The Artist
NIKOLAS SOREN GOODICH (VCU ‘19)
Nikolas Soren Goodich is a mixed-race native Angeleno. His Black grandfather was the grandson of a previously enslaved preacher from rural Alabama, and his Jewish grandfather from Kyiv, Ukraine left there at the age of six, escaping the genocidal pogroms of 1910, to find refuge in New York City. Nikolas has lived in Los Angeles, Toronto, South Dakota, Charlottesville, Richmond, Providence, New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, London, and Berlin.
He studied at RISD and BSMFA in the late 80s, SAIC in the late 90s, and earned his BFA in Painting and Printmaking at VCUarts in 2019. He has worked as an art preparator for twenty five years at some of the most prestigious galleries and museums on the east and west coasts, and in the 90s and 00s he helped to run a series of underground co-operative exhibition spaces and music venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Charlottesville, all focused on fostering curatorial diversity.
In 2013 Nikolas became homeless, sleeping out on the streets of Los Angeles for over a year, after suffering a tragic nightmare decade of substance abuse. Off the streets since 2014, he is now nine years clean and sober, and has turned his life around completely. His studio and public art practices are focused on the intersection of social and racial justice, healing toxic behavior, identity, portraiture, and on sets of interrelated concepts from critical theory, linguistics, neuroscience, consciousness studies, philosophy, and physics.
In November of 2022 TEDxBoston invited him to be a speaker at their inaugural Planetary Stewardship event held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s famous Media Lab.
He is currently represented by galleries in Los Angeles and The Hague, Netherlands, with works in private collections in the USA, UK and EU.
Learn more at nikolasgoodich.com