Jack Goldstein - Contemporary Evening Sale London Sunday, July 5, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Salama-Caro Gallery, London

  • Catalogue Essay

    Under the tutelage of John Baldessari in the 1960s, Jack Goldstein's education in multi-media conceptual and performance art greatly influenced his famed abstract paintings of natural phenomena from the 1980s.The present lot, a large scale and colourful canvas, is based on the artist's photographs of a star exploding in the sky. All specific detail and context has been stripped away from the image of this raw, violent phenomenon leaving only the essence of the original photograph. In fact, Goldstein has diluted the source image to such a degree that the subject matter is no longer relevant and the application of pigment to the canvas simply becomes an exercise in painting.With colours so bright they almost glow in the dark, the viewer is mesmerized by the allure and illusions created by the richly layered surface. Having shot to fame when, along with Robert Longo and Sherrie Levine, he was included in the 1977 groundbreaking Pictures show at New York's Artists Space,Jack Goldstein exhibited widely throughout America in the 1980s."Looking at these images, we think of the Northern Lights, sunspots, mushroom clouds or volcanic explosions seen either from a great distance or in greatly magnified detail.These events are depicted to meticulous, if not obsessive, perfection through a procedure that involves a great deal of taping and stenciling, and that leaves very little indication of human involvement. Each color of the spectrum has its own separate physical layer". (Roberta Smith, NewYork Times, May 22 1987)
     

13

Untitled

1988
Acrylic on canvas.
244 x 61.3 x 15.5 cm. (96 1/8 x 24 x 6 1/8 in).
Signed and dated 'Jack Goldstein 1988' on the reverse.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £121,250

Contemporary Evening Sale

29 June 2009, 7pm
London