SPACE + TIME + DISTANCE = EXPERIENCE
Charles Goldman is a visual artist working in conceptually motivated abstract sculpture, painting, and performance. Noted for his materials-driven practice, Goldman has spent over three decades pursuing innovation and open dialogue around sustainability, often favoring the process of material building and community over formal concerns. The concept of “sculptural guilt” frequently guides his process - how does one make objects in a world that needs no more objects? His sculptural works often repurpose discarded fragments of architectural elements, detritus and found materials, incorporating cut wires, paper pulp, diced credit cards, and plastic containers to extend these objects a new life. These objects present a conceptual provocation- their initial functions are rendered useless but now require broader context and consideration towards their potential. Goldman has always preferred the backs of buildings to their fronts, spaces in the process of being filled to the ones already full, and construction to completion.
Goldman received the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2011 and, via the time and focus allotted by the fellowship, RE>CRETE>, the green building material of his design, was inducted into the Material ConneXion Library in 2016. His work has been shown at galleries in New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Toronto, Canada; Chicago, IL; and San Francisco, CA and included at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art, GA; the Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY, and the University Museum of Contemporary Art, Amherst, MA. Public collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Berkeley Art Museum, CA; the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; the Norton Family Collection, Los Angeles, CA; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; and Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA. He has been awarded multiple residencies and fellowships, including MacDowell, SculptureCenter, Art Omi International, Hallwalls and Art Caucasus, Tbilisi, Georgia. Goldman received his BA from the University of Santa Cruz and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at Parsons School of Design.