Jack Goldstein

JACK GOLDSTEIN's recent paintings (on exhibition December 6-January 7) embody the same conceptual basis as his other work in photographs, film, recordings and performances. His paintings employ imagery based on familiar but non-specific cultural entities — cities, airplanes, skydivers, etc. The intensely rendered and colored images imply metaphor or meaning but, lacking context, they are finally too ambiguous to allow a specific interpretation. Goldstein exploits the conventions of painting much like a movie director uses various filmic effects. Among his effects are small images rendered with commercial illustration precision, painterly details against fields of flat color, and overall images achieved with air-brushed diffusion. These multiple painting conventions are purely tools employed to produce a powerful visual statement rather than exercises in painting technique or tradition.

"Jack Goldstein presents images. He does this in a number of ways; in short films, photographic pieces, records and, most recently in paintings. The images he chooses to present appear to carry the possibility of meaning, but, as he presents them, they are quite resistant to interpretation... he chooses his medium for its potential for transparency rather than for its inherent expressive qualities."
— Thomas Lawson, Real Life Magazine

"The images Goldstein uses are presented in a way which links them to media with a greater sense of complexity... Goldstein's [works] focus an intense concentration on their image — subjects... What happens in the work is congruent with our expectations of how the images would function in our symbolic life if they were allowed to."
— David Salle, Hallwalls, Buffalo

"The psychological resonance of this work is not that of the subject matter of his pictures, but of the way those pictures are presented, staged, that is, it is a function of their structure."
-Douglas Crimp, October Magazine

Goldstein has had one-man shows at Gronigen Museum, Holland; Centre d'Arte Contemporain, Geneva; Kabinette fur Aktuelle, Kunst, Germany; Nigel Greenwood Gallery, London; the Kitchen Center, N.Y. His work has been included in group shows at the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin; Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Palazzo della Triennale, Milan; Artists Space, N.Y.; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio; Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Goldstein is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and a New York State Council film production grant.