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STEVE GIANAKOS

23.09.09 - 21.11.09

"Dead Stewardess", 1981, acrylic on canvas, 61 X 61 cm





























 

For October-November 2009 AD gallery, Athens presents a solo show of artist Steve Gianakos.

Steve Gianakos has been exhibiting in New York since 1966, when Pop Art was at its peak. He has received many awards and scholarships, like the Guggenheim award in 1996, he has had twenty-seven solo shows in the United States and in Europe (including two shows in 1978 and 1981 in PS1, New York) and has participated in many group shows among other important American artists.

Steve Gianakos creates attractive and provocative pictures that refer to the years of “innocence” in the 60s and 70s, a time of prolonged youth that enabled people to dream –even naively- while offering to them a new cultural identity. The artist creates characters that get “shamelessly” involved in a provoking erotic game, in which however, real violence is absent. Characters that will reach maturity without any consequences and without loosing their childishness.

The artist is very much interested in human attitude, therefore the narrative action is direct and obvious and his forms are usually selected with a sense of humor. Even his self-portrait or historical and recognizable figures like Hitler or the character of little Loulou, loose their meaning and are used like structural materials in a painting of appropriation.

In his paintings Gianakos tends to make visible all the levels of creation that he went through, as well as their relationship with his previous work, and for that reason he often treats his pictures as ready made material, isolating elements that fascinate him and recomposing them in the method of collage and assemblage.

The titles of the works form a constituent part of Gianakos’ work. Whether they are embodied in the painting surface or they just accompany the work, they mock stereotypes and widespread beliefs with a refined language and a good dose of spontaneous cynicism.

His fifth solo show in Greece is painting of acrylic on canvas and includes some pictures from the late 70s and the beginning of 80s, along with his latest work.
 

Duration: 23 September- 21 November 2009


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