The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.
Brenda Goodman at Sikkema Jenkins
2023.3.6
A Brenda Goodman
exhibition always asks questions about form and content, but generally
different questions from proceeding shows, as Goodman constantly
experiments beyond her past. What remains constant is her smart use of
color, complex spatial and formal elements, surprising interplays of
line and shape, fertile visual imagination, and hints at psychological
tensions made manifest through conflicting spaces and contrasting
markings. In her current show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.,
of mainly large paintings apparently all made in the last year,
Goodman’s signature incised line infrequently appears, while
transparencies, often made with layers of tracing paper, appear often,
and paint is relatively thinly applied. The general impact, then, is of
an open, somewhat sketchy construction of energetic and vibrant
movements between spaces and colors, in contrast, for instance, to the
more tightly, worked out paintings of fairly thick paint exhibited in
2021 at Pamela Salisbury Gallery. The Sikkema Jenkins show remains up through
March 11.