Jack Goldstein Exhibition

May 10, 2002

 

 

05/10/02

 


CONTACT:
Julie Joyce
Luckman Gallery
(323) 343-6608

 


Calendar
of Events

LUCKMAN GALLERY presents
JACK GOLDSTEIN
Paintings from the 1980s May 25 - July 7, 2002

First time paintings have been publicly exhibited together in Los Angeles since the early 90s

The Luckman Gallery, located on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles, announces a solo survey exhibition of paintings by artist Jack Goldstein entitled Jack Goldstein: Paintings from the 1980s. Exhibition dates are May 25 - July 7, 2002. Admission is free of charge.

Jack Goldstein became critically recognized in New York in the late 1970s through the 1980s for producing work in a progressively wide array of media that regarded the dynamics of absence versus presence and related to issues including appropriation, technology, and the spectacle. Goldstein’s discursivity as an artist positioned him critically and historically among a wealth of postmodern categories. His oeuvre began with post-minimal sculpture and performance in the early 1970s; developed into post-conceptual film and sound works throughout that decade; and in the 1980s evolved into paintings that were associated with appropriation, the post-studio movement, Neo-Pop and eventually Neo-Geo. Goldstein began making paintings in the late 1970s based on his earlier photographs and collage pieces that featured small, solitary figures floating in comparatively immense fields of color. By the early 1980s he was composing images of disasters and war. Evoking spectacle, these works also maintain an emotional distance through their lack of color and glossy surfaces (Goldstein covered them with sheets of Plexiglas).

Hiring professional illustrators to create his paintings, Goldstein asserted the issues of control and distance that he maintained in his earlier bodies of work (including the films, performances and records). Achieving a balance between emotion and objectification, the paintings had no brush marks, were done mechanically with the use of an airbrush or painted in thick layers of acrylics, and utilized extremely wide stretcher bars that gave the work a sculptural presence. His paintings of the mid 1980s evolved from artificial disasters into natural disasters such as lightning storms, volcano eruptions and sunspots. By the late 1980s the paintings became what Hal Foster described as a simulation of modern abstraction, with imagery that appeared abstract but was essentially derived from the appearance of heat sensors and astronomical phenomena: “what we can’t see,” as Goldstein himself once described. After a successful career, both critically and commercially, Goldstein stopped making work in 1991. Underrepresented for the past fifteen years, works by Goldstein appear as relevant to today’s dialogue in abstract painting as they did to works of their own time.

Jack Goldstein: Paintings from the 1980s features eleven paintings from 1979 through 1990 from collections in Los Angeles and New York. This is the first time Jack Goldstein’s paintings have been publicly exhibited together in Los Angeles since the early 1990s. Goldstein’s paintings were exhibited widely throughout the 1980s at Los Angeles galleries Rico Mizuno (1981), Larry Gagosian (1982) and Asher/Faure (1988 & 1991); and galleries in New York including Metro Pictures (1981, 1983, 1986) and John Weber (1987 & 1990). Conceived of over a year ago by Julie Joyce, the Gallery Director of the Luckman Gallery, this exhibition follows the presentation of Jack Goldstein: Films, Records, and Performance Documentation from 1974-1985 at 1301PE, Los Angeles, last fall; and the exhibition, Jack Goldstein, a traveling retrospective organized by the Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble. The exhibition at the Luckman Gallery also coincides with the exhibition, Jack Goldstein: Films and Performances, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (June 27 - September 22, 2002).

Jack Goldstein’s work has been exhibited at numerous local and international galleries, including solo exhibitions at the venues mentioned above and at Lisson Gallery, London (1983), Sandra Simpson Gallery in Toronto (1989), Dart Gallery in Chicago (1986, 1987), and Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati (1985, 1987, 1988). Besides the more recent exhibitions mentioned above, Jack Goldstein’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Daniel Buchholz Gallery in Cologne, Germany (2000), and the Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart (1999). His works have also been included in the following recent group exhibitions: Timewave Zero/The Politics of Ecstasy, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz in Switzerland (2001); Sound and Vision, ICA, London; and ‘Pictures’ at an Exhibition at Artists Space, New York. Jack Goldstein was born in 1945 in Montreal, Canada. He received his BFA from Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (1969) and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia (1972).

This exhibition features a color-illustrated brochure featuring essays by Richard Torchia, Director, Arcadia University Art Gallery, and Julie Joyce, Gallery Director, Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State L.A..

Related Events
OPENING RECEPTION:
Saturday, May 25, 2002, from 6 - 8:00 p.m.

ARTIST'S TALK (featuring Jack Goldstein):
Tuesday, May 28, 2002 at 7:00 p.m.

General Information
Location:
The Luckman Gallery is located on the campus of Cal State L.A. at the intersection of the #10 and #710 freeways. Directions may be found at the University website: www.calstatela.edu.

Parking:
Pay parking for the Luckman Gallery is in Parking Structure II (permit dispenser - 50¢ per hour).

Gallery hours:
Mon. – Thur. & Sat., 12 noon - 5:00 p.m.

Telephone:
(323) 343-6610

 

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