NEW YORK, NY.- Cheim & Read present an exhibition of early work by New York painter Jonathan Lasker. The show groups together twenty seminal paintings, dating from 1977–1985, which attest to the origins of Lasker’s methodology, and ideas about abstraction, figuration and language. His consistent, critical questioning of the painting medium, which began with this early work, continues to influence his artistic practice today. The current exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue with an essay by Robert Hobbs. Lasker was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1948. After attending Queens College and the School of Visual Arts in New York, he enrolled in CalArts, in Valencia, California, in the late 1970s. His time at CalArts, which coincided with the school’s heyday of Conceptualism, became an important determining factor on his work. Committed to painting and its history, Lasker defended his chosen m