About the artist:

Born: May 9, 1928; Corning, CA The history of realism in art is as old as the history of art. Throughout the development of art the issue of realism has reappeared countless times. The tradition of realism in western art allows for a very broad interpretation of realism itself. An investigation of realism in modern western art ranges from Vermeer to Ralph Goings and todays minimalist-realist art which concentrates on the verifiable physical properties of its objects. Ralph Goings work may be taken for what it is; totally noninterpretative matter-of-fact transpositions ot 35mm color slides "untouched by trope or deviation." The photograph intercedes between the subject and the act of describing it and serves to cancel "content" and emotional response. Ralph Goings paints pick-up trucks, franchised hamburger stands and California banks with the late model trucks gleaming arrogantly in the California sun. Next season they will be new only in the painting, in twenty years they will be perfect antique pickup trucks and their sentimental value will heighten. Hence the process of nostalgia. Goings proves again and again that the place or object, no maffer how cold and stark, when vividly proclaimed within a short seasonal change, begets a larger meaning. It's a democratic triumph: all things become equal in both their power and vacuity. As a photo realist Goings neither glorifies or censures; but his objective rendering does often reveal the visual beauty and fascination of the pictorial subject. A hamburger stand may be one of the more typical symbols of our urban sprawl and convenience culture but, as Goings' paintings show, it may also be visually engaging precisely because of its synthetic qualities and the variety of texture, light play and reflections they afford. And it is this reflectiveness in our environment that offers us an incredibly fascinating and diverse array of visual entertainment. Goings and his fellow photo realists present us with visual truths: the object's presence is enough justification to make it a work of art.