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The exhibition This Heat, curated by Jacob Brooks at the New York Studio School, presents 17 works by Brenda Goodman, Steve DiBenedetto, and Bendix Harms in newly renovated, doubled-size galleries. John Yau’s Hyperallergic review examines the unusual pairing and each artist’s contribution.
A review by poet and critic John Yau, published in Hyperallergic on September 30, 2026, examines This Heat, a three-person painting exhibition at the New York Studio School that pairs New York veterans Brenda Goodman and Steve DiBenedetto with German painter Bendix Harms, an artist largely unfamiliar to the city’s art audience. The show, curated by Jacob Brooks, is the first Yau has seen in the school’s two galleries since a renovation doubled their size.
The exhibition comprises 17 works: seven each by Goodman and DiBenedetto, and three by Harms, according to the review. Yau writes that he attended drawn by the two established figures and left having taken an interest in the third. He describes the imbalance as a challenge that pushed him out of his comfort zone, requiring him to repeatedly adjust his focus to assess each artist individually rather than force comparisons — which he ultimately judged a dead end.
According to the exhibition brochure written by curator Jacob Brooks, as cited by Yau, Harms is a 59-year-old German artist living on a remote farm in northern Denmark who paints directly on canvas with a palette knife, inspired by his immediate circumstances. Yau’s close reading of Harms’s Tears of No Return (2020) — a comically grotesque scene of predatory cats, defenseless birds, and a weeping face — concludes that the work conveys the violence of the natural world and the impossibility of imposing harmony on it.
Goodman’s six paintings and one work on paper, dated 2020 to 2026, include Covid 3 (2021), Covid 5 (2021), and Mounting Thoughts (2024). Goodman has stated her work is about “pain and sadness,” Yau notes, and he characterizes Mounting Thoughts as deliberately opaque, moving between abstraction and figuration without becoming narrative. DiBenedetto’s seven paintings, including Isotope Plus (2026), the largest in the show, continue his long preoccupation with octopi; Yau reads their humor as arising from anger, despair, and tenderness.
Why an Off-Kilter Curatorial Pairing Matters
Yau argues the show’s value lies partly in its deliberate awkwardness. He describes the grouping as “off-kilter and unscholarly” and calls for more curating of this kind. The pairing of two long-observed New York painters with a relative outsider, he writes, disrupts expected institutional habits.
The review also makes a pointed institutional claim: Yau states the New York Studio School has often struck him as an insular atmosphere whose pedagogy rested on a narrow idea of art, and that including a non-New York artist like Harms was “a great intervention.” For readers tracking New York’s smaller institutions, the exhibition marks a visible change in the school’s programming — presented in galleries newly doubled in size after renovation.
More broadly, Yau frames Goodman and DiBenedetto as painters who have resisted settling into signature styles and resisted contemporary pressures to be simultaneously socially relevant and self-serving — pressures he calls the field’s Scylla and Charybdis.
The School’s Renovated Galleries and the Artists
The New York Studio School, a Manhattan institution focused on studio-based art training, expanded its exhibition spaces in a recent renovation; This Heat is installed across two galleries now twice their previous size, according to the review.
Yau writes that he has followed and written about Goodman and DiBenedetto for many years. Goodman is described as having a seven-decade career in which she has moved between the explicit and the enigmatic. DiBenedetto’s process-driven paintings are characterized as featuring figural presences that seem both primordial and post-apocalyptic. Harms, by contrast, was unknown to the reviewer before the show — the very fact that drew him to the exhibition announcement.
“Her work is about ‘pain and sadness.'”
— Brenda Goodman, as cited by John Yau in Hyperallergic
What the Review Leaves Open
Several points remain unsettled. Yau concludes that comparing the three artists directly was a dead end, leaving open the question of what formal or thematic logic, if any, connects them beyond the curator’s selection. The review does not state whether Brooks articulates a rationale for the grouping beyond the brochure details Yau cites.
Details about Harms’s career — his training, exhibition history, and representation — are not provided; Yau notes only that he learned the artist’s age, nationality, and home in northern Denmark after digging deeper on his own. The review’s text as available is also incomplete for one DiBenedetto work, cutting off mid-description of Isotope Plus. The exhibition’s opening and closing dates are not given in the source material.
Watching the School’s Expanded Programming
The exhibition offers an early indication of how the New York Studio School will use its doubled gallery space. Yau’s critique of the school’s historically insular pedagogy sets a benchmark against which future programming — particularly whether the school continues to bring in non-New York and lesser-known artists — can be measured. Readers interested in the individual artists can expect Goodman’s post-2020 work, including the Covid-titled paintings, and DiBenedetto’s ongoing octopus-derived forms to remain subjects of critical attention.
Key Questions
What is This Heat and where is it on view?
This Heat is a three-artist painting exhibition at the New York Studio School in New York, curated by Jacob Brooks and installed across the school’s two galleries, which were recently renovated to twice their previous size. The review does not specify the exhibition’s closing date.
Who are the three artists in the show?
Brenda Goodman and Steve DiBenedetto, two longtime New York painters, and Bendix Harms, a 59-year-old German artist living on a remote farm in northern Denmark. The show includes 17 works: seven each by Goodman and DiBenedetto, and three by Harms.
Why did the reviewer find the pairing unusual?
John Yau describes the grouping as “off-kilter and unscholarly,” pairing two veterans of the New York art world with an artist he knew nothing about. He calls this a strength, arguing curating needs more such unexpected combinations.
What did the reviewer say about the New York Studio School itself?
Yau writes that the school has often struck him as an insular atmosphere with pedagogy based on a narrow idea of art, and that including a non-New York artist like Harms was a great intervention.
Is the review positive overall?
Yes, with qualifications. Yau praises the exhibition for pushing him out of his comfort zone and engages closely with individual works, though he concludes that directly comparing the three artists was a dead end and that the uneven number of works required constant shifts in attention.
Source: rss
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