Jack Goldstein | Sayre Gomez

The Ranch is pleased to announce Jack Goldstein | Sayre Gomez, a two-person exhibition exploring the intergenerational connections between the pair. Goldstein moved to Los Angeles from Montreal and attended Fairfax High School before studying at the Chouinard Art Institute in the late 1960s and in 1970 was in the first class at CalArts, where Gomez later received his MFA in 2008 after migrating from Chicago. Though generations apart, both artists participate in an aesthetic lineage premised on resonant iconography as the source material for photorealistic and para-fictional artworks; both assert painting's capacity to carry conceptual and semiotic weight while still exploring possibilities of other media; both aspire to a refined, sleek painterly surface through material mastery––in Goldstein's words: "presentation is everything." In Gomez's case, his meticulously executed airbrush paintings further push the medium into another domain, simulating the finish of film and digital photography––a pursuit presaged by Goldstein and his peers. This show presents painting and sculpture by Gomez, including new work created site specifically for The Ranch, alongside examples which span Goldstein's multi-media output selected by Gomez. In so doing, Gomez has reckoned with the complexities of citation and archival revival. Through researching Goldstein's practice, Gomez was able to track down and include an original c-print by Margaret Bourke-White of the bombing of Moscow during World War II, an image Goldstein appropriated for one of his most iconic large-scale paintings.

The winding legacy of the "CalArts Mafia" in the 1970s has imprinted generations and emerged as a crucial touchstone for Gomez when a student at the school. There, Goldstein's example informed Gomez, who was introduced to the elder artist's lore and looming presence cemented by challenging, dangerous performances like his master’s thesis, Burial Piece, in which Goldstein buried himself in a wooden coffin with a breathing tube. As a blinking light registered his heartbeat, Goldstein gestured to his non-corporeal and still intangible presence. These lessons on decomposition and subject displacement find new affinities within Gomez's artistic language, which conversely turns over themes of destruction, combustion, and disintegration of the urban space. This exhibition pays tribute to Goldstein's enduring influence for artists over the past six decades.

Goldstein, a foundational figure of the Pictures Generation, studied under the conceptual art giant John Baldessari, whose students propelled a changing aesthetic sensibility first codified under the name the CalArts Mafia, reflecting performance and conceptual tendencies that expanded the sanctioned sphere of artistic reference. As Goldstein noted in an essay just before his death, the surfeit of signifiers exceeded Pop Art's notation of pop cultural imagery–– breaking into television, magazines, history books, anywhere images circulated and clustered: "We were the first generation of 'raised on TV' artists, so the art changed from being something weighty and formal and self-important to art that was more playful and decorative, fast, ironic, even cartoon-like"––not incidentally, Gomez’s generation was perhaps the last to be raised on TV before the before the advent of the Internet. After departing Los Angeles for New York with Helene Winer, Goldstein was included in the formative Pictures exhibition organized by Douglas Crimp at Artists Space in 1977. As the Pictures Generation found commercial and institutional support in the late 1970s, Goldstein turned from conceptual performance, film, and records to two-dimensional painting.

Gomez, who continues to live in Los Angeles after graduating from CalArts, has risen to prominence in recent years with his semi-fictionalized and photorealistic paintings, executed using a wide range of techniques, including trompe l’oeil, airbrushing, stenciling, and those employed in painting Hollywood sets. His work draws inspiration from the urban landscape of Los Angeles, featuring housing, road signs, billboards, and landmarks that serve as the backdrop for extended commutes throughout the city. Importantly, these are constructed spaces built from fictionalized versions of real space and an amalgam of reference images. Many of Gomez's paintings simultaneously touch on the beauty of nature, such as vivid sunsets and sumptuous palms (akin to Goldstein's depictions of sublime natural phenomenon), while also addressing themes such as the patina of time, urban decay, commercial signage and techniques, nostalgia, and illusionistic play. Gomez synthesizes these observations into hyperreal images that challenge our ability to differentiate between authenticity and simulation.

Accompanying the exhibition, artist and writer Thomas Lawson has written an essay on the convergences of Goldstein and Gomez. Lawson, who served as the Dean of CalArts from 1991 to 2022, has contributed discourse-forming scholarship periodizing the 1980s most notably in his text, “Last Exit: Painting” (1981) published in Artforum about the reemergence of painting in the decade. Jack Goldstein | Sayre Gomez is the second installment in a series of two-person shows at The Ranch in which contemporary artists conduct archival research into an artist who has been influential to their practice, selects work that they respond to or identify with during the process, and, in turn, creates a new body of work for the show and the site-specific nature of The Ranch. The first exhibition in this series was Jamian Juliano-Villani | Mike Kelley (September 10 - October 5, 2022).

Jack Goldstein (1945 - 2003) was born in Montreal, Canada and lived and worked in the United States. His work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally including major exhibitions: Stedelijk, 2017; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016; Walker Art Center, 2016; The Whitney Museum of American Art, 2015; Gwangju Biennale, 2014; La Biennale di Venezia, 2011; Whitney Biennial, 1985; documenta 8, 1985 and documenta 7, 1982. Major solo exhibitions include: The Jewish Museum, New York, 2013; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, 2012; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 2009; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2002; Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, 2002; Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart,1999; The Power Plant, Toronto, 1991; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1988; Städtische Galerie Erlangen, 1985 and The Kitchen, New York, 1977, 1978 and 1980. Several monographs have been published including Jack Goldstein x 10,000, Orange County Museum of Art, 2012; Jack Goldstein, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, 2009; Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia, Minneola Press, 2003; Jack Goldstein, Magasin, 2002; Feuer/Körper/Licht, Städtische Galerie Erlangen, 1985. His work is held in the collections of many public institutions including The Broad, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Tate, London; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Sayre Gomez (b. Chicago, 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upcoming exhibitions include Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 at the MoCA, Los Angeles and The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970 – Present at the MCA, Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Heaven ’N’ Earth at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, BE., Landscapes at Galerie Nagel Draxler in Cologne, DE., and Enterprise at Sifang Museum of Art in Nanjing, CA. Recent group exhibitions include Reverberations at the MoCA, Los Angeles, and Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) at The Broad, Los Angeles. Gomez’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; The Broad, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; ICA, Miami; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Oketa Collection, Tokyo; Maki Collection, Tokyo; and Rubell Museum, Miami.