Lewis Stein

I have tried to work without attachment to any program whether political, social, psychological or aesthetic and without attachment to craft. Nevertheless, certain concerns run through what has been a very diverse production:

1. A concern with perception -- seeing the function of art practice as a means of becoming aware of the world in ways previously not realized and seeing the function of the art object as a vehicle to communicate (by embodying) these insights. The concern with perception is never detached or disembodied and is almost always connected to a social (eg. "Surveillance Series"), cultural (eg. Object Pieces), or psychological context (eg. "Candid Portraits").

2. A concern with making manifest structural aspects of various media that are usually taken for granted. Eg. "Early Paintings" were in essence a deconstruction of painting; "Light Series" where light, the medium that makes photography possible by reflecting off of the various scenes photographed is instead made the subject of the work.

3. A concern with making work which speaks directly to the viewer or forms a transactional relationship with the viewer (as opposed to work that ultimately functions as an object to be analyzed or understood or to infer sensibility from). In other words a focus less on the object and more on the space between the viewer (participant) and the object; that is, a focus on the way meaning is generated.

Almost all the work I have done embodies one or more of the above concerns.

—Lewis Stein, Undated Statement

Lewis Stein was born in New York in 1945 and died in New York in 2022. He studied at MIT, Cambridge and UC, Berkley from 1964-1968 and then, briefly but crucially, with Anna and Lawrence Halprin in Marin County. In 2017 Maxwell Graham Gallery presented an exhibition of Lewis Stein’s Works from 1968–1979. A Painting From 1967 was first shown in a solo exhibition at David Whitney Gallery in New York in 1969. Mirrors from 1989 were first shown in a solo exhibition at Paula Allen Gallery in New York in 1989. Stein also had solo exhibitions at Nicholas Wilder, Los Angeles in 1969; Galerie Rolf Ricke, Cologne in 1970 and 1972; Artists Space, New York in 1979; Postmasters in 1985 and 1986. Stein’s work was most recently in group exhibitions at MAMCO, Geneva in 2018 and MMK, Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt in 2023.