Gregory Coates (born March 5, 1961) is an African-American artist known for working in the realm of social abstraction. Coates also works in three-dimensional formats including wall sculpture, sculpture in the round,
installation art
Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...
, and
public sculpture
Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically access ...
, and less frequently in
video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
and
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
.
Early life and education
Gregory Coates was born in
Washington, D.C.
)
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, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, on March 5, 1961. He grew up in the Carver Langston Neighborhood in the North East part of the district. Coates, the oldest of eight children, grew up in a working class household where his mother and father worked to support him, his six sisters and brother. .
Gregory Coates attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., from 1980 to 1982 and later the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture 1990.
Career
During the mid 1980s Coates moved his art studio to Düsseldorf, Germany. While in Germany Coates experienced events leading up the fall of the
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...
and the impact of those changes. Upon returning from Europe, Coates began living in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a Neighborhoods in Brooklyn, neighborhood in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn, bordered by Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Greenpoint to the north; Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Bedford–Stuyvesant to the s ...
.
Coates met artist Al Loving during the late 1980s, through his (now) wife Kiki Nienaber. He was working primarily as a figurative painter and Loving encouraged Coates to extend his practice into assemblage. Coates credits this as a breakthrough that allowed him to embrace the physical aspect of painting and to mature as an artist.
Then during the late 1990s Coates took an artist residency in
Cape Town, South Africa
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislature, legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the sec ...
. In 1996 Coates experienced aftermath of the official end of
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
and encountered extreme poverty, which resulted in another shift in his work via the use of repurposed materials. He saw this as a moral imperative in response the gross wastefulness of industrialized societies and the economic inequities he witnessed while living in Cape Town. As a result, Coates began using almost exclusively,
recycled materials
Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the p ...
to create his work. Materials used included feathers, bike tubes, cardboard, crumpled papers, dirt, vinyl records, and the heads of push brooms, which he pairs with provocative titles to address topics such as the problematics of
Cold-War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of Geopolitics, geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term ''Cold war (term), co ...
politics, poverty, racism, domestic labor, and Black aesthetics.
Collections
*
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in December 2003 and opened its permanent home in ...
*
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
*
Georgia Museum of Art
The Georgia Museum of Art is an art museum in Athens, Georgia, United States, associated with the University of Georgia (UGA). The museum is both an academic museum and, since 1982, the official art museum of the state of Georgia. The permanent co ...
*
The Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...
*
Kamigamo Shrine
is an important Shinto sanctuary on the banks of the Kamo River in north Kyoto, first founded in 678. Its formal name is the .
It is one of the oldest Shinto shrines in Japan and is one of the seventeen Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which ...
in
Kyoto, Japan
Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the city ...
.
A large commissioned work by Coates is installed at the
Pennsylvania Convention Center
The Pennsylvania Convention Center is a multi-use public facility in the Market East, Philadelphia, Market East section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, designed to accommodate conventions, exhibitions, conferences and other events. The "L"-shaped ...
(Extension) in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
.
Coates did a residency and installation in Verbier 3-D Foundation in Verbier, Switzerland in February, 2011, in a series called "Go Tell It on the Mountain: Towards a New Monumentalism."
Awards
Awards that he has received includes the "
Joan Mitchell Foundation
Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...