Jonathan Lasker: Paintings from Five Decades, a solo exhibition of the New York-based painter, opens at the Museum of Recent Art (MARe) in Bucharest on February 20th in the presence of the artist.

The exhibition, part of MARe’s international program, includes 15 key, large-size works by the artist, created over the past five decades and selected from various European collections.

Lasker is “one of the most visible figures involved in promoting painting as a critical art, as higher cognitive engagement. Lasker’s conceptualism blends demonstratively the most traditional artistic means (oil paintings, drawings) with an acute questioning of the contemporary ways of representing and creating (mentally and visually) the world,” a presentation of the show reads.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1948, Lasker lives and works in New York. He initially pursued a career as a musician before studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

He has had retrospectives at Kunsthalle Bielefield, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Kunstmuseum (St. Gallen), The Power Plant (Toronto), and the Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama), the Reina Sofia (Madrid), and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf).

Among public collections, his work is in the Mudam, Luxembourg, the Hirshhorn (Washington, D.C.), L.A. County Museum, Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (N.Y.).

On the day of the show’s opening, Jonathan Lasker will also deliver a talk, moderated by Erwin Kessler, as part of the Voiced On program supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

The exhibition, curated by Erwin Kessler, is open until May 11th.

(Photo: MARe/Muzeul de Artă Recentă on Facebook)

simona@romania-insider.com