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Jack Goldstein
11 / 04 / –
11 / 05 / 2000
Exhibition
Jack Goldstein - An Installation of Films from the Artist (1974-1978)
Selection newly organised by Jack Goldstein (C)
Installation view, Jack Goldstein in Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (1999)
"I‘m interested in that gap between minimalism and pop art:
the objectness and autonomy of minimalism and the subject matter from our
culture that’s in pop art. But there is also a link to conceptual art."
In October 1999 with its project
"Artist Once-Removed", the haus.0 program introduced for the
first time in a decade, a focus on the artist Jack Goldstein (C*1945). A
perspective was opened onto his concept of production, related to performances,
records, films and paintings. Goldstein’s productions played a crucial
role in the American contemporary art scene, as a bridge from the 1970s
to the 1980s, in what critics then termed ‚post-studio‘ art. By
way of this term, the exhibition reflected its host institutional site,
the first German artist’s space founded in the early 80s to offer artists
media production possibilities as opposed to traditional ateliers.
The era-bridging aspect of Goldstein’s methodology implied a new sense
of media interplay, joining industry production to D.I.Y ethos, the individual
subject to technology through a sense of sublime underlying the new Hollywood
dominated spectacle just beginning. Yet, despite much research, twenty years
after both commercial and critical support concerning performances, records
and films, nothing could be found other than the traditional collector formulation
of art: paintings. The artist’s decision to absent himself since almost
ten years also made it virtually impossible to obtain the media productions.
Due only to the chance acquisition of two European art institutions, the exhibition
could present a single film,"The Jump", and complete set of record
productions. The exhibition research into older art magazines brought to light
some of his methods of joining architecture and film in installation.
This new, current exhibition is for haus.0 a valuable supplement to "Artist
Once-Removed", as it reveals the unique qualities of the artist‘s
early film productions, and his approach to them in terms of a sculptural,
installational sense of space and time.