The Artist
NIKOLAS SOREN GOODICH (VCU ‘19)
Nikolas Soren Goodich b. 1969
Nikolas Soren Goodich is a biracial, Black and Jewish, native of Los Angeles. His Black grandfather William was the grandson of a previously enslaved preacher from rural Alabama, and his Jewish grandfather, also named William, left Kyiv, Ukraine at the age of six to escape the genocidal pogroms of 1910 to find refuge in New York City. Nikolas has lived in Los Angeles, Toronto, South Dakota, Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia, Providence, New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, London, and Berlin.
He studied at The Rhode Island School of Design and at The Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts in the late 80s, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 90s, and he earned his BFA in Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts in 2019. He’s worked as an art preparator for twenty-seven years at the most prestigious galleries and museums on the east and west coasts. In the 90s and 00s he helped run underground co-operative exhibition spaces and music venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Charlottesville, VA, focused on curatorial diversity.
In 2012 after suffering a tragic nightmare decade of substance abuse Nikolas became homeless, forced to sleep on the streets of Los Angeles for over a year. Off the streets since 2014, he is now a decade clean and sober. He’s turned his life around completely. In both his studio and public art practices he focuses on the intersection of social and racial justice, healing toxic behaviors, identity, portraiture, and concepts from critical theory, linguistics, neuroscience, consciousness studies, philosophy, and physics.
In November of 2022 TEDx Boston invited him to give a TED talk at their inaugural Planetary Stewardship event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s famous Media Lab. In 2023 his alma mater Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts had him give an extended version of the talk at The Institute of Contemporary Art museum in Richmond, VA. He was the first alumnus ever to be given that honor.
He is currently represented by galleries in Los Angeles and The Hague, Netherlands, with works in private collections in the USA, UK, Japan, and EU.
Learn more at nikolasgoodich.com
