introduction · in perfect worlds, possible worlds (a, b) (2nd version) (1989/2000) and cactus...

For the past four decades, Zvi Goldstein (born 1947, Transylvania) has been working to shift the direction of contemporary art towards areas which were historically shaped as the peripheries of the Western world. In the early 1970s, Goldstein, by then a young student in Milan, played an active role in the conceptual art scene in Europe. In 1978, as he became increasingly dissatisfied with the art of late Modernism and the Post-Modernist trends of that time, Goldstein left Italy for Jerusalem. He made Jerusalem his own artistic and intellectual habitat, his own intermediate zone located between Europe and the peripheries of the Middle-East and Africa.

Simultaneously with this change, Goldstein developed a multifaceted artistic strategy for third world countries, combining objects and texts in sculptural installations which initially alluded to Russian Constructivism, the first movement to influence modern art from the margins of Europe. Since then, Goldstein’s work has been anchoring contemporary art practice in non-Western contexts, based on a close examination of the rich, premodern traditions of Asia Minor, the Middle-East and Africa, regions to which the artist constantly travelled, approaching hermetic-monastic communities and societies still only partially touched by modernity.

This exhibition reflects on Goldstein’s unique artistic method, which incorporates a variety of perspectives – climate, botany, ethnography and eschatology1 – as metaphors of peripheral cultural environments designated by the artist as Emergency Societies. The exhibition begins with the artist’s Methodology, a diagram-like map conceived in 1978, listing the six groups of works that constitute Goldstein’s oeuvre: ‘Serial Constructions,’ ‘BlackHole Constructions,’ ‘Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds,’ ‘Anomalies,’ ‘E.T.N.O.’ and ‘Botanology.’A footnote indicates that the Methodology was set out in parallel with the artist’s move to Jerusalem, yet prior to the actual execution of the works in the six groups. As a preliminary, independent map, Goldstein’s Methodology marks his work as a separate entirety, an isolated, autarkic world that defines itself by itself. Defending the work

as an unconventional artistic manifesto, as theory in the guise of a narrative and vice versa. When Goldstein tries to convince his interrogators to release him from custody, he shares with them (and with the readers) the principles of his art practice:

“Therefore, there are no distinctionsin my artistic work

between different Modernist categories:

FANTASY AND THEORYCONCEPT AND AESTHETICSCONTEXT AND ONTOLOGYBIOGRAPHY AND IDEOLOGY

BETWEEN BEING CENTRALAND GEOGRAPHICALLY PERIPHERAL.”2

Fundamentally unclassifiable, Goldstein’s works are neither readymades3 , nor traditional sculptures. Their industrial-technological allure is deceptive, since they are always unique, singular outcomes. The works reject the Duchampian mechanism of displacing a found everyday object into the realm of art by means of redefinition, because then they would require an external, non-artistic context. Yet Goldstein’s works have the appeal of an object that suddenly appears in the world, while the labour invested in its production remains almost entirely obscure. As a consequence, the works emerge as inexplicable, unavoidable phenomena, as the fulfilment of a necessity, as a matter of urgency.

Goldstein’s artistic model strives to lessen the presence of the artist’s hand in his works. As results of technological production, they are immaculate and spotless, denying the traditional connection between the peripheral and the exotic, the manual, the immediate, etc. Contrary to Post-Colonial theoretical discourse, Goldstein’s oeuvre is not deconstructive. It does not affirm the “epistemological4 centrality and permanence of European dominance,”5 by ways of a negative critique. Instead, it suggests an inclusive-constructive platform for thinking and acting, which turns aesthetics into a political tool for reshaping

from external infections and interpretations, the Methodology is a form of self-periodisation on which basis the oeuvre exists as a fulfilled vision, as a distinct history.

The autonomy of the oeuvre is further enhanced in the cases where wall-texts are embedded in sculptural works. In Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds (A, B) (2nd Version) (1989/2000) and Cactus Model (1991), texts provide the works with context, with keys to their meaning. Whilst disclosing the underlying theoretical and ideological motivation of Goldstein‘s art practice, the texts also control the interpretive horizon of the oeuvre, which, as a result, becomes even more impenetrable.

In the sound installation Room 205 - The Voices (2011) the artist activates text in another way. The installation stems from Goldstein‘s book of poetry, Room 205 (2010). The cave-like white cube with recordings of recited passages from the book emitted through its walls, introduces us to the artist’s elaborated poetic delirium. Room 205 was originally published as an independent, poetry-based work of art. It was only later that the passages were animated and spatialised by this sound installation, which, unlike other works by Goldstein, not only absorbs the written text as its contextual referent, but also transmits it as its content.

Room 205 is Goldstein’s second book. It followed On Paper (2004), a piece of ‘written art,’ or rather, a hybrid of a memoir, a travelogue, an art-theoretical manifesto and a philosophical novel. It contains, among other things, descriptions of realised as well as unrealised sculptural works by Goldstein in a larger, panoramic narrative, which in turn functions as a context for the sculptural objects.

In the opening scene of On Paper we read about Goldstein’s interrogation by agents of the Chadian secret service who detained him on suspicion of espionage during one of his trips to Africa. Remarkably, Goldstein’s answers to his interrogators clarify his artistic credo. Despite the circumstances in which they were given, they read

the dispositions of Western cultural perception.

Goldstein brings contemporary art to unfamiliar terrain, to situations whose historical basis lies amidst marginal areas that came into contact with modernity in an inorganic way. His works reveal the hybrid nature of the world, the fluid inconsistency of things, the unfixity of identities and the fact that meaning is obtained and transformed ad-hoc. Embodying the paradoxes conveyed by the term ‘Peripheral Avant-Garde,’ Goldstein’s works confront us with situations in which characteristics of place and time cannot be determined unequivocally. In these situations, ‘peripheral’ stands for the blurring of boundaries between centre and periphery, West and East, here and there, and ‘Avant-Garde’ for the amalgamation of the modern and the premodern, the progressive and the ancestral, as a premise for radical contemporaneity.

1 Eschatology is the doctrine of the end of times.2 Zvi Goldstein, On Paper, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther

König, Cologne, 2004, p.13.3 A readymade is an everyday object that may by the creative

act of selection and designation by an artist attain status as a work of art. The term ‘readymade‘ is associated almost exclusively with the aesthetic activities of Marcel Duchamp during the period 1915 to 1917.

4 Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, the rationality of belief and justification.

5 Homi K. Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817“, Critical Inquiry 12:1 (Autumn 1985), p.144.

Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds1954_2012

Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds A, B, C (1st Version), 1989—1990

Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds A, B (2nd Version), 1989/2000**

Future, 1989/1995**

The Limit of My Knowledge, 1992Measurements, 1992**

Things We Are Afraid Of, 2000On Paper, 2004

Reconstructed Memories (Lariam B), 2001—2005**

Room 205, 2010Haunted by Objects, 2010—2012Room 205 — The Voices, 2011**

Age 7 (Reconstruction), 1954/2012**

Zvi Goldstein first set out his artistic Methodology in 1978, listing all six groups of works that still constitute his oeuvre today. Since then

individual works have been progressively added to these groups. This most recent version records his work up to and including 2014.

Works in the exhibition.**

*

Black Hole Constructions1990_1999

Cultural Attraction, 1990Natural State, 1990

Peripheral, 1990Black Box, 1991

Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014

Oriental Elements, 1979The Peripheral Man, 1995

Typology of Oriental Moustaches, 1995Wedding, 1995

Jüdische Chronologie, 1996Reconstructed Memories, 1996

Winds from the Sahara: Day 1 — Day 6. Sharav, Sharkiya, Simoom,Sirocco, Ghibli, 1996—2004Sirocco — Day 4, 1996/1997

A Letter to Julian, 1998Harmattan, 1999

Winds from Jericho, 1997—2014

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Serial Constructions1978_2013

Constructions 1978—2013Construction, 1978

Industrial Pavilion A-1, 1981—1982Function — Construction — Working Tables (1st and 2nd version), 1983/1986

Ideological Models, 1978—1989Models for Socialism X-1, Y-2, 1983

Elements, 1978—1988Element C-14, 1978/1982

Element F-6 (1st and 2nd verson), 1978—1987Architectures and Abstractions, 1986—1989

Where Are You Going America?(Construct Paradigms WFS 321-327), 1987

Future Utopia Eschatology, 1989Distance and Differences, 1991**

Anomalies1986_1987

Anomalous Model XY 422, 1986Anomalous Model XY 423, 1986Anomalous Model XY 424, 1986Anomalous Model XY 425, 1986

Anomalous Model XY 426, 1986—1987 Botanology1986_2010

B-Bau (Ventilation System for Warm Climatic Countries), 1986/1994African Plant, 1991Cactus Model, 1991

Deep Mythologies, 1992Contingency and Solidarity, 1992

Olive Model, 1993Vegetable Construct, 1994

Comfort (A Simple Volumetric Study), 1994A Peripheral Condition, 1995

My Gardened Mind, 2010

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Zvi GoldsteinMETHODOLOGY 1978_2014 *




Future, 1989/1995**









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Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014







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Anomalies1986_1987








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Future, 1989/1995**









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Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014







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Anomalies1986_1987








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Future, 1989/1995**









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Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014







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Anomalies1986_1987








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Future, 1989/1995**









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Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014







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Anomalies1986_1987








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Future, 1989/1995**









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Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014







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Anomalies1986_1987








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Future, 1989/1995**









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Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014







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Anomalies1986_1987








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english

S.M.A.K.M.S.K.

STATIONGENT-

ST-PIETERSCITADELPARK

ENTRANCE

CITADELLAAN

VU : Annelies Storms | Botermarkt 1 | 9000 Gent

/Introduction

25.06… 23.10.2016




Future, 1989/1995**









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Hybrid, 1999

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E.T.N.O.1979_2014







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Anomalies1986_1987








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1 / E.T.N.O.

Winds from the SaharaSirocco - Day 4, 1996-1997

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, PVC, deralyn, window blind, plastic loop fastener, silkscreen, printed text on paper, aluminium frame

120 x 497.5 x 13 cm

Courtesy Daniel Marzona, Berlin & Broadway 1602, New York

This large work, reflecting the artist’s interest in the link between climate and culture in peripheral areas, stems from Goldstein’s travels in Africa and Southern Europe following the hot Sirocco winds, which originate in the Sahara Desert.

As the Sirocco winds change direction during the course of the day, the label suspended from the bottom right of the work indicates the time in the Sahara Desert, and accordingly the Sirocco’s trajectory at the moment the process of installing the work is completed at any given site at which it is displayed.

Sirocco - Day 4 is the only realised work of a multi-part project entitled Winds from the Sahara.

2 / E.T.N.O.

Reconstructed Memories, 1996

anodised aluminium, Pertinax, Plexiglas, silkscreen

65 x 128 x 9.5 cm

Courtesy Daniel Marzona, Berlin & Broadway 1602,

New York

Reconstructed Memories is an objectified document, an informative chart detailing the artist’s travels: landscapes he traversed, people he met, monasteries he stayed in, remote villages he visited, etc. All of his experiences are reconstructed from memory, without the aid of maps, calendars or photographs, but as part of an experiment in ‘remembering and forgetting,’ with respect to the oral traditions of premodern civilizations.

3 / BOTANOLOGY

Deep Mythologies, 1992

lacquered aluminium, untreated copper, lacquered copper, lead, wood, PVC, Novotex, mirrors, sand from the Judean Desert, plant remains, water, elasticated cords, upholstery fabric, plastic loop fasteners, transparent card cases, foldback clips, paper, index cards, silkscreen

220 x 570 x _ cm

Collection Hauser & Wirth, St. Gallen

At first glance, the façade of this work resembles a Byzantine icon divided into separate registers by an arrangement of material samples and optical devices displayed on and below shelves. The overall arrangement generates a representation of a landscape with earth, water and a mountain, as well as the means by which the representation was made.

At the margin of the work, on the right, is a cupola with a lead bar, which disappears into the wall and surfaces on the other side, thus providing the façade of Deep Mythologies with a rear space—a subconscious, invisible domain.

Deep Mythologies is derived from Goldstein’s experiences in the Judean Desert over a span of many years, in the course of which the physical and mythological topography of the desert amalgamated in his consciousness.

4 / BOTANOLOGY

Contingency and Solidarity, 1992

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, brass, magnets, wood, plastic, PVC, Pertinax, plastic balls, plastic loop fasteners, transparent card cases, duct tape, foldback clips, printed paper, silkscreen

250 x 560 x _ cm


New York

The central area of the work, inlaid with rows of small magnets, and the framed panel to its left, simulate their own territory, their own field. On the right side of the work is a sculptural arrangement consisting of contemporary industrial elements tied together in a provisional manner, including small prints of botanical images and shiny balls held by magnets. Because all the elements are fixed to the same point, it seems as though the arrangement sprouts from the wall like a tree grows from its roots.

As intimated by its title, Contingency and Solidarity codifies the loose joining of forms, materials and images in terms of precarious human and social interactions. At the same time, it codifies precarious human and social interactions, in terms of the relationship between materials and sculpture.

5 / PERFECT WORLDS, POSSIBLE WORLDS

Reconstructed Memories (Lariam B), 2001-2005

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, broken glass, cast aluminium, Ertalon, glass lenses, dried lizard, dried crayfish, stuffed armadillo, metal wire, power transformer, electric wire, light fitting, broken light bulb, newspapers, tag, strip, plastic loop fastener, matchboxes, matches, candles, silkscreen

84 x 296.5 x 18 cm


New York

In the upper right corner of the work, surrounded by a printed image of a crescent moon with clouds, is a lens, beyond which a half-consumed candle and matches are placed.

The left side of the work consists of a broken light bulb and a model of a mountain with a dried-out lizard positioned on it as if frozen in the act of climbing. The mountain is pierced by a series of irregularly scattered peepholes, through which parts of a stuffed armadillo and a dried-out crayfish are seen in dim light.

In the centre of the work is a chart of countries and people the artist once visited, conjured only from memory, and a personalised map echoing the territory covered by his journeys.

The intentionally broken glass pane, encasing a major part of the work, conveys the traumas and fears related to the encounter with otherness, strangeness, and the misunderstood.


Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds (A,B) (2nd Version), 1989-2000

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, silkscreen, Formica, plywood, Pertinax, glass, plastic loop fastener, transparent card case, paper, printed text on paper, aluminium frame

119.5 x 155 x 33 cm

Collection Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Perfect Worlds, Possible Worlds (A, B) is an ensemble of two display cases and a text. The left display case is sealed with a transparent glass pane, while the right one is sealed with a reflective glass pane. The left display case is overt and relatively informative, while the right one is dark and atmospheric. Our superimposed image on the reflective glass pane emanates as if from a parallel universe, therefore establishing a premise for one’s own meditation regarding the concept of ‘perfect’ or ‘possible worlds.’

7 / BLACK HOLE CONSTRUCTIONS

Cultural Attraction, 1990

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, plastic rods, assorted plastics, magnets, silkscreened text

133 x 410 x 45 cm

Collection Freunde der Kunstmuseen Krefeld e.V.

On the left panel of the large black surface, two semi-identical constructions are installed, one next to the other. Resonating spatialised configurations of flow diagrams, the two

The work Jüdische Chronologie is about the overlap of different time dimensions. It shows a detail of a binary calendar, featuring the dates of the Jewish holidays within a given period as they appear on a lunar Hebrew calendar that was synchronized with a solar Christian-Gregorian calendar.

16 / BOTANOLOGY

African Plant, 1991

anodised and lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, wire, wood, leather, PVC, synthetic fabric straps, foldback clips, plastic loop fasteners, transparent card case, printed paper, silkscreen, printed text on paper, aluminium frame

220 x 485 x 43 cm


New York

The long debated concept of ‘the exotic’ is represented here by an enlarged botanical image of a plant, known by the name of Cunonia Capensis L. The leaves of Cunonia Capensis L. recall those of the Cannabis plant, which is famous for its hallucinatory properties.

The work magnifies the image of the African plant, transforming it from a scientific image to a material object in space, an entity that exists beyond the categories of the human and the vegetative. As a consequence, the plant is no longer a derivative of external systems of signification, but becomes the origin for a new meaning. Occupying the centre of the work, it renders all the other elements peripheral. Its appearance is distinct and clear, while the identity of the other elements remains cryptic and their position unstable.

In this complex, aesthetic and conceptual proposition, the artist demonstrates his yearning for a new, more symmetrical and inclusive anthropology, free from rigid classification and homogenous typology.


Measurements, 1992

untreated brass and aluminium, stainless steel, silkscreen

30 x 141 x 32.5 cm


New York

Apart from Measurements, several more works by Goldstein incorporate rulers as a sculptural material (e.g. Wedding, African Plant and Cactus Model). Whenever rulers appear in a work, they ostensibly turn it into a self-referential image of its own preparation. But unlike the canon of Postminimalist process art, Goldstein’s use of rulers does not disclose the procedures involved in the production of the work.

In the case of Measurements, the rulers are a manifestation of a standard, and of a criterion recording the length, width and height of the work according to the metric decimal system. However, the validity of the recorded magnitude is challenged by the untreated brass the work is made of. The corroding brass undermines the fixity of the size as defined by standard units of measurement, subjecting the work to the permutations of time.

18 / BOTANOLOGY

Vegetable Construct, 1994

untreated aluminium, anodised aluminium, untreated copper, lacquered copper, metal mesh, insulation panels, wire fuse element, PVC, Novotex, silkscreen, printed text on paper, aluminium frame

240 x 520 x _ cm

Collection S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele

Kunst, Ghent

Reminiscent of a musical score or an artificial still life, Vegetable Construct is a multi-layered wall arrangement of material units with small printed images of vegetables on top of them. The meaning is related to the artist’s gardening practice at his home in Jerusalem.

Using the metaphor of the foreign origin of many European vegetables, the work polemically

constructions physically outline ‘fields of attraction’ and ‘vibrating areas of sensibility.’ On the right panel is a circular, almost architectural element referred to by the artist as ‘The Pagoda’—inside of which stainless steel rings interrupt units of round, inlaid magnets, brought together to form an oscillation, a rippling magnetic field of energy.

8 / BOTANOLOGY

B-Bau (Ventilation System for Warm-climate

Countries), 1986-1994

anodised and lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, PVC, Plexiglas, jointed wooden lay figures, fans, car batteries, electric cables, electric plugs, paperclips, plastic loop fasteners, transparent card cases, printed paper, silkscreen

166 x 376 x 67 cm


New York

The work appears as an experimental ventilation instrument installed upon an open base, within which two car batteries are laid across the floor. Seemingly charging the device, the two batteries suggest an improvised source of ‘energetic potentialities,’ familiar to developing countries with warm climates, like those listed in an attached chart with information on the average temperature of each country during its warmest month of the year.

The upper part of the work is comprised of two models: a closed case and an open stage hosting wooden, mannequin-like figurines. The work pretends to investigate how different climates generate different forms of labour, energy and cultural production.

9 / E.T.N.O.

The Peripheral Man, 1995

anodised and lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, magnets, wood, Formica, plastic, plastic balls, Novotex, Pertinax, Plexiglas, mirrors, wooden rosary, synthetic resin rosary, fake moustache, rubber bands, woollen cord (‘Aqal), strings, labels, foldback clips, paper tags, plastic coated prints, silkscreen

250 x 200 x 100 cm

Collection The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

“I met The Peripheral Man in one of the smallest, tucked-away rooms during a visit to a big European city museum. The man had a small black coffin and many shiny stars on his head. A large moustache adorned his face... blue electronic streaks were pulsating from his head. Red flashes of plasma were radiating out to the universe. His thin body was entirely nude, levitating horizontally in the exhibition space. Little round magnets, five centimetres from each other, were symmetrically placed on the walls, floor and ceiling.”

(Zvi Goldstein, On Paper, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2004, p.202)

10 / E.T.N.O.

Wedding, 1995

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, wire construction, wood, MDF, Formica (added after 1998), plastic, Plexiglas, clamps, textiles from Damascus, Ethiopian monk’s cowl, plastic coated prints, silkscreen

200 x 250 x 100 cm

Collection The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

The marriage of continents and morphologies of meaning, joined in a ceremonial image of ecstatic spin, is central to this work. Wedding communicates the union of separate cultural patterns: modern and premodern, progressive and ancestral, Western and Eastern.

11 / SERIAL CONSTRUCTIONS

Distance and Differences, 1991

anodised aluminium, stainless steel, untreated copper, plywood, Formica, PVC, Plexiglas, glass lenses, silkscreen, printed text on paper, aluminium frame

150 x 770 x 120 cm


New York

The work is a perceptual device constructed as a grid-like sequence of identical red modules, which, rather than unifying the space it inhabits, highlights the problematics of cultural perspective. The fixtures on top of each module mark the work as an array of separate observation posts, as a potential multiplicity of relative points of view. Instead of leading from and connecting one module to the other, the work introduces distance and differences between them.


Room 205 - The Voices, 2011

plaster walls and ceiling, acoustic insulation, audio player, loudspeakers, metal mesh elements, wood, MDF, Formica, wires, Plexiglas, neon lights, paper

275 x 980 x 420 cm


New York

Like a cave whose shape and volume cannot be determined from the outside, this elongated rectangular room reveals its dimensions only as you enter it. The walls are studded with a pattern of ventilation grills from which a polyphonic jumble of voices emerge, reciting sixty-two passages from Goldstein’s book of poetry, Room 205 (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2010). Room 205 recreates one minute of hallucination, “an open eye recall,” occurring between 9:25 and 9:26 AM in room no. 205 at a hotel in Tel Aviv.


Peripheral, 1990

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, plastic rods, Plexiglas, silkscreen

140 x 440 x _ cm


New York

Similar to the black hole of a star after a gravitational collapse, the centre of the work emits no information. No light is reflected. A fundamental unattainability is enacted. In contrast with the blankness of its centre, the two large peripheral lenses operate as apertures, beyond which depictions of light beams unfold in the form of black and white patterns. The work stretches our field of vision to its margins, where, as if by virtue of a higher power, sight coincides with geometric configurations introducing hypothetical infinities.


Black Box, 1991

anodised aluminium, lacquered aluminium, lacquered brass, copper, metal mesh, steel spring, glass lenses, plastic loop fasteners, transparent card case, printed paper, silkscreened text

325 x 160 x 60 cm

Collection Kunstmuseen Krefeld

This wall installation is composed of independent elements. The left hand element is a specifically-shaped black box, whose internal space is filled with two concealed compartments, wherein small index cards of ‘peripheral strategies’ and ‘personal methodological formulas for artistic survival in isolation’ are hidden. The box was sealed when produced in Jerusalem and shall never be opened.

Black Box holds a secret, known only to the artist. By obscuring its meaning and content, the work denies the notion of observation and interpretation.

15 / E.T.N.O.

Jüdische Chronologie, 1996

anodised and lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, silkscreen

78 x 144.5 x 5.5 cm


New York

questions the concept of cultural origin in general and, more particularly, artistic originality.

19 / BOTANOLOGY

Cactus Model, 1991

anodised and lacquered aluminium, stainless steel, MDF, Plexiglas, plastic pot, cactus, soil, silkscreen, printed text on paper, aluminium frame

174 x 390 x 55 cm

Collection S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele

Kunst, Ghent

The structure of Cactus Model might be mistaken as dichotomous, setting an architectural proposition against a living plant, or a man-made miniature against an organic outgrowth. Yet the work actually problematises this sort of binary thinking, since a segment of an architectural form is extended onto the base where the cactus stands. In fact, Cactus Model rejects the notion of separate ‘typologies’ in favour of a ‘hybrid’ view of the world, in which there is no distinction between culture and nature, purpose and purposelessness.

Inscribed on top of the plant case is the scientific name of the cactus species, Marginatocereus-Marginatus. As much as it denotes a botanical type, the name also functions as a metaphorical comment on Goldstein’s position as a marginal artist, living and working in Jerusalem, outside the immediate context of Western culture.


Future, 1989-1995

anodised, lacquered aluminium, Plexiglas, silkscreen - 2 parts

64 x 109 x 11 cm


New York

This two-part work contains inscriptions of the words “FUTURE”— the justification of all political and ideological activities, and “ESCHATOLOGY”— the theological-metaphysical concept of the end of the world as taught and expected by many religions and other systems of belief. With these inscriptions, each of which addresses a different view of history and time, the work alludes to a shift in the artist’s way of thinking, from ideological optimism to a dark vision of the world.


Age 7 (Reconstruction), 1954-2012

Plexiglas box with two shelves, pipe wrench, callipers, Plasticine, sheet of card rolled into a conical form, bread, ring-binder clip, thread, glue, page cut-out from On Paper, paper

50 x 60 x 15 cm

Collection Christiane Lange

A sheet of thin cardboard rolled into a conical shape, items from Goldstein’s father’s toolbox and other materials, serve as reconstructed fragments of his childhood memories at the age of seven.

22 / FROM MY ARCHIVE

1978-2007; preparatory drawings, unrealised works, references, material samples.

Curator: Ory Dessau

Director: Philippe van Cauteren

Staff: Peter Aerts, Katrien Blanchaert, Mieke Bossaert, Dominique Cahay, Alexandr Caradjov, Anne De Buck, Tashina De Ketele, Marieke De Pelsmaeker, Filip De Poortere, Tineke De Rijck, Michel Delabarre, Veronique Despodt, Eva Dierckx, Anna Drijbooms, Eric Elet, Annie Expeels, Bries Geerts, Martin Germann, Leen Goossens, Rebecca Heremans, Bjorn Heyzak, Ann Hoste, Carine Hoste, Claudia Kramer, Carine Lafaut, Rohil Lal, Vivienne Lemaitre, Christine Maes, Sabine Mistiaen, Eva Monsaert, Brice Muylle, Christoph Neerman, Iris Paschalidis, Dirk Pauwels, Lien Roelandt, Doris Rogiers, Catherine Ruyffelaere, Glenn Sanders, Aïcha Snoussi, Gilbert Thiery, Lander Thys, Marie Louise Van Baeveghem, Veronique Van Bever, Filip Van de Velde, Christa Van Den Berghe, Hidde Van Schie, Odelinde Van Thieghem, Ronny Vande Gehuchte, Liesje Vandenbroeck, Annemie Vander Borght, Werner Vander Schueren, Evy Vanparys, Annelies Vantyghem, Eline Verbauwhede, Marieke Verboven, Jürgen Verhas, Thibaut Verhoeven, Bea Verougstraete, Christian Volleman

Supported by

Visitor leafletWriter: Ory DessauEditor: Annelies VantyghemFrench Translation: Anne DhondtEnglish Translation: Gregory BallLayout: Femke VanbellePrinter: Graphius Group

Special thanks to: Tamara Abramovitch, Katrien Driesen, Fiona Elliott, Ishbel Flett, Rachel Goldstein, Julian Heynen, Magdalena Holzhey, Judith Hugener, Anke Kempkes, Rita Kersting, Luigi Kurmann, Suzanne Landau, Christiane Lange, Mira Lapidot, Daniel Marzona, Amitai Mendelson, Eva Meyer-Hermann, Tatjana Pieters, Yvonne Quirmbach, Johannes Schmidt, Sara Sizer, Rufina Valsky, Katharina Wendler

Jan Hoetplein 1

9000 Ghent

Belgium

Tel. +32 (0)9 240 76 01

www.smak.be

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introduction · in perfect worlds, possible worlds (a, b) (2nd version) (1989/2000) and cactus...

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