ART-PRESENTATION: Zvi Goldstein-Winds from Jericho
Zvi Goldstein’s artworks are not ready-made, nor sculptures, they are unique formulations of his concept about the world. The object around which his sculptures are built is “broken” from his initial environment and used to rebuilt an artistic, intellectual and singular universe. Zvi Goldstein is taking the contemporary art to an unfamiliar territory, his works reveal the world’s hybrid nature, the fluid inconsistency of things, an identities’ infinite.
By Efi MIchalarou
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive
Featuring works from the last three decades, the exhibition “Winds from Jericho” marks the introduction of Zvi Goldstein’s work in Sweden. The exhibition’s title refers to the warm winds that originate in the Sahara – winds that have guided Goldstein on his travels and have for centuries impacted people in northern Africa and the Mediterranean region. Situated in the Jordan Valley, east of Jerusalem, Jericho is one of the world’s oldest settlements. The city was visible from the window of the artist’s studio and represented to him a still unknown world. His artistic practice shifted focus from the centre of Western culture to its periphery already in the late 1970:s, long before postcolonialism and discussions about centre and periphery became pivotal topics in the international art world. Born in Romania in 1947, Goldstein emigrated to Israel with his family as a child, and although he has lived there for most of his life, his oeuvre and philosophy are shaped by a deep sense of not belonging anywhere specific, which, paradoxically, often frees one to feel at home just about anywhere. After studying art in Jerusalem, Goldstein traveled through Europe, living as a vagabond at first until attending Milan’s Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. He enjoyed a fair amount of exposure after graduating in 1972, showing his early conceptual work at solo and group exhibitions with Arte Povera contemporaries, and working as an assistant to Sol LeWitt. However, by 1978, Goldstein experienced a deep crisis of faith in art. He felt that the late modernist and the post-modernist trends of the time marked the end of artistic expression, and that Western visual culture has exhausted its means of representation. Goldstein then decided to shift the focus to the peripheries. This drastic breach has led to an unusual, hard-to-categorize art making, which began with what may sound like an irrational restriction: That year, Goldstein laid out his “Methodology”, a chart listing all the works that he will ever produce, organized into six themes. In the nearly four decades that followed, Goldstein would go on to create works of art that adhere to one of the following groups in his hermetic system, sometimes coining new terms: “Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds”; “Black Hole Constructions”; “Serial Constructions”; “Anomalies”; “Botanology”; and “E.T.N.O.” Having devised a plan for the production of artworks, Goldstein subsequently embarked on a series of solitary research trips to monastic communities and tribal societies all across Africa, Asia, and Asia Minor.
Photo: Zvi Goldstein, Winds from Jericho, Installation view Moderna Museet-Malmö, 2021, Photo: Helene Toresdotter, Courtesy Moderna Museet
Info: Curator: Iris Müller-Westermann, Moderna Museet, Ola Billgrens plats 2-4, Malmö, Sweden, Duration: 15/5-29/8/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-19:00, www.modernamuseet.se
