Exhibiting three of Jack Goldstein's lesser-known works—his Burning Window installation, 1977/2015, and two sets of text-based Aphorisms (both dated 1982) painted on the gallery wall—this show distilled a tension within Goldstein's practice between mundane observation and metaphysical introspection. Burning Window consists of a single window frame containing four panes of textured Plexiglas placed in the center of a gallery wall that has been painted bloodred. Behind this window, flickering red lights give the appearance of fire. But this faux flame produces no heat. Instead, Burning Window effects an unsettling experience with its uneasy marriage of implied trauma and camp. No spectator of this installation would reasonably assume that Burning Window was intended to simulate an actual fire. Its reality is far more ambiguous. Goldstein commented in the compilation Portfolio Performance, 2001, that "the window functions as a 'safe' but fragile barrier in front of which the spectator is witness to the world outside as a measureless inferno." Burning Window evokes film but is not quite "cinematic"; suggestive of a narrative, in actuality it more acutely dramatizes the staged quality of its moving images. Per Goldstein, the spectacle "calls into question the 'truth' of visual experience."
Read MoreJack Goldstein, Burning Window, 1977/2015, wood, Plexiglas, acrylic paint, lights, dimensions variable.