Jonathan Lasker

Galleria Cardi presents a new solo exhibition of works by Jonathan Lasker. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1948, he has been active in New York since the mid-1970s, after finishing his studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and at Cal. Arts in Valencia, California. Lasker started exhibiting his works in the early 1980s. There was particular interest in painting at the time and he soon firmly established himself on the international scene. Jonathan Lasker can undoubtedly be considered as one of those artists who, concentrating on the concept of abstraction, has become one of its most innovative personalities. The use of his characteristic sign, or of a complex and tangled mass of signs, became so insistent as to be recognised at a certain point as the painter’s “signature”, a sort of “label” or “logo”. It cannot be reduced to merely an “internal” interpretation (i.e. as an abstract-decorative motif) for it needs to maintain contact with objective reality as the clearest divergence from classic abstraction. Even though his style is immediately recognisable and familiar, Lasker is not an artist who aims for repetition or mass production, for his work is not subjected to a mechanical gesture (as is that of Andy Warhol). It is the result of a manual process which is typical of abstract painting, and is basically the extreme effect of a physical approach to the canvas that derives from Pollock’s dripping, divested of any existential emphasis. The success of Lasker’s painting is to be found in the balance it strikes between stylistic familiarity and cultural contradictions, and this is why his recent works also display innovative elements within an organised framework. Galleria Cardi. presents twelve large and medium-sized works made in 2004, which are going on show for the first time, and a series of works on paper illustrating the preparatory stages prior to painting.

Pressetext

Jonathan Lasker - New Paintings 2002-2004