Steve Gianakos
Pleased to meet you #4, 2017
Semiose éditions
Text by Alexis Vaillant and conversation between Steve Gianakos and Amélie Lavin
'To present the artist as a rock star' this phrase perfectly captures the ambition of this deluxe fanzine and might well have been coined specifically for the New York artist Steve Gianajos, whose natural nonchalance and taste for the depraved have lent him the exalted status of harbinger of the dark side of Pop Art. The artist's unconscious, plugged live into his reservoir of images has succeeded in blowing all the fuses of puritan America with its 10,000 volts of desire. Girls, girls, girls, but as well as the odd beaver and penguin are what make the world go round for this eternal Greek adolescent, whose humor and cruel acuity spare no turpitude.
This dense portfolio reviews forty years of painting, loaded with the artist's indefatigable fantasies of the flesh.
'Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name : Steve Gianakos.'
Steve Gianakos
A face in profile depicted as a safety pin, a head in high-heels, a snake in a pair of underpants ! The New York artist (b.1938) Steve Gianakos' drawings, collages and acrylics could easily be seen as proverbs, with their trivial truths distilled through a few dark lines. His naïve style in the vein of vintage comics and children?s books depicts mini scenes ranging from the obscene to the cruel, inhabited by cannibal pin-ups and little girls lifting their skirts. The American art establishment, with its morals and metaphysical ambitions takes a slap on the backside; the same treatment is also reserved for the American Dream. Gianakos is a major figure of American Pop Art and his work is included in the collections of the MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum in New York. He is represented in France by Semiose Gallery.