sacred ceramic figurines are just as formidable now as they must have been in and around 1500 B.C. when they were made. In her recent works, Eve Biddle focuses on snake imagery that embraces the past by means of the formal conventions of depicting the serpent—in deference its long and complex iconography. She also invites new associations for the sometimes feared, often benign, but always irrepressible snake.
The exhibition I have time for death and rebirth reexamines the mystical realm of serpentine images that has coursed through Western culture for millennia. On view are a dozen relief sculptures of large snakes in ceramic, 2-D snake images on silk, glazed ceramics, plus mirror cut-out reliefs, and works on paper. Also featured are silkscreened, photo-based images of plants and flowers on oval panels that the artist refers to as “portals.” Co-founder of the Wassaic Project, a Hudson Valley art education center, Biddle is never didactic in her artwork, and the photo-based images of nature provide a subtle context for the snakes rather than a distraction.
Eve Biddle, Mirrored Snake: Tangle, 2022 Screenprint on mirror and wood 38½ x 13 x 1 in. Courtesy Geary Contermporary.
In her artful 2005 book Snake, author Drake Stutesman discusses the importance of the snake as being at the “core of art,” and the serpentine S-line as the “quintessence of aesthetics.” The snake is “key to the unknown, initiator of creativity (life) and a leader from one era (time zone) to another,” she writes. In this exhibition, Biddle seems to concur in the way her works often appear as ancient artifacts, and, as mentioned in a press statement, she uses the image of the snake symbolically as a metaphor for regeneration and resilience. Ultimately, Biddle, through her art, restores to the snake a sense of dignity and underscores its often overlooked cultural and environmental importance. —David Ebony
Brenda Goodman: A Long Journey—Paintings from 1989-2024 at Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, N.Y., through November 23, ‘24.
Brenda Goodman, Studio 3 (2023), Pamela Salisbury Gallery.
Brenda Goodman has always been something of a cult figure among avant-garde painting aficionados. In recent years, however, the veteran Detroit-born upstate, New York artist has garnered significant attention from the art-world mainstream, with several well-received gallery and museum exhibitions across the country. Brenda Goodman: A Long Journey—Paintings from 1989-2024 offers a rare opportunity for Mid-Hudson Valley art audiences to examine the broad range and depth of her career over the past four decades, with major examples from these years. While imagery has often prevailed in certain compositions, including a series of self-portraits, Goodman’s work is fundamentally abstract, and process has been paramount in her endeavor. Two, fine, large untitled paintings from 1989 featured in the show, demonstrate how obsessive layering has been a hallmark of her practice. In each of these compositions, Goodman builds up the surfaces to a rich impasto with infinite layers of deep brown and other earthy pigments. Feverish brushstrokes of red and green here and there enliven the rather somber, introspective mood of these works. Hazy crosshatched irregular oval shapes in gray or white in the foreground suggest shadowy presences or ghostly figures, but only in terms of a furtive glance or an after image.
Installation view, Brenda Goodman: A Long Journey: Paintings from 1989 to 2024, Pamela Salisbury Gallery.
More overtly figurative is the series of self-portraits that Goodman has produced over the years, including Quandary (2011). This large, imposing work shows the artist enveloped in the white walls of her studio, mourning the recent death of her beloved dog, and wondering if the act of painting can somehow placate profound grief. Over the years, Goodman brightened her palette and developed a visual language of contradictory spatial relationships. Sometimes these compositions suggest architectural renderings or floor plans of some fanciful modernist structures, as in The House That Jack Built (2022) and Find It--It’s Yours (2021). One of the most outstanding works, Studio 3 (2023) subtly celebrates Goodman’s queer, feminist sensibility. The work shows the interior of the artist’s studio with a canvas in which a pink-red triangular shape—suggesting something between a pussyhat and a revolutionary Phrygian cap—has been unveiled. It conveys an intimate, emotional scene, enlivened by inuendo and fraught with intrigue. —David Ebony