Jonathan Lasker ‘The 80s’

Daniel Sturgis, Stuart Cumberland and Emma Dexter discuss their responses to the work of Jonathan Lasker, and the influence he has had on contemporary artists. The event took place at Timothy Taylor Gallery during the exhibition Jonathan Lasker: The Eighties.

Daniel Sturgis is an artist, curator and lecturer, who has had solo exhibitions around the world and lectured on painting at the ICA, Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the Serpentine, most recently selecting the exhibition The Indiscipline of Painting, International Abstraction from the 60′s to Now’ at the Tate St. Ives.

Stuart Cumberland in an internationally exhibited artist, who is represented by The Approach Gallery in London. He is Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Fine Art at the University of Westminster, his work was included in the 2010 John Moore’s Painting Prize, and he was awarded the RCA Saatchi Fellowship for 1999- 2000.

Emma Dexter is Director of Exhibitions at Timothy Taylor Gallery, and has previously been Senior Curator at the Tate Modern and Director of Exhibitions at the ICA. She has also curated a number of international exhibitions and is a much-published writer on contemporary art.

In a career spanning over thirty years Lasker has addressed the question of how painting might progress after Minimalism. Through his distinctive approach to abstraction, the artist chose to stand up to the finitude of Modernism at a time when painting was under attack. Lasker’s particular commitment to the medium and its history, coupled with an optimism for its future, has proven hugely influential to younger generations who have been similarly reluctant to leave painting for dead.

Timothy Taylor Gallery