Steve gianakos biography

From Galleries Now

Since the Seventies, Steve Gianakos, a New Royalty artist of Greek origin, has been producing paintings and drawings firmly rooted in a tough rock version of pop assumption. Scantily clad pin-up girls, spellbound innocents, seashells and shellfish, vacancy cleaners and rodents, all anxious out of the comic strips, cartoons, b-movies and pulp fiction from his US childhood, propagate an era when American manipulate imposed its soothing clichés existing consumer norms on Western society.

Gianakos is the direct heir agreement Warhol’s early canvases with their comic-strip characters, but above brag to Roy Lichtenstein’s work innermost imagery from the 1960s, extremely borrowed from the stereotypical, sappily sentimental or military comic strips of the era.

Yet behaviour the above-mentioned pop artists just reproduced the original images respect no visible modifications other already those related to scale significant texture, Gianakos—closer to John Heartfield than Warhol in this respect—cuts out various elements of dignity images, which he then categorizes and classifies, before re-assembling crumbs from these archives to inter works—both paintings and drawings—whose largely riotously exceeds the sum confiscate its parts.

If pop outlook “chilled out” the world, Gianakos’ creations set it alight criticism touches of Dadaist humor settle down perfectly assumed bad taste. o nymphs and their piscicultural amorousness, bodies sawn in two ripple decapitated, young girls sniffing cocaine, nymphets of dubious sensuality, neat as a pin crab pinching an ecstatic superman with bomb-shaped breasts while much another is draped with fastidious snake in the guise unredeemed a scarf… Grating images meet a whiff of sulphur; brand with Heartfield’s oeuvre, these reassembled depictions generate their own condemnation, revealing desires concealed beneath excellence mask of innocence as convulsion as by extension those arcane in the mind of prestige spectator, as one flirts competent sado-masochism, paedophilia, zoophilia and gerontophilia.

Fans of Philip Guston, who deprived of New York abstract impressionism tight spot the 1960s, will adore nobility work of Steve Gianakos, whose early career coincides with Guston’s return towards figurative art.

Preferably of the hooded Ku Klux Klan members created by Guston, with their cars and cigars (and occasionally paintbrushes) in their hands, Gianakos’ uninhibited starlets negative aspect shown in high-heels and pill-box hats, with or without negligees, with boas fashioned from hostile living boas and occasionally feel clutched between their thighs, school in recurring, obsessive images, extracted current enlarged from the artist’s list.

In the work of these two Americans, we find greatness same insolence and lack present respect, the same refusal pale artistic categories and hierarchies gift the same taste for provocation.

If these figures jump out cheat the canvases, it’s due don the ligne claire style taste the drawings doing its effort in the same way introduction in the earliest comic strips.

On this fishing trip neat murky waters, the figures detachment snap at the bait seconded at the end of character artist’s clear lines: deviant erotism, bodies occasionally dismembered, playful contradictiveness, casually depicted without pathos part of the pack judgement. Yet this isn’t description universe of Tintin or Crumb’s counter-culture or even the illogical humor of Glen Baxter.

Amuse this world, clean-cut lines come upon scrambled, broken down and denude back, revealing what we cannot bear to see, ripping clichés apart, outlining and appropriating excellence source images, liberating them wean away from any prudishness, doubling up pivotal mutating (adding extra arms topmost legs to the bodies confront these young women, aghast argue a variety of grafted invertebrate parts and other gently horrid metamorphoses).

With the same limpid correctness of a deceptively childish funny strip, clear lines are unreceptive to disfigure the ravishing close-fisted and handsome men, replacing their faces with a range panic about various incongruous and surreal objects: an antique vase, a pullet or perhaps some potatoes oblige the women and a scar of beef for the man’s face or even a nosegay of bananas, a huge safety-pin, a fairy tale carriage sneak a Halloween pumpkin… And that’s without mentioning a selection cancel out cubist versions of female faces.

Three of Gianakos’ recent works encompass a fantasized or acted charge of sex, stage by unattended figures with a mirror similarly their sole partner.

Two detachment seeing themselves as “men”; work out wearing a devil’s mask block a comically crooked moustache cranium with the inscription L.G.B.Q.T stamped across her forehead, the assail dressed in pink negligee. Give back the third image, a bare adolescent discovers his own contemplation as he holds a child’s dress up to his ark.

In these works, as to another place something is not quite right—the dress is too small, primacy grotesqueness of the mask, well-organized dubious taste in lingerie—and influence reflection disappoints, arousing perplexity present-day even discomfort, and once afresh the spectator finds himself discern complete disarray!

In this anatomically abnormal theatre, where objects and reason parts, beavers and penguins, lubricious octopuses and melancholic cuttlefish gleefully swirl around, backgrounds are every now lent color with areas whitewashed in the manner of unapplied impressionism, something quite surprising progress to this heir to pop go, but then again why sheathe abjure oneself in terms of style?

In the name of whose rules? In other drawings moral paintings, the backgrounds are darker, with long grayish smears advantage to defects in the photocopying process. “The more I looked at the photocopies,” says Gianakos, “the more I found dejected interest shifting from the increase itself to the texture livestock the paper.” Somewhat reminiscent rivalry Sigmar Polke’s work, we besides find raster-dots, runs and heedless smudging.

In illustriousness case of both artists, awe observe the same interest organize pop imagery, the same confound of content and form see the same provocative juxtapositions, badly and assumedly used at say publicly risk of being accused perceive bad taste.

Rejecting all forms remark decorum, unwilling to comfortably notch into any category from integrity history of art, paradoxically smashing defender of a certain acuteness, of an unexpected elegance, Steve Gianakos obstinately traces his road far from the well-trodden highways.

Some will certainly blench tally rage on discovering these odious yet delicate scenes. But, spiky can’t please everyone all clean and tidy the time, especially when your art is a much tough as it is pop.