This week I visited the Maisterravalbuena gallery, where Jack Goldstein’s Selectric Works is exhibited. You can enjoy it until May 26th. What surprised me the most from this exhibition was that Goldstein (1945-2003), who had been until now a multimedia artist -best known for his performances and videos-, decided to dedicate himself to write poetry at the end of his life. Developing a poetic capability -a potential we all have in ourselves- is a superhuman effort in refinement. In his search to express what moved him, Goldstein went through many stages and used different means. This search for answers leading to the world’s essence ended up revealing itself in his poetry.
About Artistic Investigation
The Spanish sculptor, Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003), wrote in his book Quosque tandem…!: “Art forces man to put in play his spiritual reserves, to enrich them.
We can talk aesthetically about spiritual curation. Art transforms the apparent order of the outside world; it creates the necessity of a deeper comprehension of oneself; it forces us to put in play an intimate zone of our consciousness whose revelation is a sensibility exercise…
Artistic sensibility religiously transforms man with his world and with his life. The love that is given to the statue is a love without schedule or conditions. It’s the same love that turns a man into an apostle, the same that turns a stone into a statue. Thus all things weight upwards. Religious faith is believing in what we don’t see, but aesthetic faith teaches us to believe in everything we are seeing…”
The artistic investigation to which a creator submits himself throughout his life is a path towards sensibilization, a spiritual path. His life is the search for what’s essential, the experimental creation; art is the product of this search.
Conceptual Poetry
Selectric Works’ poems are conceptual and a bit Pop. The author critiques mass culture through them. Poetry has always made me reflect; it invites me to travel into my own world. And what I liked the most from this visit was imagining how Goldstein, with his trajectory as a performance and video artist, embarked on a search for refinement that ended up with him writing poetry.
“Uncertain in a world of accurate devices
It moves in order to breathe
suppose a blind man
Spontaneous
Provocation”
Jack Goldstein
This week’s workshop will consist of writing poetry. Conceptual poetry, which never stops being a game, invites the observer, through the text’s organization, the placing of its words and their connection, to interpret the poem and to do a personal reading.
We will write poetry with a very personal language, which describes imaginary trips, intimate worlds and places that only exist in our minds. The one writing will have his own idea about his own poem, but the one observing it will have a different reading, according to his sensibility, his personal experiences, and his concerns.
I invite you to become conceptual poets or to at least give it a try.
Photography: Oscar Rivilla
Conceptual design: Carolina Verd
Fashion:
Courtesy of Pez
Red dress by Forte_Forte
Earrings by To be continued
Sneakers by Golden Goose
Carolina Verd 