Steve Gianakos

STEVE GIANAKOS

Whatever Tickles Your Fancy:

Works from the 70’s to the Present

December 1, 2000 through January 19, 2002

Fredericks Freiser Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Steve Gianakos. Since 1969, the artist has shown extensively in the United States and abroad. Among his numerous one-person exhibitions in New York are Fischbach Gallery in 1969, The Clocktower and the Institute for Art and Urban Resources in 1974, Barbara Gladstone Gallery in 1983, and Barbara Toll Gallery, which represented the artist from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. This will be the artist’s 24th solo exhibition and his first in New York since 1994.

Steve Gianakos has been playing vulgarity and offensive humor against sophistication in his paintings and drawings for over 30 years. Using mostly old, non-specific cartoon graphics, rendered through a mechanical process, Gianakos portrays the human condition as an absurd interplay of sexuality and psychological fragmentation. From his deceptively simple nursery-rhyme drawings from the 70’s to his more recent collages on distressed paper, he creates images that are lewd and silly, fantastical and frank.

In his works from the 70’s and 80’s, Gianakos appears to be unintimidating. Elegant compositional refinement becomes the device upon which he hangs his frighteningly witty observations. In his more recent collages, something less polite is going on. Though his skillful handling of humor is a constant in these works, it cuts with a double edge-- ridiculing the (mostly female) subjects while indicting the creator. In fact, part of the surprise of these works is that an artistic treatment and formal elegance is given to such images. In Her Parents Were Enthusiastic When She Told Them, an octopus penetrates a young women, who appears to be more elephant than human. The woman unenthusiastically raises her skirt in compliance.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information and/or photographs please contact the gallery by telephone at (212) 633-6555, fax at (212) 367-9502 or e-mail at fredericksgal@mindspring.com.