Jonathan Lasker United States, b. 1948

Through strong compositional structure and intelligent color choices, Lasker's paintings hum with energy. The artist explores the gap between marks and signs; a mark refers primarily to itself, while a sign signals a referent external to the painting, something known and recognizable. Though Lasker invented his own visual vocabulary, creating meaning through context and repetition, any obvious message remains elusive.

Jonathan Lasker (b. 1948) was born in Jersey City, NJ. He attended the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1975 and studied at the California Institute of the Arts in 1977. Adopting a playful approach to abstract paintings always in search for new territories, Lasker's paintings portray a visual vocabulary composed of scribbles, inspired by graffiti and cartoon imagery, whilst investigating the various qualities of painting itself.  His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, California, Fundacio La Caixa, Barcelona, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Moderna Museet, Stockholm,  Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, among others.