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Sharon Gold (born February 28, 1949) is an American artist and associate professor of painting at Syracuse University. Gold's artwork has been installed at MoMA PS1, Dia Art Foundation , Carnegie Mellon University , Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University , Everson Museum of Art, and Princeton University Art Museum. She was a fellow at MacDowell Colony. Gold's work has been reviewed by Arthur Danto, Donald Kuspit , Ken Johnson , and Stephen Westfall in a variety of publications from Artforum to the New York Times, New York Magazine, Arts Magazine, Art News, and many others. Gold has also received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and has written for Re-View Magazine, M/E/A/N/I/N/G/S, and Artforum. Her artwork spans across minimalism, monochromatic abstraction, geometric abstraction, and representational painting and has been conceptually informed by structuralism, existential formalism, and feminist theory.

Early life
Sharon Gold is a native New Yorker born in the Bronx. She grew up attuned to the arts, especially music. Gold attended The High School of Music & Art and later went on to study at Hunter College and Columbia University before graduating from Pratt Institute with a BFA in painting.

Work
Sharon Gold rose to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s with her monochromatic paintings that inhabited a space of existential formalism. She gained recognition in 1979 with reviews in Art in America and Artforum written by Hal Foster and Donald Kuspit. Through the years, her work has experienced a variety of transformations that follow a clear and gradual path from monochromatic abstraction and existentialism to direct representation.

Monochromatic Series
Starting in 1974, Gold began to work with monochromatic paintings composed with "thick skins of dark, near-black paint, textured with palette knife, so as to obscure zones of primary color (in the paintings) and earthy color (in the drawings). Lines scratch the black and expose red, yellow and blue. The shock of the gesturalism is such that it devalues the vibrant latency of the color (which is nonetheless intuited)." Gold develops vast layers of illusionistic transparency and painterly opacity before scratching into the surface as an act of stripping each of these conventional painterly modes. These works often take on the cruciform imprint of the canvas's wood backing revealed as a relief behind layers of paint. At once, the development of the diagrammatic wood armature as a material element and an illusionistic space in the pictorial plane shatters expectations of materiality and illusion in these monochrome pieces. Gold's painted language becomes a phenomenologically imbued surface that embodies structuralist semiotics as embedded in color and painted forms.

Geometric and Transitional Geometric Series
In 1979, Gold broke from the monochromatic process to create paintings that allowed first for the intuitive composition of space and later for painterly mark making. As such, her way of being "color-shy, distrustful of the power of color or color-names" was replaced by the play of painterly process. With the removal of the monochromatic surface, geometric forms pull to the foreground of the paintings, which were realized by Gold "in accordance with my sense of intuition and reason." Stephen Westfall explains in an Arts Magazine review that "the main differences between Gold’s work then and now are that she’s drawing more within the boundaries of her interlocking planes, there’s movement to the planes themselves (they’re not as locked into the rectangle of the canvas, even if they remain parallel to it), and there’s a wider color range. Her marks used to be, as she has written, 'a consequence of putting paint down on a surface.' They’re grown into lyrical gestures that resonate with the natural landscape and the figure." These paintings became a transformative step towards an inclusive form of mark making that can be seen in Gold's trajectory toward not only painterly abstraction but the introduction of unabashedly illusionistic representational painting in later works.

Nature (as) Imagined
Following her period of geometric abstraction, Gold began working on even more intuitive works that took on biomorphic features that hint at representational landscapes. The organic referentiality of these pieces is another step in Gold's development out of process based work and into an intuitive practice. These paintings maintain the materiality and concern for surface that exist in her earlier monochrome and geometric works while taking on the illusion of nature as a subject. In 1986, Stephen Westfall described the transformation Gold made in painting this new series, "The disappearance of geometry from Gold's paintings would be a startling enough development, considering how little time has elapsed between her last exhibition and the work currently on view at the Pam Adler Gallery, and also compared with the rate of change in her work over the last decade. But the stunner is just how descriptive the new paintings really are, not simply their depicted forms but their glowing passages of light. She's painting with the brush, almost staining in some areas, in glistening transparencies taht achieve an old masterish luminosity as they build up. The forms she's painting now call to mind water, spores, suns, spirit shapes, and mountains."

Ovals (as) Portraits
In 1987, Gold turned to the use of the oval as a metonymical device representing the portrait. These works, while ostensibly abstract and geometric, become deeply personal conversations with the oval as a stand in for portraits in, for instance, a family tree. The ovals take on glowingly articulated personalities often expressed through colors and variations in size to develop family and conversational hierarchies. These works exist as the transitional point for Gold's conceptual standpoint, a shift toward work that directly tackles social issues through a private lens. As such, the geometrical elements of this series become direct vehicles for meaning rather than for exploration of existential formalism or intuitive painting.

Self/Portraits
The Self/Portraits series pairs Gold's painterly sense for geometric abstraction with the entrance of representational painting, a step that totally shatters the previously existentialist and process-based format of Gold's work. The metonymy of the oval continues throughout this work, but it is overshadowed by Gold's direct representational painting of corporeal subjects. The body, which, in her earlier works, was signified through the action of painting, comes to the foreground of these works. The Self/Portraits become introspective specters that mirror Gold's monochromatic paintings in authority if not in form.

Seeing Subjects
Gold's Seeing Subjects series began in 1994 as the most emotionally charged and intimate work she has created. The works often include portraits of herself and her young daughter in various situations, and they begin to invite overt feminist interpretations. In particular, Gold's use of the frame as a medium for engraved text introduces titles that directly color interpretations of her paintings. Paintings of masks and glasses become lenses or views through which Gold's works may be understood in a direct relationship with their titles: SIR.CUM.SPECT, LIP SERVICE, WOMENS VIEWS, BLIND SIGHT, EYE-SPY, SAFETY GLASS, MASKED BALLS, MASK'R AID. The works appear as a cacophony of views projected upon the mother to daughter relationship: protective, loving, obsessive, and nostalgic.

A Fictional Autobiography
A Fictional Autobiography is Sharon Gold's 2006 work, an interactive website made in collaboration with Letha Wilson. The website is an attempt at the translation of paintings, digital prints, and photographs from the physical gallery space to the virtual landscape of the internet. Multiple overlapping narratives fill the autobiographical space with artwork depicting women in a sociological study of various relationships and interactions that subvert the traditionally superimposed roles women are often expected to abide by. The works comment on both contemporary and historical issues and are related, often humorously or ironically, to short phrases that serve as titles. These titles are presented in the timeline as monochromatic and opaque buttons that obscure Gold's artwork until the user scrolls over the top of them. In a review by Cindy Stockton Moore, the piece is described as being "a chronological context, in which artwork is linked to preceding pieces in flowchart form. Each type of work (small paintings, large paintings, silhouettes) is replaced with a corresponding color-coded symbol. Blue squares, orange circles, green diamonds become signifiers; labeled only with a title, they conceal the image until it is selected. The relationship between text, image and meaning become interchangeable - reflecting Sharon Gold’s densely layered, creative process and her continued exploration of visual semiotics."

Recent Work
Sharon Gold's most recent works depict shouting and frustrated women. The women, often appearing to be in agony, are created with charcoal on Belgian linen. Gold crops the portraits to a tight fit. This device, together with a deceiving stillness achieved through the absence of color, serves to accentuate Gold's presentation of trauma as a motif.

Solo Exhibitions
2007 A Fictional Autobiography, online exhibition, http://www.sharongold.com/

2001 Robert Pardo Gallery, New York, New York

1991	 Stephen Rosenberg Gallery, New York, New York

1989	 Stephen Rosenberg Gallery, New York, New York

1987	 Stephen Rosenberg Gallery, New York, New York

1986	 85 Mercer Street, New York, New York

1986	 John Davis Gallery, Akron, Ohio

1986	 Pam Adler Gallery, New York, New York

1984	 Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, New York

1984	 55 Mercer Street, New York, New York

1982	 Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia

1981	 Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York, New York

1981	 Atholl McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California

1981	 Galerie Michael Storrer, Zurich, Switzerland

1978	 Bertha Urdang Gallery, New York, New York

1977	 OK Harris Gallery, New York, New York

1977	 112 Greene Street, New York, New York

1976	 OK Harris Gallery, New York, New York

1971	 Judson Gallery, Judson Memorial Church, New York, New York

Group Exhibitions
2014 Sideshow Nation II: At the Alamo, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, New York

2014 PAPERAZZI 3, Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, New York

2012 Faculty Exhibition, XL Projects, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

2011 Faculty Exhibition, XL Projects, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

2010 Faculty Exhibition, XL Projects, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

2009 Faculty Exhibition, XL Projects, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

2009 Drawing the Other: Works on Paper by SU and SUF Faculty (50th Anniversary Exhibition), Syracuse University, Florence, Italy

2007 Dangerous Women Two, The Gallery, Mercer County Community College, West Windsor, New Jersey

2005 ARTEFACT Galleria Pardo, Zurich, Switzerland

2005	 To Never Forget: Faces of the Fallen, The Wall, Shaffer Art Building, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

2005	 Faculty Exhibition, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

2004	 ARTEFACT Galleria Pardo, New York, New York

2004	 Subject to Oneself A Group Exhibition of Self-Portraiture, PLAySPACE, California

2004 California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA

2004	 Faculty Exhibition, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

2004	 ARTEFACT Galleria Pardo, Milan, Italy

2004	 First Annual Downtown Art Auction Benefit, Michael Perez Gallery, NY, NY

2002	 Faculty Exhibition, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

2000	 Women, Art and Change 2000, Spark Gallery, Syracuse, NY

1999	 Faculty Exhibition, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1999	 No Limits, Judson Memorial Church, New York

1999	 Edith Barrett Art Gallery, Utica College of Syracuse University, Utica, NY

1998	 A Live and Silent Auction of Miniature Art Works, Prime Time House Benefit, Torrington, Connecticut

1998	 Artists Choose Artists, The Century Association, New York, NY

1998	 Studio Arts: The Creative Process, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1996	 Faculty Exhibition, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1994	 Group Exhibition, Dietrich Contemporary Art, NY

1994	 Faculty Exhibition, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1993	 Inaugural Exhibition, Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1993	 Ticket=Art, Organization for Independent Artists Benefit, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, October 11, 1993

1993	 Studio Tour, Art In General, New York Benefit, October 16, 1993

1992	 Group Exhibition/Benefit, IRIS HOUSE: A Center for Women Living with HIV, NY, Women’s Foundation and Manhattan Borough President's Office

1991	 New Acquisitions, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York

1991	 Inaugural Exhibition, ARTSTAR, Los Angeles, CA

1991	 Paper Trail, Stephen Rosenberg Gallery, NY, NY

1990	 The Image of Abstract Painting in the 80's, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, curated by Susan Stoops

1990	 New Work, Stephen Rosenberg Gallery, NY, NY

1989	 Painting Beyond The Death Of Painting, Kuznetsky Most Exhibition Hall, Moscow, USSR, curated by Donald Kuspit

1989	 One Of A Kind: Unique Works On Paper, GH Dalsheimer Gallery, Baltimore, MD

1989	 Space, Scale & Structure, Ben Shahn Gallery, William Patterson College, Wayne, NJ

1988	 Abstraction: The Central Image, four-person exhibition, Stephen Rosenberg Gallery, NY

1988	 Summer Show, GH Dalsheimer Gallery, Baltimore, MD

1988	 Faculty Exhibition, The Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1987	 Six Younger Underknowns, Dia Art Foundation, Bridgehampton, NY, curated by Henry Geldzahler

1987	 Faculty Exhibition, The Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1986	 Rose Art Museum 25th Anniversary Show, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

1986	 Tribeca Alert! Tribeca Benefit Art Auction, Hal Bromm Gallery, NY, NY

1986	 Sixth Invitational, John Davis Gallery, Akron, Ohio

1986	 Line Drives, Gallery 53/Smithy Artworks, Cooperstown, NY

1986	 Abstraction/Abstraction, Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh PA, curated by Elaine A. King, traveling to Paul Klein Gallery, Chicago, Ill.

1986	 New Abstract Paintings, Cork Gallery, Lincoln Center, New York, curated by D. Fortenberry

1986	 Joseph Masheck Collection of Contemporary Art, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

1985	 Earsight: Sound and Image in the Contemporary Arts, Nexus Gallery, Philadelphia, Pa. curated by Peter Frank, traveling to Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Johnston Extension, Pa.

1985	 The Fifth Annual, John Davis Gallery, Akron, Ohio

1985	 Ten Gallery Artists, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1985	 Group Exhibition Invitational, Pam Adler Gallery, NY, NY

1985	 Umpires of Art, Gallery/53 Smithy Artworks, Cooperstown, NY

1985	 A Decade of Visual Arts at Princeton: Faculty 1975-1985, The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

1985	 The Non-Objective World-1985, Kamikaze, NY, NY, curated by Stephen Westfall

1985	 Group Exhibition, Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio

1985	 Painting 1985, Pam Adler Gallery, NY, NY

1984	 Faculty Exhibition, The Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1984	 Small Works: New Abstract Painting, Lafayette College and Muhlenberg College, Easton and Allentown, Pa., curated by Ron Janowich and Thomas Hudspeth

1984	 The Fourth Annual, John Davis Gallery, Akron, OH

1984	 Bases Loaded, Gallery 53/Smithy Artworks, Cooperstown, NY

1984	 First Underground Show, 456 Broome Street, NY, NY curated by Thornton Willis

1984	 Drawings: New Dimensions, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1983	 Multiples, Jack Tilton Gallery, NY, NY

1983	 Visiting Artist and Faculty Show, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

1983	 Contemporary Abstract Painting, Center for the Arts, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pa., curated by Thomas Hudspeth

1983	 Art of the Rapid Transit, Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, Buffalo, NY

1983	 New York Painting Today, Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh, Pa., curated by Elaine A. King and Donald Kuspit

1982	 Critical Perspectives, MoMA PS1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Long Island City, NY, curated by Joseph Masheck

1982	 Fifteen Artists, Pam Adler Gallery, NY, NY curated by Pam Adler and Jack Tilton

1981	 Drawing Invitational, Harm Bouchaert Gallery, NY, NY

1981	 Works on Paper, Museum of Modern Art, Art Lending Service, NY, NY

1981	 Group Exhibition, McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX

1981	 Donne in Arte-Viaggio a New York, Galleria Arco d'Alibert, Rome Italy, traveling to Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy

1980	 US Art '80, Ericson Gallery, NY, NY, curated by Vered Lieb

1979	 Small Is Beautiful, Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, Pa., traveling to Center Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa., curated by Marilyn Zeitlin

1979	 Group Exhibition, Susan Caldwell Gallery, NY, NY

1978	 Group Exhibition, 112 Greene Street, NY, NY

1978	 Group Exhibition, Bertha Urdang Gallery, NY, NY

1978	 Group Exhibition, Kilcawley Center, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH

1977	 Drawings and Prints-New York, Rush Rhees Gallery, University of Rochester, NY

Performances and Video Works
In 1994, Sharon Gold presented A Video Tape 1990-1991 as a video installation at the Syracuse University faculty exhibition at the Lowe Art Gallery. The same video was presented during Gold's 1991 solo exhibition at Stephen Rosenberg Gallery in New York City. In 1984, Gold played a toy piano at St. Stephen's Church as part of the North South Consonance premiere performance, High Art, with composer Martin Bresnick and piccolo player Robert Dick. Gold performed an improvisation with composer John Zorn at the [Knitting Factory]] in New York City. Gold performed with Maureen Connor in 1978 during an art cabaret at The Ear Inn's Performance Workshop. In 1977, she presented a performance and video tapes at 112 Greene Street in New York City. In 1976, Gold's How to Play the Piano performance and video piece and Paper Piece #1 took place at the Performance Workshop. In 1975, she presented a performance and audio work at Pratt Institute titled Minimal, Post-Minimal, Conceptual Art: Running Piece. She also performed in the John Cage concert with performance and video at [Pratt Institute]] in 1975. Together with co-director Elaine Hartnett, Sharon Gold ran the Performance and Video Workshop New York city group from 1975 through 1978. In 1967, she performed at Judson Memorial Church for the Judson Memorial Poets' Theatre. From 1965 through 1967, Gold participated in dance and music performances at Elan International Folk Theatre in New York City.

Collections and Public Commissions
Gold's works are in the collections of the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; Chemical Bank, New York, New York; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; Southeast Banking Corporation, Miami, Florida; Best Products, Richmond, Virginia; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, New York; Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, Ohio; McCrory Stores, New York, New York; Norsearch Industries, New York, New York; Prudential Insurance Company of America, Newark, New Jersey; Fox, Glynn & Melamed, New York, New York; and Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, Inc., New York, New York. In 1988, Gold was commissioned to make a public painting for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority at the Humboldt-Hospital Station east entrance in Buffalo, New York.

Recognition
Sharon Gold received grants or fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in 1972, Pratt Institute in 1974, National Endowment for the Arts for painting in 1981, and the Penny McCall Foundation for painting in 1988.

Early Positions and Visiting Faculty
Sharon Gold worked as a faculty member at Princeton University. She was also a visiting artist faculty member at Pratt Institute, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Francisco Art Institute, and the Tyler School of Art.

Syracuse University
Sharon Gold has been a member of the Syracuse University faculty since 1986. She is an associate professor of painting and has influenced hundreds of artists during her academic career, including William Powhida and Letha Wilson. At Syracuse, she has taught alongside artists Andrew Havenhand, Kevin Larmon, Michael Sickler, Jerome Witkin, and Stephen Zaima.

Professional Affiliations
In 2003, Sharon Gold became a member of the American Association of Museums in Washington, DC. She participated in the 2002, 1998, and 1996 Feminist Art and Art History Conferences at Barnard College, Columbia University. In 1998, she presented her paper, Constructing Narratives: Evolving Subjects and Content as Sits for Seeing and Spectatorship. Gold was a panelist on Race/Image/Gender at Syracuse University for Celebrate Difference week in 1990 and served as the panel chair on Abstract Pictures/Abstract Paintings for the College Art Association Conference that same year. In 1989, she was the committee chair for the distinguished artist award for lifetime achievement through the College Art Association in San Francisco. In 1988, she was a committee member and presenter for the distinguished artist award for lifetime achievement through the College art Association in Houston, Texas and a panelist at The Sameness of Difference: The Contemporary Dilemma in Art at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York. Gold was a member of the Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants Association from 1980 through 1983. She also served as the director of the visual arts program at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs from 1977 to 1981. Gold became a member of the College Art Association in 1977 and a New York Artists Equity member in 1973. She was a member of the Organization of independent artists from 1970 to 1980.

Critical responses
In a 1979 review of Gold's work, Donald Kuspit explains the conceptual relationship between painting and sculpture that comes out through Gold's work: "Gold's differentiation of the phenomenal field of the paint by a cruciform--the form becomes a means by which the field decisively announces its power of individuation--introduces a profound relief into the paintings, and also heralds their critical relation to sculpture. Indeed, when I first saw them I thought of them as impacted reliefs, because they were sufficiently raised from the wall to function as reliefs yet not sufficiently removed from it to become theatrical, or even illustrative of the wall. The model of differentiated form emerging from undifferentiated flux--simply of a frame emerging from the unframed--which the relief offers, seems to me a more primordial image of sculpture than Pincus-Witten's vertical/horizontal, figure/earth crossing. The crossing can be displayed only after the primary relief has been established: it becomes the differentiation of the freshly undifferentiated surface the frame contains. In any case, this critical relation to sculpture--reinforced by the fact that Gold's canvas is backed by "wall-like plywood panels" (another touch of felt invisibility, of subliminally articulate negative presence)--adds a fresh element of conceptual tension to the perceptual tensions already noted. Both perceptual and conceptual tension are registered in the fact that the crossings of the cruciform--or rather, in some cases, the implied crossings--are handled in such a way that they become a kind of relief sculpture."