Steve Gianakos
New Work
November 10 through December 7, 2009
Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Steve Gianakos. For over thirty years Gianakos has created an uncanny body of work in which formalist montage and perverse humor fuse into an iconic combination of pictorial wit and weirdness. Using the raunchy vernacular of the dirty joke or locker room pun, Gianakos portrays the human condition as an absurd interplay of leering sexual desire and psychological fragmentation.
The artist’s new work contrasts themes of vulgarity and innocence. His skillful handling of scatological humor treads further into the dark territory of taboo by painting Dick-and-Jane style figures at play in the field of sexual high jinx. Black and white paintings with heavily outlined images read like depraved coloring books for bad little girls and boys who, aesthetically speaking are pressed tight between Georges Bataille and the Bauhaus.
About the Artist
Steve Gianakos was born in New York City in 1938. This past year he was included with thirty works in Exile on Main Street, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Netherlands. His recent solo exhibitions include Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles and Alphadelta Gallery, Athens. His work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; New York; The New School for Social Research, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This will be the artist’s fourth solo show with Fredericks & Freiser.
