Exploring the Boundaries of Abstraction in James Greco's Transformative Art
Written by Michael Klein, Owner & Director
Michael Klein is best known for his work and achievements in the field of contemporary art. As both a dealer and curator, he has had a long and distinguished career as a New York gallery owner and director, representing an international roster of emerging and mid-career artists. He became the first in-house curator for Microsoft Corp.
An invitation to make a studio visit to Brooklyn a few years ago introduced me to the work of James Greco. During our first visit, I was immediately struck by his dynamic abstract paintings. Each held a certain character and power akin to Abstract Expressionist works, such as those by Kline or Hartigan, but on a more moderate, I’d even call it domestic, scale. I thought more about them and included one in an exhibition I was then planning, City Lives in 2015. Focused on artists working and living in New York City, and how the city itself, its buildings, traffic, harbor, or citizens, somehow influenced their work, I wrote in the brochure accompanying the show: Greco sees his paintings as ‘portraits of abstraction.’ As such, he distances himself from the notion of abstract painting as a reckless wandering in search of results. For him, the field is less an arena and more a platform for visual ideas and reactions to his working and living environment.
Over the course of other visits, I saw more and more paintings, works on paper, and sculpture. He is a force of nature, a creative energy that I find remarkably impressive, a master with an aesthetic appetite that is always in pursuit of new ideas and new solutions. Now moved to a larger studio on Long Island, he is even more fearless in his adventurous spirit of both images and installations, which I call tableaux. For the tableaux, he can combine two-dimensional works on canvas or paper with three-dimensional objects, improvised or found, or both. By definition, a tableau is “a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history.” Greco is making those stories here with his installations.
His work continues to evolve from his living and working environment, taking from everyday materials, so it is not surprising that when discussing his art with him, he draws on his interest in and familiarity with two European traditions. The first is Arte Povera, an Italian art movement of the '60s, and in particular, he is a follower of Jannis Kounellis. Next is the Neo-Expressionist school of the '80s, and here the works of Sigmar Polke. Both these artists are renowned for their highly individual points of view and aesthetic inventions, pooling the imagination for ideas and relying heavily on the everyday as the subject of their works. His box of materials comes from the street, whatever he finds, uncovers, and uses, whether it is paper, cardboard, found wood scraps, metal, or even the branch of a tree. In a stunning sculpture, Greco makes use of a branch, vertically presented and installed on a ceremonial cart titled A Drawing for Rick Owens. Owens, a radical American fashion designer based in Paris, is as individualistic as the branch. The branch is a persona on a float, being paraded on the street like one of his runway models: thin, silent, and captivating.
Nature appears again in Wind Drawing, where the branch is part of a wall installation consisting of a large triptych of dark painted works on paper and small electric lights. It is as if he has deconstructed into parts the imagery of a stormy day observed.
The tree/branch theme continues in another recent installation of three parts. Here, the branches are staged like props or actors, each holding an object: a wooden chair, tires, and a short aluminum ladder placed at the top of the branch. Perched, as it is titled, the artist’s studio is the topic. Nature, here, is simply another tool or element in the process of creating a room-sized installation, a three-dimensional poetic conjunction of the everyday.
All under the rubric of abstraction, but everything comes from the everyday world, so the imagery and objects are always familiar. And from the familiar, he takes the works so that we are looking at something different, unique, and specifically Greco in style and manner. Today’s contemporary art world seems conservatively divided between painters and sculptors, but Greco is both and stands out as a result because of his radical independence and commitment to his personal viewpoint.
Back in the studio, Greco can spend hours absorbed in a series of still-life paintings, richly colored canvases in a highly painterly style reminiscent of the American modernist Marsden Hartley, and then turn his attention to sculpture. The subject remains the same, but now he sees it in three dimensions, creating a cut-out assemblage of wood parts left unpainted, but another kind of still life. The subject is the plant, painted or built; it is the model to which Greco turns, and using this model, he imagines what it could be as a work of art, be it painted, sculpted, or both.
Another recent work is part of his humanist campaign: Gatekeeper. What appears to be the fragment of a modern mannequin, the head, is now lodged between two painted panels. It is truly a simple gate, monitored by this watchful presence. It is at once magical, mysterious, and haunting. It is a subtle reminder of our mortality when, in the end, we all will meet the gatekeeper. It is this and other observations presented here that make Greco stand out in a very crowded, somewhat noisy arena of contemporary art.
His dexterity, his ability to transform the ordinary, the commonplace into something to pay attention to, is key to his intuition and his talent for making and inventing new, thought-provoking works on a room-sized scale.
Read more from Michael Klein
Michael Klein, Owner & Director
Michael Klein's expertise lies in his role as a private art dealer and freelance, independent curator for individuals, institutions, and arts organizations. Today, Michael Klein Arts works with a diverse group of artists, estates, galleries, and non-profit institutions, providing management, curatorial, and other consulting services. At the same time, the company serves institutional as well as private collectors, focusing on developing collections of emerging, mid-career, and established artists. The company also organizes traveling exhibitions both in the United States and abroad.
