FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Preview: June 4 - 5, 11am - 6pm
June 6 - 29, 2014
Touchstone Gallery with the support of the Cultural Service of the Embassy of France presents:
Les Chemins de Memoire
(The Paths of Memory)
by Charles Goldstein
Opening Reception: Friday, June 6, 6 - 8:30pm
Paris born CHARLES GOLDSTEIN began painting at an early age. He was encouraged by French painters and heavily influenced by the painting of the immediate post war period with the work of Mark Rothko, Alfred Manessier, Phillip Gustom, and Franz Kline among others to create strong and emotional paintings.
His works on MEMORY found its roots in the Holocaust with the disappearance of 84 members of his close family in France and in Poland. Realizing that figurative painting could not describe the unspeakable, he chose to define his identity and pay tribute to those who became “ashes and dust” through abstruction. Goldstein’s works are stirringly emotional, each revealing in richly somber tones the need to bare witness to a past that still haunts his soul.
His juxtaposition of color and form impart feelings of solitude and, ultimately, freedom. Each work skillfully conveys a mélange of melancholy, a contemplative visual soliloquy that is both cathartic and visually stunning. One can see in each brushstroke a skilled use of materials to express a deep-seated passion, a need to convey a breath of emotion.
Vivid colors meld and drift, ebb and flow, underscoring both loss and a quest for self-discovery.
Goldstein lives near Paris, France. He has exhibited his work in France, Italy and Germany and recently in New York.
Images: L'ecriture et la vie (hommage a Jorge Semprun) 2011, 32 x 22 in.; Rien qu'un ecrasant silence No.1 2010, 32 x 40 in.; Tant de vies melees ont fait ces fumees noires No.1 2006, 32 x 32 in. Mixed Media on Canvas.