Skip to content

Steve Gianakos

Accessories and Other Girlie Desires

November 13, 2014 – January 17, 2015

STEVE GIANAKOS, It Was Hard to Tell What She Was Thinking, 2014
STEVE GIANAKOS, It Was About the Pursuit of Excellence, 2014
STEVE GIANAKOS, Then She Thought... Why Not, 2014
STEVE GIANAKOS, She Was a Complex Mix of Sweet and Savory, 2014
STEVE GIANAKOS, The Girls Were Always Anxious to Get the Team Shirts, 2014
STEVE GIANAKOS, The "Baby What" With Noodles Was a Hit, 2014
STEVE GIANAKOS, He Had a Great Love of Flowers, 2014
He Loved the Flip-Flops She Gave Him, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
At First She Was Reluctant, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
Ring Ring... It Was Her Ex, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
She Fled When He Tried To Remove Her Bra, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
She Learned to Bake Bread in Europe, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
She Was in No Hurry to be Married Again, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
The Boss' Wife's Sister, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
She Was the Author of More Than 300 Books, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
The Arrival, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
His Stutttttering Got Worse, 2014, Acrylic on canvas
Steve Gianakos, Details Were Scant, 2014

Press Release

Steve Gianakos

Accessories and Other Girlie Desires

November 13 through December 20, 2014

(extended through January 17, 2015)

Opening reception: Thursday, November 13, 6-8PM

 

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 1950s 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. 

 

 

 

About the Artist

Steve Gianakos was born in New York City in 1938. He has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions. His work is currently included in Disturbing Innocence curated by Eric Fischl at FLAG Art Foundation, NY, and 12 Inch curated by Chuck Webster at One River, Englewood, NJ. He has also been included in group exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art, NY, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Netherlands, Brooklyn Museum, NY; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, OH. His work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art; NY; The New School for Social Research, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; and The Museum of Modern Art, NY.  This will be the artist’s seventh solo show with Fredericks & Freiser.

 

Fredericks & Freiser is located at 536 West 24th Street, New York, NY. We are open Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm. For more information, please contact us by phone (212) 633 6555 or email info@fredericksfreisergallery.com, and visit us online at www.fredericksfreisergallery.com, and on Instagram @fredericksandfreiser.

Download PDF