Greg Drasler is an American artist known for metaphorical paintings that mix vernacular imagery and decoration and visual and interpretive conundrums.
[Goodman, Jonathan. "Greg Drasler at Generous Miracles," ''Art in America'', July 2000.][Scher, Robin]
"Life Is a Highway: Greg Drasler on His New Show at Betty Cuningham Gallery,"
''ARTnews'', June 23, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2019. His work explores the construction of identity and memory through painted subjects that range from elaborately constructed interiors to symbolic common objects to patterned panoramas of the American highway.
[Berlind, Robert. "Greg Drasler at Shea & Beker," ''Art in America'', June 1990.][Cohen, David]
"Greg Drasler at Betty Cuningham,"
''artcritical'', October 5, 2011. Retrieved October 8, 2019. Although representational, Drasler's work eludes defined aesthetic categories such as
realism, incorporating elements of
surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
,
abstraction, and postmodern
bricolage and recontextualization.
[Young, Christopher R]
''New Horizons in American Realism''
Flint, MI: Flint Institute of Arts, 1991. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[Edelman, Robert G. "Recycled Landscape: American Contemporary Landscape Painting," ''Art Press'', Paris, March 1991.][Einreinhofer, Nancy. ''Surrealism in America'', Wayne, NJ: William Patterson College, 1988.] In an early ''Art in America'' review, Robert G. Edelman wrote that Drasler "shares with
Magritte the ability to create images that are both convincing and profoundly disorienting";
[Edelman, Robert G. "Greg Drasler at R.C. Erpf," ''Art in America'', October 1987, p. 188.] Jonathan Goodman described his later paintings as enigmatic puzzles meant to be meditated on, as both "visual metaphors for self" and formal statements existing for the sake of psychological mystery.
Drasler has been awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
and grants from the
Pollock-Krasner Foundation,
National Endowment for the Arts and
New York Foundation for the Arts.
[''Artforum'']
"2014 Guggenheim Fellows Announced,"
''Artforum'', April 10, 2014. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[''Artforum'']
"Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards More Than $3 Million in Grants,"
''Artforum'', April 17, 2019. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[Yang, Christina. "Cave Painting," ''Greg Drasler: Cave Paintings'', New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1994.] His work has been shown at the
New Museum,
PS1,
Whitney Museum Stamford,
Artists Space
Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in Soho, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Artist ...
and
Carnegie Museum of Art, and reviewed or featured in ''Art in America'',
[McCarthy, Gerard. Review, ''Art in America'', January 2005.] ''Flash Art'',
[Mahoney, Robert. Review, ''Flash Art'', March–April 1990.] ''New Art Examiner'',
[Liu, Timothy. "Greg Drasler," ''New Art Examiner'', May 2000.] ''The Paris Review'',
[Piepenbring, Dan]
"Road Trip,"
''The Paris Review'', June 15, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2019. and ''The New York Times''.
[Raynor, Vivien]
''The New York Times'', February 21, 1988. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[Zimmer, William]
''The New York Times'', July 2, 2000, Section CN, p. 14. Retrieved October 8, 2019. Drasler lives in
Tribeca, New York City with his wife, artist
Nancy Davidson, and teaches at
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...
.
[Butler, Sharon]
"Studio visit with Greg Drasler,"
''Two Coats of Paint'', June 23, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[Archives of American Art]
"Nancy Davidson papers, 1970s-2016,"
Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
Early life and career
Drasler was born in
Waukegan, Illinois in 1952.
[Hamill, Pete]
''Tools as Art''
New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. Retrieved October 8, 2019. He was influenced in the 1960s by seeing
James Rosenquist's room-spanning ''F-111'', as well as the work of
H. C. Westermann
H. C. Westermann (Horace Clifford "Cliff" Westermann) (December 11, 1922 – November 3, 1981) was an American sculptor and printmaker. His sculptures frequently incorporated traditional carpentry and marquetry techniques. From the late 1950 ...
and
Chicago Imagists such as
Jim Nutt
James T. Nutt (born November 28, 1938) is an American artist who was a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as the Chicago Imagists, or the Hairy Who. Though his work is inspired by the same pop culture that inspired P ...
and
Roger Brown, and studied art at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
[Neal, Patrick]
"Painting Matters Now,"
''Hyperallergic'', April 25, 2013. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[Schufli, Bride]
"Interview with Greg Drasler,"
''Romanov Grave'', April 9, 2012. Retrieved October 8, 2019. In 1978, a fire destroyed all of his possessions and artwork in diverse media, except for two paintings; afterwards, he committed to painting as his medium.
After earning a BFA (1980), he enrolled in the school's Year in Japan Program, which heightened an interest in the relationship between place and identity and encouraged his future use of vernacular imagery.
in 1983 after completing his MFA, Drasler moved to New York City and began exhibiting professionally.
[Sim, Jiyong]
" An Interview with Greg Drasler,"
''Simpl Mag'', June 8, 2019. Retrieved October 8, 2019. In his first decade there, he appeared in two shows curated by
Marcia Tucker
Marcia Tucker (born Marcia Silverman; April 11, 1940 – October 17, 2006)Smith, Roberta ''The New York Times'' (October 19, 2006), Retrieved 23 November 2014. was an American art historian, art critic and curator. In 1977 she founded the New M ...
at the New Museum (the inaugural "On View," 1983; "Other Man: Alternative Views of Masculinity," 1987), as well as group exhibitions at Berggruen Gallery (San Francisco),
Jack Tilton
John Havemeyer Tilton Jr (April 25, 1951 – May 6, 2017) was an American art dealer, based in New York City.
He was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, the son of a father who had studied art at Yale University, designed Christmas cards, and ser ...
and Artists Space (New York), Carnegie Museum of Art, and
Knoxville Museum of Art.
[Tucker, Marcia. "The Other Man: Alternative Representations of Masculinity," i]
''Out of Bounds: The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker''
Lisa Phillips et al. (ed.), Getty Research Institute, 2019. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[Edelman, Robert G. ''The Transformative Vision: Contemporary American Landscape Painting'', The Carnegie Museum of Art, 1989.][Green, Renée. "What's Painting Got to Do with It?" in ''Other Planes of There: Selected Writings'', by Renée Green, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.] Early solo exhibitions took place at the R.C. Erpf (1985–7) and Shea & Beker (1990) galleries in New York and Marianne Deson (1988) and Center for Contemporary Art (1990) in Chicago.
[Artner, Alan G. "Art that pries," ''Chicago Tribune'', November 1, 1990.][Yau, John. ''In the Realm of the Plausible'', New York: Betty Cuningham, 1990.]
In subsequent years, Drasler has had solo exhibitions in New York (
Queens Museum of Art, 1994; Betty Cuningham Gallery, 2007–16), Boston, California, Chicago and Seattle; he has appeared in group shows at the New Museum, PS1, Whitney Museum Stamford, and
Weatherspoon Art Museum, among others.
Drasler has been a member of the Fine Arts faculty at Pratt Institute since 2005, and prior to that, taught at
Montclair State University,
Princeton University,
Hofstra University
Hofstra University is a private university in Hempstead, New York. It is Long Island's largest private university. Hofstra originated in 1935 as an extension of New York University (NYU) under the name Nassau College – Hofstra Memorial of Ne ...
and
Williams College.
[Berger, Joseph]
"An Exhibition for Students Who Lost Art in a Studio Fire,"
''The New York Times'', April 10, 2013. Retrieved October 8, 2019.[Pratt Institute, Fine Arts]
"Greg Drasler."
Faculty. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
Work and reception
Drasler's paintings explore
liminal
Liminal is an English adjective meaning "on the threshold", from Latin ''līmen'', plural ''limina''.
Liminal or Liminality may refer to:
Anthropology and religion
* Liminality, the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle ...
spaces and thresholds between places or states of being (inside and out, here or there, public and private, real and imaginary, object and environment); these include suitcases, bedrooms, automobile interiors, the American highway and roadhouse, and film sets.
He employs strategies of bricolage, recycling and displacement, packing his images with signs, symbols, metaphors, pattern and design, visual puzzles and puns.
[Drier, Deborah. "Interiors," ''Greg Drasler: Cave Paintings'', New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1994.][United States Embassy Brussels]
''ART in Embassies''
United States Department of State, 2010. Retrieved October 8, 2019. These elements convey humor, nostalgia, and a sense of the uncanny in examinations of the self and its relationship to personal space, location, and local culture.
Figurative and "Baggage" paintings (1983–1990)
Drasler's early work focused on home builder and handyman imagery that functioned as an allegory for self-construction.
After moving to New York, he began painting objects that served as human stand-ins and lone figures, often with unexpected props, in forlorn landscapes.
[Zimmer, William]
''The New York Times'', July 19, 1987. Retrieved October 8, 2019. Reviewers described them as hovering between memory and dream, noting in figurative works, such as ''Headlights'' (1986), ''Laocoön'' (1987) or ''Mercury Rising'' (1990), a sense of isolation and visual conceit that sometimes alluded to the miraculous or mythological.
His "Baggage Paintings" (1987–90) depict plush period gear in apparently random but carefully composed states—stacked (''Samson and Delilah''), rifled through (''Customs''), grouped (''Deposed'' or ''Baggage Claim'')—that imply
allegories of identity, luxury and privacy, and toy with conventions of literature and representation, such as the
still life
A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...
, landscape and
Minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
.
Critics such as Robert Berlind describe them as meticulously detailed with "virtuosic, fluid brushwork" emphasizing the play of reflected light and color and a playful style that lulls viewers into a "cheery complicity" often undermined by darker elements.
With ''Samsonite'' (1990)—a wide-open, empty suitcase with fabric lining like rumpled sheets, implying a private, sexual component—Drasler signaled his shift in the next two decades to interiors as sites for exploring subjectivity.
Interiors (1990–2010)
Drasler's "Cave Painting" works
[Greg Drasler website]
"Cave Painting,"
Paintings. Retrieved October 8, 2019. depict intricately constructed, ornate interiors that serve as metaphors for the interior construction of the self and the human relationship to personal, domestic space.
They pair his interests in contemporary
psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psyc ...
[Drasler, Greg. "Painting into a Corner: Representation as Shelter," in ''The Vitality of Objects: Exploring the work of Christopher Bollas'', Joseph Scalia (ed.), London: Continuum Press; Wesleyan Press, 2002.] and home design—architecture, ornament, wallpaper and fabric—in theatrical, film set-like scenes characterized by human absence, visual conundrums, and ''
trompe-l'Å“il'' obfuscation.
[Edelman, Robert G. "The Tranquil Domicile as Grand Illusion," ''Greg Drasler: Cave Paintings'', New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1994.] In formal terms, critics note the work's technical facility, illusionistic
perspective, and effective blend of periods and motifs, noting links to
Vuillard's confined spaces, eighteenth-century idealizations of nature, and the
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
;
in psychological terms, they suggest it draws viewers in voyeuristically, through a dreamlike, vaguely unsettling presence and furtive signs that imply the traces left in vacated rooms or closely guarded secrets.
Drasler created enigmatic, Magritte-like formal and psychological puzzles in paintings such as ''Changing Room'' (1994), whose surreal ''trompe-l'Å“il'' draped sheets, mirror reflections and painted landscape mural camouflage both architecture and purpose.
Robert G. Edelman suggests these paintings slowly reveal "wry and portentous secrets" like
Velázquez's ''
Las Meninas'' or
De Chirico's piazzas, which similarly resist resolution.
In other paintings, such as ''Restless Bedroom'' (1992), Drasler conveys a more animate spirit with enveloping swaths of fabric or nature motifs that blur boundaries between organic and man-made, inside and outside, and figure and ground.
He also introduced suspended common objects (a tomato pincushion in ''Green Room'', 1995; linked hangers in ''Mobile'', 2001) and symbolic wallpaper patterns into his work (a bluebird and birdcage, beehive, and ball and chain in ''Facts of Life'', 1995) that allude to psychosexual dramas to untangle.
[Altieri, Charles. "Reading Polytheogamy," ''Polytheogamy'', Philadelphia: Saturnalia Books, 2009.]
In his "Tattoo Parlor" series, Drasler continued to explore wallpaper patterns (on canvas and as an installation environment), using familiar iconography and playing off the idea of the imprint places leave on their occupants.
[Harris, Andrea. "Jesus Flash for the Walls and the Mind,]
''Greg Drasler: Tattoo Parlor''
Santa Ana, CA: Grand Central Press/California State Fullerton, 2005. Retrieved October 8, 2019. His "Jesus Wallpaper" consisted of straightforward, loosely rendered iconic images of Jesus, which appeared as backgrounds in a series of room paintings (1995–7) of assorted hanging objects (jumper cables in ''Jumping Jesus'', a wallet in ''Profit'', a pencil in ''2B Jesus'').
"Tattoo Parlor" was fully realized—with the paintings hung on hand-painted, Jesus Wallpaper-patterned walls—during his residency at Djerassi Foundation (1996) and in installations at PS1 (the group show "Get Busy", 1997) and California State University at Fullerton (solo show, 2005).
Drasler also employed pattern in his "Hats Paintings" (1988–2012), approaching abstraction in canvasses filled edge-to-edge with seas of anonymous men in subtly shaded fedoras, their faces turned away or hidden beneath the hats.
Road trip and automobile-related works (2006– )
In the 2000s, Drasler's investigations of interior and liminal spaces expanded to include Hollywood illusionism, automobile interiors, and the American
road trip
A road trip, sometimes spelled roadtrip, is a long-distance journey on the road. Typically, road trips are long distances travelled by automobile.
History
First road trips by automobile
The world's first recorded long-distance road trip by t ...
.
[Hodara, Susan]
"At the College of New Rochelle, a Show Meant to Provoke Double Takes,"
''The New York Times'', February 22, 2015. Retrieved October 8, 2019. A tour of the former
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios drew his attention to cutaway automobile props used for filming, which he noted exist as both interior and exterior spaces and as windows to the world.
He employed them in visually enigmatic paintings such as ''Green Screen'' (2006), ''Road Trip'' (2006) and ''Internal Combustion'' (2010), set against backdrops or
green-screens
Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to r ...
; the backgrounds, representing the potential of inexhaustible, to-be-determined locations, extended metaphors regarding the freedom and imaginative capacity offered by the automobile.
With the show "On the Lam" (2011), Drasler examined automobile interiors as sites of independence, seclusion, fantasy, and a cinema-like screening of experience.
He packed the pictorial frames (including the depicted windscreens) of works such as ''On the Lam'' with objects, decorative and Native American patterns (''Rain Dance''), and
Americana travel references.
Reviewers have described these paintings as raucous works of visual wit and poignancy,
nostalgic evocations of 1950s interstate travel, old hand-colored postcards and 1960s concert posters,
and fantastical, inexplicable assemblages that simultaneously recall elements of the work of
Roger Brown, the
Pattern and Decoration movement, and
Philip Pearlstein.
Drasler used his 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship to drive cross-country, gathering ideas that would emerge in his "Road Trip" works. He drew inspiration from the expansive, big-sky vistas of the
Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
and the vernacular architecture of the American
roadhouse.
He reconfigured these inspirations on canvas with
crazy-quilt patterning suggesting both the landscape's vast reach and its man-made division into property.
A key work was the six-panel, 400-inch ''Stratocaster Suite'' (2016), which was displayed in a narrow room so as to unfold for viewers in time like a road-trip landscape or
Muybridge stop-motion sequence.
Collaborative projects
Drasler's allegorical hanging-object paintings of the 1990s were influenced by psychologist
Christopher Bollas
Christopher Bollas (born 1943) is a British psychoanalyst and writer. He is a leading figure in contemporary psychoanalytic theory.
Early life and education
Bollas was born in the United States in Washington, DC. He grew up in Laguna Beach, Ca ...
's concept of the
unthought known
Unthought known is a phrase coined by Christopher Bollas in the 1980s to represent those experiences in some way known to the individual, but about which the individual is unable to think.
At its most compelling, the unthought known stands for th ...
; he contributed an essay, "Painting into a Corner: Representation as Shelter," to the book ''The Vitality of Objects: Exploring the Work of Christopher Bollas'' (2002), edited by Joseph Scalia.
[Scalia, Joseph (ed.). ''The Vitality of Objects: Exploring the work of Christopher Bollas'', London: Continuum Press/ Wesleyan Press, 2002.] He collaborated with poet
Timothy Liu on the book ''Polytheogamy'' (2009), consisting of interleafed images of Drasler's paintings with Liu's poetry.
[Liu, Timothy and Greg Drasler]
''Polytheogamy''
Philadelphia: Saturnalia Books, 2009. Retrieved October 8, 2019. Beginning in 2011, he produced a series of video interviews with Nancy Davidson documenting the lives and work of artists, including
Don Dudley
Don Dudley (born 1930, Los Angeles) is an American artist who has worked on both the West Coast and East Coast of the United States. His early work is associated with the Finish Fetish school in California of the late 1960s as well as with New Yor ...
,
Judith Linhares
Judith Linhares (born 1940) is an American painter, known for her vibrant, expressive figurative and narrative paintings.Pagel, David. ''Judith Linhares: Divine Intoxication'', Orange, CA: Chapman University, 2006.Smith, Roberta''The New York Time ...
,
Thomas Kovachevich
Thomas Kovachevich (born March 11, 1942) is an American contemporary visual artist and physician. Kovachevich's art practice is multi-faceted; exhibitions of paintings, sculptures, installations and performances have represented the lexicon of thi ...
and Matt Freedman, which appear on the website Romanov Grave.
[''Romanov Grave'']
"Grave Videos."
Retrieved October 8, 2019.[''Romanov Grave'']
"Matt Freedman,"
Grave Videos. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
Awards and public collections
Drasler has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014), a Helen L. Bing Fellowship (1996), and grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2019), National Endowment for the Arts (1993), and New York Foundation for the Arts (1991), among others.
He has also received artist residencies from
Djerassi (1996) and the
MacDowell Colony (1986).
[Drasler, Greg. ''Greg Drasler: Road Trip'', New York: Betty Cuningham, 2016.] His work belongs to several public art collections, including those of the New Museum,
Krannert Art Museum
The Krannert Art Museum (KAM) is a fine art museum located at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Illinois, United States. It has of space devoted to all periods of art, dating from ancient Egypt to contemporary photogra ...
,
Fisher Landau Center
The Fisher Landau Center for Art is a private foundation located in Long Island City, in Queens, New York City, United States. It offered regular exhibitions of contemporary art, open to the public from 12 to 5pm, Thursdays through Mondays, until ...
, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and
Dow Jones & Company
Dow Jones & Company, Inc. is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp and led by CEO Almar Latour.
The company publishes ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Barron's'', ''MarketWatch'', ''Mansion Global'', ''Financial News'' and ''Private Equ ...
.
[Krannert Art Museum]
"Greg Drasler,"
Collection. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
References
External links
Greg Drasler official websiteGreg Drasler
Guggenheim Fellow page
Greg Drasler
faculty page, Pratt Institute, Fine Arts
''Two Coats of Paint''
Interview with Greg Drasler
''Romanov Grave''
Greg Drasler
artist page, Betty Cuningham Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drasler, Greg
21st-century American painters
21st-century American male artists
20th-century American painters
Painters from New York City
Artists from Illinois
University of Illinois College of Fine and Applied Arts alumni
American art educators
People from Waukegan, Illinois
1952 births
Living people
20th-century American male artists