FRANCES GOODMAN

Ecstasy

September 30 - November 12, 2022

See full list of works here

Text by Chloë Reid

The revellers were apparently hurled back into a non-rational, pre-intellectual state, where the personality was replaced by something completely different - and by ‘different’, I mean something to all appearances not mortal. Inhuman. *

Julian Morrow in The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tart

The Greek root for ‘ecstasy’ is ekstasis, meaning ‘to stand outside yourself’ – a feeling pursued by those who wish to escape or seek renewal through the suspension of rational thought and action.

Frances Goodman’s new solo exhibition at SPECTA entitled Ecstasy takes as its subject the quest for meaning where material needs, wants and de-sires have been mollified and money is no object. Perhaps ‘the void’ is felt more keenly by those unable to obscure it with the pursuit of basic earthly requirements. Ecstasy considers existential anguish as it is expressed and expunged by the privileged few.

Two sequin-embroidered panel works Beckoning and The Dance draw the viewer directly into the realm of iridescent release. The Dance is titled after Matisse’s famous painting (1910), and follows Goodman’s interest in historical depictions of women in nature. Goodman’s The Dance consists of three panels featuring heavily made-up figures in sparkling, otherworldly costumes moving in a formation that mimics the circle of dancing bodies in Matisse’s work. In Beckoning, a lone figure in a Bridgerton-worthy headdress offers a quick, come-hither look as she disappears into dense green foliage.  

Beckoning and The Dance gesture to a culture of carefully curated, ritualised contemporary retreats, festivals and parties in which substantial capital outlay enables temporary access to immersive, redemptive and hedonistic experi-ence. Such events vary dramatically in scope, scale and in the nature of their offerings, but the promotion of healing, self-expression and the shifting of perspective through ceremonial and participatory performance, dance, guided mediation, cultural appropriation, burnt offerings and the use of psychedelics and ecstasy are common features.

Goodman takes a more distinctly sardonic tone in a text-based work. I WANT MORE reads a banner of pink, blue and white acrylic nails, echoing an emptiness felt by those who want for nothing, materially. The archetype behind this demand is searching for a world beyond the one they know and own.

The desire to get out of your mind is not the exclusive preserve of the rich, nor is the pursuit of healing and psycholo-gical release through ritual, ceremony, drug-taking, or a combination of these. For the purposes of Ecstasy however, Goodman is characteristically interested in cultural commodification and social capital. In this case, that means the outfits, the make-up, the glamour and the aesthetic and financial excesses associated with a particular cultural phenomenon. Characteristically also, Goodman’s magical, alluring surfaces and blunt missives both marvel at, and critique her subject.

Frances Goodman (ZA, 1975) lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Goodman obtained a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College in London, 2000, and holds a Laureateship from the Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten (HISK) in Antwerp. She was a recipient of the Cecily Brown Fellowship for Outstanding Woman Artists in 2014 and took part in Sundaymorning@ekwc Artist Residency in Oisterwijk, NL, 2021. Latest solo exhibitions are Transmogrified at Richard Taittinger Gallery, NY, 2021; Uneventful Days, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, 2020. Group exhibitions include 2021/22: Ubuntu, a lucid dream at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and Soft/Loud at Art in Buildings, Michigan; 2020: Materiality at Iziko South African National Gallery; Romancing the Mirror at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida; MY BODY, MY RULES at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); I am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africaat the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC; 2019: Material Insanity at the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) in Marrakech, Morocco; and Pop Stars! Popular Culture and Contemporary Art at 21c in Oklahoma City.
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* The Secret History reflects on the fallout of a murder at the hands of trust-funded revellers attempting to reach a Dionysian high.