Glenn Goldberg

A unique, idiosyncratic figure among the landscape of contemporary painting, 70-year-old, Bronx-native Glenn Goldberg's work is delightfully difficult to categorize and, for this reason alone, stands out and refreshes the discussion around the world's oldest medium. "There are no birds in my work," says Goldberg of his most recent body of paintings, whose primary motif just happens to be the silhouette of a bird. Never mind that the avian cutout essentially functions as a structural device; the beauty and felicitous, koan-like logic of this statement start to make perfect sense when you consider everything else that's going on in his paintings. Meticulously crafted via a systematic mark-making method that resembles stitching on top of demarcated fields of vibrant color, the paintings are liable to bring to mind everything from Persian rugs to Tibetan mandalas to Aboriginal picture making to the flat, spaceless graphics of early video games. Their compositions and colors seem to be galvanized by a crystalline, pictorial logic that appeals directly to an intuitive understanding that exists right on the threshold of language. Any attempt to explain them, like a dream, all but makes them flutter and flee; quietly observed and admired, they glow and shimmer like incontrovertible facts that casually defy the laws of gravity.

Glenn Goldberg (b. 1953, Bronx, NY) lives and works in New York. Goldberg received an MFA from Queens College in 1981 and a BA from Queens College in 1977. His work has been presented in recent solo exhibitions at Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); The Approach, London and Paris (2024); Marvin Gardens Ridgewood, New York (2021); 5. Gallery, Santa Fe (2020); Aidron Duckworth Museum, Meriden, NH; and Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, IA (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Muna Island, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2026; Springs Projects, Brooklyn; Basket Two, Houston; and Hill Gallery, Birmingham (2023); O'Flaherty's NYC, Miguel Abreu Gallery, Below Grand, and the Scully Tomasko Foundation, New York (2022); Good Naked Prospect Park, Brooklyn; and Inman Gallery, Houston (2021); Sharpe Walentas Studios, Planthouse, New York; and Inman Gallery, Houston (2020); and the National Academy of Design, Platform Gallery, John Molloy Gallery, and 56 Henry Street, New York (2019). Goldberg is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1988), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1989), and the Margaret Hall Silva Foundation Award (1996). His work is held in major public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, National Gallery of Art, and the High Museum of Art.