The Approach is pleased to present Other place, an exhibition of new paintings by Glenn Goldberg.

Born in The Bronx, Glenn Goldberg was exposed to the anti-establishment sentiments of 1970s’s America; a time when socio-political concerns took precedence over academic and professional aspirations. For Goldberg, it was a continuation of the 1960’s counterculture in which music, drugs, sex, peace and love flourished alongside political protest. The dream-like iconography of Goldberg’s paintings captures the spirit of this time, when fantasy and invention assumed a social significance and spiritual intention. Each work, recurringly titled An other place, draws from the artist’s invention and structural inclination, referring to a place that is unknown and, as Goldberg states, “more there than here”.

The artist’s familiar motifs appear to reference the natural world, yet reject specificity. Instead, they appear as indexical signs, as if stand-ins for us. By employing borders, stacked forms, decorative passages and architectural elements, Goldberg’s paintings are built landscapes that shimmer and reward prolonged looking. It is an effect that owes much to the artist’s mark-making which indexes sewing, weaving, printing and ideas related to craft and the decorative arts. Stitched atop washes of vibrant colour, Goldberg’s strokes record physical labour, delineate pictorial space and make a case for intimate repetition. Beyond tone, space and form, these accumulated marks reveal anxiety, perseverance and a calmness out of which artistic decisions are formed.

Glenn Goldberg was born in the Bronx in 1953 and attended the New York Studio School and Queens College during his undergraduate education. He later continued his graduate studies at Queens College to receive his MFA. He has received grants from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Edward Albee Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, and The Joan Mitchell Foundation. Goldberg’s work has been shown extensively throughout the US and internationally, and is held in numerous collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Arts and Letters, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others. Goldberg has taught at various institutions including The Cooper Union, NY Studio School, Brandeis University, Queens College, Parsons School of Design, and Lodestar School of Art in Ireland. He has also been a panellist and visiting artist for MFA painting programs at Yale, Columbia, Boston University, American University, Hunter College, and numerous others. In 2023, Goldberg was commissioned to create a public mosaic arts project at the E. 149th St subway station in the Bronx by the New York MTA Arts and Design Commission. Goldberg lives and works in New York City.