Glenn Goldberg
Glenn Goldberg is a painter whose work deals with icons and characters, expressed in dialogue with the decorative arts.
Goldberg views his paintings as colorful liquids applied to a piece of cloth, rather than paint on canvas, using repeating patterns, overlapping grids, and simplified geometric forms to heighten the connection to textiles and the decorative arts. His most well-known subjects—birds, dogs, flowers, and cells—appear in pared-down iconographic form, and share space in absurd and disorienting ways that challenge three-dimensional pictorial space. For example, compositions include absurd pairings such as a bird riding the back of a dog or a duck sitting on a person’s head, and physically impossible scenarios such as two identical people approaching one another or two people of incommensurate size sitting together. All of these situations imply circumstances that are both familiar and require the realm of the imagination and embody complexity, awkwardness, and vibrancy. Some scenes are peaceful, quiet, and idealized, while others are charged psychologically and contain personal narratives, mystery, or discomfort.
New York, NY
Born 1953, Bronx, NY
1981 MFA Queens College, Queens, NY
1978 New York Studio School, New York, NY
1977 BA Queens College, Queens, NY