Steve Gianakos "New Paintings"
Fredericks & Freiser Gallery
This event has ended.
Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Steve Gianakos. Since the early 1970s Gianakos has been taunting and reddening the cheeks of his viewers with perversions that can throw any Freud lover into analytic shock. Dismantling its veracity with a smirk or a shaking of the head, Gianakos’ work grants us a collective purging that is curiously humorous. Coupled with crisp lines that evoke minimalism’s simplicity, Gianakos conflates formalist rigor with mind-bending vulgarity.
Appropriating the iconic style of 1950’s children’s books, Gianakos’ characters assume a basic innocence that belies their hyperbolic actions. Violence and sexual impulse are at once portrayed as inherent as they are grossly twisted. Working with only stark black lines, Gianakos delivers his punch straight up. His geometric inter-framing both leads the eye into the scene while also disorienting it. Harnessing the grotesque both formally and contextually, Gianakos finds a way to astonishingly marry the two.
Steve Gianakos was born in New York City in 1938.
Media
Schedule
from January 19, 2012 to February 18, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-01-19 from 18:00 to 20:00