Jack Goldstein

Jack Goldstein (1945–2003), born in Montreal and a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts, became a key figure in the “Pictures Generation,” an artistic movement that turned away from traditional art forms and appropriated images from advertising, television, and popular culture.

His work is characterized by radical reduction, technical brilliance, and conceptual precision. Early in his career, he created post-minimalist sculptures and performances. In the 1970s, he produced experimental 16mm films such as *The Jump* (1978), in which a high diver from Leni Riefenstahl’s *Olympia* appears to leap into the void—a symbol of Goldstein’s own struggle with presence and obliteration. Other videos, such as *Shane* (1973) and *Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer* (1975), also explore the power of cinematic images.

At the same time, Goldstein turned his attention to sound art and produced the record series *A Suite of Nine 7-inch Records* (1976), in which soundtracks from feature films were edited into sound artworks. Starting in 1980, he created his significant large-format, photorealistic paintings of natural spectacles, war scenes, and images of technology. These were illustrations from newspapers and magazines that his assistants had to execute according to his specifications. For him, the goal was to maintain maximum distance from the work and keep his personal signature as minimal as possible.

Whether sculpture, film, sound, or painting—Goldstein’s art revolves around transience, invisibility, and the mechanisms of media reproduction. It strikes a subtle balance between spectacle and emptiness. His suicide in 2003 marked the end of a life’s work that exerted a major influence on younger artists—yet went largely unnoticed in Switzerland. In collaboration with MAMCO Geneva (Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain), private lenders, and thanks to a permanent loan from the Jochen Kienzle Foundation, the Kunst Museum Winterthur is able to present a representative selection of paintings, films, and records Kunst Museum Winterthur .

Curated by Lynn Kost

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Jack Goldstein