RAPACIOUSLY YOURS :: Frances Goodman
O, Rapture! Capture me and take me away to the depths of your passion. Wrap me in your embrace, calmly sway me virulently, vigilantly and captivate my essence eternally. I am the curve at the edge of the circle, the cycle in the path of circumference, the flirtatious collection at the end of a sentence. I am feminine. I am round and receiving. I am open. I am, Rapaciously Yours.
Frances Goodman’s first major US solo exhibition at the Richard Taittinger Gallery is a show of feelings through visceral sculptures. The first female on the gallery’s roster, “Rapaciously Yours” elicits a voluptuous rolling loll inside the psyche of the contemporary woman. “I think it’s a political decision to be an artist,” says Goodman. “To have something you really believe in and that you want to express,” is the gesture with which she stands upon her stage, and her voice in the work is rotund, bellowing the unattended woes of wayfaring modern maidens. Articulating the “babbling undercurrent” as she calls it — the tumultuous reality that women face daily of being hyper sexualized and undervalued — is the focus of her work. To the reality that has so long been inverted to the interim, she seeks to draw out and reveal “what’s really going on underneath.” Surface material from the conformational talismans of the mainstream contemporary woman undulate to create a rich texture and volume for the exhibition, the air in the gallery thickened like heavy breathing.
The lust attributed to the naturally occurring lusciousness of the circle has gotten women the blunt side of the stick, as well as given power and liberation by the satiation of desire. She is blamed and acclaimed for these beautiful traits, subversively upheld and publicly denounced. She is the center of a rigorous push and pull, to and from salvation, in and out of love. Goodman uses acrylic nails to create voluminous organisms, bulbous in form and lustrous in appearance.
These sculptures spill from the wall like amoebic embodiments of the ultimate wet dream. The giant, pink, glistening tongue can’t help itself but to lure the viewer into the implicit meaning of its medium.
Six-foot tall, fake nails that swerve past the edge of an unseen finger, repeat the curve that is most universally attractive, insinuating an incumbent penetration of vast proportion.
Flattened car seats have written in cursive, “easy come, easy go” and “skin on skin,” spelled out with scattered pearls and earrings, haranguing the tales of the ostracized.
Hanging down from the ceiling, The Dream is composed of wedding dresses embroidered with thoughts of women about ceremony vs. commitment in marriage. The pressure to marry billows up from the floor in once worn dresses, taffetas, silks and organzas reaching to meet the dresses from the ceiling and like an atom bomb of disillusion and disappointment, detonating a nuclear blast of truth. She puts on fake nails, fake lashes, she spits and swallows, she gets her pearls broken and earrings lost in the backseat of some car, she gets married for the wedding, more so than for the man. She dresses herself up in the way the social structures provide for her, she, herself forgotten in the process, disregarded in any way she might see herself as outside of the given norm.
Goodman journeys the voyage with prostitutes, brides, and all that fall in between to incur her most sincere reflection at what being a woman is like today, and to use her platform as an artist towards the activation of mind in her peers. “My work is more for women than for men” she says plainly. Her choice and aim are clear. “I don’t think art should make you feel complacent, I think it should make you feel uncomfortable,” so the intertwining tentacles of Medusa might rightfully make one a little queasy with their slick, slippery tendrils reaching out to ensnare you, evoking the fantasy of some,
while Violaceous might positively make others squirm with its anatomical intimation insinuating hidden desires felt deep within.
"Art is a form of politics,” Frances says as she stands in the midst of her show, and she feels an insistent calling to confront the status quo; to say clearly and through artful beauty the truth of her reality. Though it is not lost on her the privilege she enjoys as a white woman, she is still saddled with the baggage of being female in a male dominated world, so she seeks to address what she knows. She addresses her community of sisters to aid in the dialogue of sorting through endless mountains of expectations and labels, pulling together the items that define and confine a young generation. Art is her way of expressing the eternal feminine quality of nurture and comfort. She is, through her art, becoming a shoulder for women to release on, a messenger of grace in a time of need. She is a safe haven to divulge intimate secrets to. She is a sentinel in the guards of the Arts, which are and have always been, the premiere avenue to brave the wilds of the unknown and the unseen, whilst offering the hand of visualized reconciliation of that which cannot be stated by words alone.
Feminism to Frances Goodman is working for the equal treatment and value of women. Woman has been painted as a temptress since the dawn of modern civilization. Cordoned off from the mainstay of daily importance despite the fact that she is the integral key to the survival and perpetuation of the species. Despite the warmth and comfort that she is sought out for. In spite of the nurture and nourishment that flows from her, it is the incessant nature of her curves that so rile and defile her suitors causing them frenzy and ecstasy at once. Full of the universal curves, Woman is the most perfect medium with which to contemplate the Reality, and so yes, she is voluptuous and inviting. The nature of the curve is terribly tempting in its drawing in and pushing out at once, and she is terrible in her temptation, terribly involuntary in its innate presence. She is rotund and receiving, merciful and mercurial. She is infinitely elegant in her opening and closing. She is rapacious towards her duty as the feminine, to please and to yield, to enforce and engage the agony and the ecstasy.
Through her art Frances Goodman works to uplift the feminine to its due place of importance and necessity in the world by showing the double standard and conflict that continue to keep women in an inferior standing. She longs for women, when they write the story at the end of their days to have lived a full life of self-satisfaction and fulfilled purpose so that they may sign off, Rapaciously Yours.
Frances Goodman’s Rapaciously Yours is on display at the Richard Taittinger Gallery Friday, February 26th through Saturday, April 16th.
*IMAGES, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
GALLERY VIEW
Courtesy Richard Taittinger Gallery
LICK IT
2016
Acrylic nails, resin, foam
66.1 x 31.5 x 22.6 in. / 168 x 80 x 65 cm
LICK MY LOLLIPOP
2016
Resin, fiberglass, metal, enamel
80.7 x 27.6 x 15.8 in. / 205 x 70 x 40 cm
Courtesy Richard Taittinger Gallery
THAT’S HOT! PINK
2016
Resin, fiberglass, metal, enamel
` 80.7 x 27.6 x 15.8 in. / 205 x 70 x 40 cm
SKIN ON SKIN
2012
Faux pearls, leather car seat
Artwork Size:
53.9 x 48.8 x 3.9 in. / 137 x 124 x 10 cm
Framed Size:
57 x 65.75 x 6.5 in. / 144.8 x 167 x 16.5
THE DREAM
2010-2016
Silk, lace, organza, satin, beads, embroidery thread, wedding dresses, sound installation
Dimensions Variable
MEDUSA
2013-2014
Acrylic nails, foam, metal
63 x 39.4 x 27.6 in. / 160 x 100 x 70 cm
VIOLACEOUS
2015
Acrylic nails, foam, metal
66.9 x 55.1 x 19.7 in. / 170 x 140 x 50 cm
BITE YOUR NAIL
2014
Reflective vinyl on Plexiglass
with Swarovski Crystal
39.4 x 39.4 in. / 100 x 100 cm
Edition of 5
FRANCES GOODMAN
Courtesy Richard Taittinger Gallery
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