Greg Colson
Encyclopedia
Greg Colson is an American
artist best known for wall sculptures constructed of salvaged materials. Colson has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Sperone Westwater (New York), William Griffin Gallery (Santa Monica), Galleria Cardi (Milan), Kunsthalle Lophem (Bruges, Belgium), Konrad Fischer (Düsseldorf), and the Lannan Museum (Lake Worth, Florida). Colson’s work is in many public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art
(New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art
(Los Angeles), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
(DC), the Panza Collection (Lugano, Switzerland), Sammlung Rosenkranz (Berlin), and the Moderna Museet
(Stockholm).
(1956) and grew up in Bakersfield, California
with his parents and two brothers Jeff and Doug. 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 severe industrial environment of the Bakersfield 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. As a student at California State University Bakersfield, Colson was moved by the frustrated meaning he found in the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Bruce Nauman
, Ed Ruscha, John McCracken
, Kazimir Malevich
, and R. Crumb. He later earned an M.F.A. at Claremont Graduate School. He works and lives in Venice, California with his wife Dinah Kirgo.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist best known for wall sculptures constructed of salvaged materials. Colson has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Sperone Westwater (New York), William Griffin Gallery (Santa Monica), Galleria Cardi (Milan), Kunsthalle Lophem (Bruges, Belgium), Konrad Fischer (Düsseldorf), and the Lannan Museum (Lake Worth, Florida). Colson’s work is in many public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
(New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
(New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
(Los Angeles), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
(DC), the Panza Collection (Lugano, Switzerland), Sammlung Rosenkranz (Berlin), and the Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet
Moderna museet, the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, that was first opened in 1958. Its first manager was Pontus Hultén...
(Stockholm).
Background
Colson was born in Seattle, WashingtonSeattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
(1956) and grew up in Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield is a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California. It is roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, to the north and south respectively....
with his parents and two brothers Jeff and Doug. 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 severe industrial environment of the Bakersfield 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. As a student at California State University Bakersfield, Colson was moved by the frustrated meaning he found in the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
, Ed Ruscha, John McCracken
John McCracken
John Harvey McCracken was a contemporary artist who lived and worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico and New York.- Education/teaching :...
, Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...
, and R. Crumb. He later earned an M.F.A. at Claremont Graduate School. He works and lives in Venice, California with his wife Dinah Kirgo.
Work
Among Colson’s body of work is a series of “stick maps” of cities such as Cleveland, San Jose and Baton Rouge. These sculptures are built of found lengths of various materials; ski poles, curtain rods, plastic plumbing pipe, wood molding – the structure becoming a metaphor for the manifold influences on a city. In another series of constructed “pie chart” paintings (based on socio-cultural surveys), Colson mocks the deluge of analysis that is so much a part of our daily existence by playing up the material and iconographic elements to such a degree that any actual understanding is subverted. Roberta Smith put it like this in her early New York Times review: “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".Selected Collections
- Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
- Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
- Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA
- http://www.metmuseum.org/search/iquery.asp?command=text&attr1=Colson&attr2=undefined&v0=Greg+Colson&gs=sitemap+taxonomy%2F%2F0%2F%2F1&vid=%24__visitId__%24&g=sitemap+taxonomy&i=sitemap+id&qid=%24__queryId__%24&s1=iphrase+relevance%2F%2F0&s0=sortOrder%2F%2F0&tq=1&q=10&as=1&r=sitemap+taxonomy%2F%2F2%2F%2F3&qtid=%24__queryId__%24&t=0&ia=1&qt=1284765366&render=1&w=0&datascope=&dataStore=0&text=&c=t%3A11%2F%2F%3Assl%2F%2Fsitemap+taxonomy%2F%2F%3AWorks+of+Art%3AMetropolitan 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
Monographs
- Greg Colson, Galleria Cardi, Milan. Essay by Robert Evren, 2001
- Greg Colson, Whale and Star Press. Texts by Pontus HultenPontus HulténKarl Gunnar Vougt Pontus Hultén was a Swedish art collector and museum director. Pontus Hultén is regarded as one of the most distinguished museum professionals of the twentieth century...
and Peter Wegner, 1999 - Greg Colson, Lannan Museum, Lake Worth, FL. Essay by Bonnie ClearwaterBonnie ClearwaterBonnie Clearwater is an American writer and art historian. She is the director and chief curator of Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and has a particular interest in the work of Mark Rothko....
, 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 SachsTom SachsTom Sachs may refer to:*Tom Sachs *Tom Sachs , movie producer, credits include The Lady Vanishes and The Horror of Frankenstein...
, 2000 - Mapping, Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York. Essay by Robert StorrRobert Storr-Education:Robert Storr received his B.A. in History and French from Swarthmore College in 1972, and earned an M.F.A. in Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.-Career:...
, 1994 - Panza: The Legacy of a Collector, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Texts by Kenneth Baker, Cornelia H. Butler, Rebecca Morse and Giuseppe PanzaGiuseppe PanzaGiuseppe Panza was one of the world's most prominent collectors of modern art.. He lived in Milan and Varese, Italy.-Life and work:...
, 1999 - Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector, Abbeville Press, New York. By Giuseppe PanzaGiuseppe PanzaGiuseppe Panza was one of the world's most prominent collectors of modern art.. He lived in Milan and Varese, Italy.-Life and work:...
, 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 HultenPontus HulténKarl Gunnar Vougt Pontus Hultén was a Swedish art collector and museum director. Pontus Hultén is regarded as one of the most distinguished museum professionals of the twentieth century...
, 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
- 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. “Greg Colson-review.” The New York Times, January 12, 1990, p. C27
- Jerry SaltzJerry SaltzJerry Saltz is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and a columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, Saltz has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism three times. He was the sole advisor for the 1995 Whitney...
. “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