The Eternal Silence of Infinite Space,1994.
One after the other, artists of the ’80s are being rescued from postmodernism by valiant revisionist critics and curators. Unlike other damsels in distress, Jonathan Lasker refuses to drop the hankie, resolutely holding on to disjunction, preexisting systems, and the impossibility of direct expression. Reina Sofía vice-director Kevin Power takes the hint, using language as the organizing conceit for his full-scale survey of Lasker’s work. If this discourse is dated, the paintings are still here, and the show gives us the opportunity to reconsider them—not to recoup them for “beauty” but to think about their life as physical objects. (Power is joined by Robert Hobbs and Richard Milazzo in the catalogue.)
