Born in Montreal in 1945, conceptual and performance artist Jack Goldstein experimented with film, sound, and records at the beginning of his career before turning his attention in the 1980s to natural phenomena, which he impressively staged in monumental formats. His focus is on the representation of scientific phenomena such as sheet lightning, electric fields, thunderstorms, and lightning strikes—as in the work "Untitled" from 1985 offered here. However, explosions, natural disasters, images of war, and astronomical photographs are also part of his recurring range of motifs. Goldstein often uses ready-made images to construct an apparent reality on canvas. A photographic image forms the center of his composition, which he reworks using his preferred airbrush technique and places in a new, often luminous context.
Goldstein studied at the renowned California Institute of the Arts under John Baldessari, graduating in 1972. In the 1970s, he became a defining member of the so-called Pictures Group with his audio, film, and performance works, commuting between New York and Los Angeles. In 1977, he participated in the exhibition "Pictures" at Artists Space in New York, curated by art theorist Douglas Crimp, which was to give this generation of artists its name. Together with artists such as Robert Longo and Sherrie Levine, Goldstein distanced himself from both minimalism and pop art and became a central figure of the "Pictures Generation." In 1982 and 1987, he was represented with works at documenta 7 and 8 in Kassel.
Despite his success and numerous exhibition participations worldwide, Goldstein consistently sought anonymity. In the 1990s, he moved to California and spent the years until his death in 2003 in relative isolation. This conscious distance is reflected in his art and his works, which captivate with their cool, overwhelming beauty, monumental formats, and spectacular subjects. He even sees his signature as a mere template. With an aesthetic of the sublime, Goldstein's painting increasingly approaches the representation of the incomprehensible. As in "Untitled," the spectacle of the moment is central to his work—the fascination of the moment and the fleeting nature of time. For Goldstein, meaning arises not only from duration or eternity, but precisely from the presence of the moment, from the transience of a flash. [AW]