Greg Colson (born April 23, 1956) is an American artist best known for works that straddle the line between painting and sculpture that address concepts of efficiency and order. Using scavenged materials, Colson allows the physicality of his makeshift constructions to intrude on the precise systems he paints or draws upon their surfaces - striking a balance between subject and context, image and support, order and chaos.
Biography
Colson was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in
Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's popula ...
, in the nearby suburb of
Oildale
Oildale is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kern County, California, United States. Oildale is located north-northwest of downtown Bakersfield, at an elevation of . The population was 32,684 at the 2010 census, up from 27,885 at the 2000 cens ...
with his parents and two brothers Doug and
Jeff
Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form ( hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson or Jeffrey, which comes from a medieval variant of Geoffrey.
Music
* DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ/turntablist record producer Jeffrey Allen Townes ...
, who is also an artist. His father Lewis Colson was a social worker but was also a skilled mechanic and inventive with makeshift repairs and adapting materials to new uses – which inspired his son's appreciation of the ordinary and the rejected. The industrial environment of the Bakersfield/Oildale area, and its accompanying attitudes and outlook, also affected Colson – particularly in its contrast to the large urban/cultural centers he would later inhabit as an artist.
He received his BA from
California State University Bakersfield where he studied with George Ketterl, Ted Kerzie, Michael Heively, and visiting artists
John McCracken,
Joe Goode,
Ed Ruscha,
James Turrell
James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. Much of Turrell's career has been devoted to a still-unfinished work, ''Roden Crater'', a natural cinder cone crater located outside ...
, and
Ed Moses. From 1978-80 he attended
Claremont Graduate School
The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges which includes five undergraduate (Pomona College, Claremont McKenna Col ...
, studying with Tom Wudl, Michael Brewster, and Roland Reiss and earned his MFA. During the 1980s he apprenticed for artists
Vija Celmins, Ruscha, and Wudl. In 1987 he had his first solo exhibition with Angles Gallery. Colson currently works and lives in Venice, California with his wife, writer Dinah Kirgo.
Works
Colson's diagrams and maps speak to the detached, abstract quality of much human analysis, at the same time smuggling social critique into each work.
Roberta Smith of ''
The New York Times'' described Colson's 1990 debut exhibition at
Sperone Westwater Gallery: "In nearly all of Mr. Colson's works, the combination of modesty and grandiosity, of mental exactness and physical imprecision adds up to an odd, sad beauty. Elliptical as they are, his pieces often seem to scrutinize the conflict between the active center and deserted margins of industrialized society."
Colson's series of ‘Stick Maps’ of cities such as Cleveland, San Jose, and Baton Rouge are built of found lengths of assorted materials; ski poles, curtain rods, plastic pipe, wood molding – the structure becoming a metaphor for the manifold influences on a city. His constructed ‘Pie Chart’ paintings based on socio-cultural surveys, mock analysis. Colson's 'Elliptical Models' paintings incorporate, the ordinary and the profound and suggest preposterous hierarchies using the formal through-line of the circle. Sharon Mizota, in her ''
Los Angeles Times'' review of Colson's 2010 exhibition at William Griffin Gallery (now Kayne Griffin Corcoran), characterized these works as "grand and hilarious testaments to the leveling effect of data overload. "One
ieceincludes concentric circles depicting ‘5 Steps to Happiness,’ ‘Flea Life Cycle,’ ‘The Cycle of Addiction,’ and for good measure, a flange gasket. The piece levels the distinctions between these wide-ranging phenomena in an absurdly uninformative information graphic."
More recently, Colson has designed and created large-scale outdoor sculptures.
Exhibitions
Colson has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Sperone Westwater (New York),
Patrick Painter Inc. (Los Angeles),
Galerie Konrad Fischer
The Galerie Konrad Fischer is a German contemporary art gallery. It was founded in 1967 by Dorothee and Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf, in a disused alley in the center of the city. Its first exhibition presented the work of Carl Andre to European a ...
(Düsseldorf), Gian Enzo Sperone (Rome), Galleria Cardi (Milan), Kunsthalle Lophem (Bruges, Belgium),
Baldwin Gallery
The Baldwin Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Aspen, Colorado established by Richard Edwards in 1994. The gallery features a variety of mainly American but also international contemporary artists and works including painting, drawing, sculpt ...
(Aspen),
Krannert Art Museum (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and the Lannan Museum (Lake Worth, Florida). Colson's work is in many public collections, including the
Whitney Museum of American Art (New York),
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York),
Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles),
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.),
Panza Collection (Varese, Italy), Sammlung Rosenkranz (Berlin), and
Moderna Museet (Stockholm).
Selected collections
Greg Colson's work is included in collections at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Krannert Art Museum, Urbana-Champaignm Illinois; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; New York Public Library, New York, NY;
Panza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland; Sammlung Rosenkranz, Berlin, Germany; Tsaritsino Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; UBS Art Collection, Zurich, Switzerland;
Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
References
Selected bibliography
Monographs
* Greg Colson, Galleria Cardi, Milan. Essay by Robert Evren, 2001
* Greg Colson, Whale and Star Press. Texts by
Pontus Hulten
Pontus or Pontos may refer to:
* Short Latin name for the Pontus Euxinus, the Greek name for the Black Sea (aka the Euxine sea)
* Pontus (mythology), a sea god in Greek mythology
* Pontus (region), on the southern coast of the Black Sea, in modern ...
and Peter Wegner, 1999
* Greg Colson, Lannan Museum, Lake Worth, FL. Essay by
Bonnie Clearwater, 1988
* Greg Colson: The Architecture of Distraction, Griffin Editions, Los Angeles. Interview with Genevieve Devitt, 2006
* Greg Colson: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois. Essay by David Pagel, 1996
Selected books and catalogues
* American Bricolage, Sperone Westwater, New York. Todd Alden, David Leiber and
Tom Sachs, 2000
* Mapping,
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...
, New York. Essay by
Robert Storr, 1994
* Panza: The Legacy of a Collector, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Texts by Kenneth Baker, Cornelia H. Butler, Rebecca Morse and
Giuseppe Panza
Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (23 March 1923 – 24 April 2010) was a collector of modern art. He lived in Milan and Varese, Italy.
Life and work
Giuseppe Panza was born on March 23, 1923, in Milan. His father, Ernesto, was a wine distributor who i ...
, 1999
* Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector, Abbeville Press, New York. By
Giuseppe Panza
Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (23 March 1923 – 24 April 2010) was a collector of modern art. He lived in Milan and Varese, Italy.
Life and work
Giuseppe Panza was born on March 23, 1923, in Milan. His father, Ernesto, was a wine distributor who i ...
, 2007
* Gian Enzo Sperone: Torino, Roma, New York, Hopefulmonster Editore, Turin. Texts by Anna Minola, Maria Cristina Mundici, Francesco Poli, Maria Teresa Roberto, 2000
* Sammlung Rosenkranz im Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany. Texts by Sabine Fehlemann, Peter Frank,
Pontus Hulten
Pontus or Pontos may refer to:
* Short Latin name for the Pontus Euxinus, the Greek name for the Black Sea (aka the Euxine sea)
* Pontus (mythology), a sea god in Greek mythology
* Pontus (region), on the southern coast of the Black Sea, in modern ...
, 2002
Selected articles
* Maartje Den Breejen. "Intentie en Ongeluk-Als het Leven Zelf." Het PAROOL (Amsterdam), September 6, 2002, p. 11
* David Hunt. "Spotlight: Greg Colson." Flash Art, November–December 1998, p. 105
* Ken Johnson
“Greg Colson-review.”The New York Times, February 16, 2001, p. B37
* George Melrod
“Greg Colson at Sperone Westwater.”Art in America, September 1994, p. 112
* Sharon Mizota. "Art review: Greg Colson at Griffin." Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2010
* Sally O'Reilly. "Greg Colson at Sprovieri." Time Out (London), January 16, 2002, p. 48
* Tibby Rothman
“Beyond the Image – Interview with Greg Colson”Venice Paper, October 2006
* John Russell
The New York Times, January 12, 1990, p. C27
*
Jerry Saltz. "Greg Colson: Liberating Materials From Materiality." Flash Art, May–June 1990, p. 150
* Roberta Smith
“These Are the Faces to Watch.”The New York Times, January 5, 1990, p. C21
External links
Official WebsiteGreg Colson at the WhitneyGreg Colson at MOCAGreg Colson at the Hirshhorn
{{DEFAULTSORT:Colson, Greg
1956 births
Living people
American contemporary painters
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
Postmodern artists
Painters from California
Artists from Seattle
Art in Greater Los Angeles
Painters from Washington (state)
Claremont Graduate University alumni
20th-century American sculptors
American male sculptors
20th-century American printmakers
Sculptors from California
Sculptors from Washington (state)
20th-century American male artists