UNTIL THE SPARK HAPPENS; PUSH & PULL; FREE FALL – these are some of the textual fragments hovering on the reflective, resin surface of Caro Jost’s Streetprint Paintings. These are words appropriated from the writings of other artists, specifically those of 1940s-60s New York, in which the erratic and unpredictable movement of creative thought is expressed in bold headline. Since 2010, Jost has been researching the lives of these artists – studios, exhibition spaces and meeting points across the city – documenting through film the remnants of their working, whether these are now visible or invisible. The film stills then become the physical material with which Jost constructs her densely layered and textured compositions; the act of deep looking that they invite of the viewer runs in parallel to the artist’s materialisation of these traces within the present. The single black lines that frame and connect each work may gesture to a linear temporal movement, yet within the space of each painting lies a composite of perspectives, a collage of fleeting moments. Accompanying the Streetprint Paintings is one of Jost’s Streetprints, in which she makes transfers directly from the surface of physical locations that bear a particular significance to the artist’s research. Together, these modes of documentation represent an attempt to capture certain energies that have perhaps now expired, but which are given a new life within the compressed time of each work.
Joseph Constable (Associate Curator at the Serpentine Galleries, London), 2021

In 2010, Caro Jost began searching for the traces of the pioneering art scene of the 1940s – 1960s in New York. She researched and visited former artist´s studios, exhibition spaces and meeting places and recorded and filmed what is still visible today. This research resulted in a film documentation and a new series of works using and re-working the photo and film material. On a canvas primed with a Streetprint a collage-like image structure of the film stills in serveral layers is placed and superimposed with picturesque interventions.