Brenda Goodman, Sarah Heinemann, and Simon Smith
THINKING ABOUT ABSTRACTION
February 27 through March 29, 2025
Opening Reception
Wednesday, February 26, from 6–8 pm
Gallery hours:
Thursday–Saturday, 12–6 PM.
Location
53 Stanton Street
New York, NY 10002
608.556.4763
Press Release
JJ MURPHY GALLERY is excited to present a group exhibition, “Thinking about Abstraction: Brenda Goodman, Sarah Heinemann, and Simon Smith,” opening Wednesday, February 26, 2025, from 6–8 PM. The show, the gallery’s tenth, runs from February 27 through March 29. Gallery hours: Thursday–Saturday, 12–6 PM.
There are many different types of abstract painting, including lyrical, geometric, minimal, conceptual, expressive/gestural, hard-edge, optical, and Color Field. Yet certain abstract artists manage to employ some of these elements without fitting neatly into the above categories, such as Brenda Goodman. Goodman has always worked from her emotions, which have given her paintings a psychological aspect—an intense visceral power. Her abstract works achieve this effect through the experimental way she approaches their material surface: incised gouges into wood panels, thick impasto, and colors and shapes that collide to create disharmonies. For Goodman, abstract painting represents a mixture of both emotion and formal decisions. It's the combination of the two that separates her work from most contemporary abstract painting.
Although Sarah Heinemann has worked for nearly twenty-five years executing the conceptual and minimal wall drawings of Sol LeWitt, her own individual practice as an abstract painter differs significantly. In the last several years, the artist has begun to rethink her approach to such elements of abstraction as color, lyricism, geometric forms, and gestural mark-making. Instead of employing vibrant colors, they have become more muted, as in her small painting “Beak” (2024), in which black has become more dominant and the shapes less geometric. A certain awkwardness replaces lyricism, creating a precarious balance. In “For Once Maybe Twice” (2024), wide gestural strokes of black threaten to obliterate the painting, whereas in “Argos Cake” (2025), a modulated surface of black is partially separated by a thin green line and violet.
All three artists in the exhibition remain critical of what Goodman, in an interview, calls “paint nice”—the kind of abstract painting that craves to be liked but lacks an artist’s truly emotional engagement with the work. Simon Smith uses color, line, texture, geometric forms, lyricism, and gestural marks without relying solely on any one of them. He seems to be seeking, as Philip Guston once suggested, a “simplicity, where things can’t be separated.” Some of his works, such as “Accessories” (2023), have middle to darker value tones rather than vivid colors. Smith tends to favor more organic shapes. In “Commuter” (2024), he uses distinct edges as a form of bold punctuation. In “Wearing a Hat” (2024), the artist obscures the outline of the shape by adding a cloud of white paint over it.
Brenda Goodman has had over 40 solo shows of her work, including at Sikkema Jenkins in 2023 and 2019, as well as a survey exhibition at Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson, NY, in 2024. Goodman’s work is included in numerous major collections: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Detroit Institute of Arts; and the Agnes Gund Collection. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Goodman is represented by Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, NYC. The artist lives and works in upstate NY.
Sarah Heinemann holds a BFA in painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2000) and an MFA from Hunter College, NYC (2022). Solo exhibitions of her work include SARDINE Gallery in Bushwick and The Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens. Heinemann has worked for the studio of Sol LeWitt since 2000, realizing LeWitt wall drawings for museums, galleries, and private collections. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.