28/05/2026
JONATHAN LASKER
Double Play
Charlottenstrasse
Until 20 June 2026
Jonathan Lasker’s paintings are pictures in every sense. From the start of his practice in the 1970s, between the emphatically non-representational, pared-down objecthood of Minimalism and an increasingly dematerialized, conceptual turn, his work grappled with contradiction in a redefining moment for painting. While studying at the California Institute of the Arts, he initiated an analytical engagement with the medium, posing painting as a question of picturing, both in its construction and perception – opening up a line of critical inquiry that continues to inform his work today.
The elements in the later works presented in the exhibition have a particularly firm presence. They are set apart from the earlier paintings here, though, at times, we may sense their beginnings — in a certain combination of colors, a certain quality of marks. The central objects are iterations of a form that has become more fixed in recent years, though its white body and wavering black outlines call back to the loose forms of some of Lasker’s earliest paintings. Their figural appearance, vaguely resembling a head with a snout, like a cartoon character, is enhanced by an inclination to read the works as portraits. In the lower right of each, this form is partially hidden behind an impastoed object that builds the picture plane outward — cross-hatched lines in primary colors, a flattened bubble-gum slab that is also head-like, and a looping black scribble. These sets of figures bring the different objects that make up Lasker’s painterly world into close correspondence, like a one-on-one conversation.
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Work:
Jonathan Lasker
Multiple Personality, 2025
Oil on canvas board
30 x 24 cm
Framed dimensions:
33.6 x 27.6 x 4 cm
Installation view at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 2026, photo by .de
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