NEIL GOODMAN

Rivers & Valleys
Zolla/Lieberman Gallery is pleased to present Rivers & Valleys, a solo exhibition of sculpture by Neil Goodman. Bringing together recent works in bronze, the exhibition reflects both a continuation and an evolution of Goodman’s decades-long exploration of line, mass, void, material, and space.

After nearly forty years in Chicago, Goodman relocated to Los Alamos on California’s Central Coast, exchanging the industrial landscapes of Chicago’s South Side and Gary, Indiana, for rolling hills, agricultural valleys, and oceanfront cliffs. Rivers & Valleys emerges from this transition, absorbing the rhythms of a new landscape into an abstract sculptural language developed over the course of his career.

Central to Goodman’s practice is bronze, a material whose history includes ancient vessels, classical statuary, monuments, tools, and objects of ritual. As art historian Sue Taylor notes in her accompanying essay, Goodman’s relationship to bronze is also deeply physical, rooted in the resistance of the material and the processes of making. His sculptures align themselves with an “age-old, workmanlike, artisanal tradition,” while remaining unmistakably contemporary in their abstraction.

Throughout Rivers & Valleys, Goodman continues to investigate the relationship between presence and absence. Mass is stretched and reduced. Openings and intervals become as consequential as the bronze surrounding them. As Goodman states, “emptiness becomes its own kind of substance,” an equal partner in the composition. His forms move between the organic and geometric, the architectural and figurative, inviting associations without settling into representation.

To Goodman, the landscape is not represented so much as internalized. His sculptures occupy a territory between solidity and emptiness, nature and geometry. The exhibition considers how place and the passage of time can reshape an artist’s visual language while preserving the ideas and sensibilities that have sustained a lifetime of making.

Neil Goodman is a sculptor whose work is widely recognized for its careful attention to form, material, and space. Over several decades, Goodman has developed a distinctive sculptural language rooted in bronze casting and an ongoing interest in the relationship between objects and their surroundings. His sculptures combine precision with a strong sense of material presence, using shape, surface, and shadow to create works that reward close observation.

Goodman’s sculptures often begin with familiar forms drawn from tools, vessels, machinery, and architectural elements. He simplifies and reworks these references through modeling and casting, transforming them into abstract forms that retain a connection to their original sources. His work frequently explores contrasts between weight and balance, solid and open space, and smooth and textured surfaces. Carefully developed patinas further emphasize the physical character of the bronze and the process through which each sculpture is made.

Goodman’s career has combined an active studio practice with a longstanding commitment to teaching. He received his BA from Indiana University Bloomington and his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. He later joined the faculty of Indiana University Northwest, where he became a founding member of the Fine Arts department and taught for nearly four decades before retiring as Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts in 2017.

Goodman’s work has been presented widely in museums, galleries, and public settings across the United States. His sculpture was included in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s landmark 1995 exhibition History of Chicago Art, 1945–1995, and his work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. His sculptures are held in public and private collections, while major commissions can be found in civic, cultural, and academic settings throughout the US.

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Tags: Chicago, Near North Side, NEIL GOODMAN, Rivers & Valleys, Zolla Lieberman Gallery