Small Standing Tall – Review

Small Standing Tall

Dominique Nahas, “Small Standing Tall”, D’Art International Magazine, May 24, 2021

Michel Goldberg’s wall work aesthetic of using only black and white coloration is advanced through sophisticated use of unique one-of-a-kind techniques ranging from monotypes with unique textural qualities to flat assemblages on wood assemblages, to India ink-on-paper drawings. Goldberg treats each surface with a radical intensity. His pictorial surfaces are buzzing with activity: we see his applied, nearly miniaturized skeins of paint, his staccato stippling of tiny tremulous brushstrokes as constitutive elements suggestive of overlaid handwritten secret alphabets. The artist’s painterly marks vacillate ambivalently between appearing to be self-effacing, mechanical, and constructive at times; at other times they give the appearance of expressive randomness, of idiosyncratic, ostentatious deliberateness. A rigorous, visual poetry of interiority pervades.  

Michel Goldberg’s Monotypes and Sculpture in Small Standing Tall at Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham, NY