Leo Koenig, Inc.
545 West 23rd Street, 212-334-9255
Chelsea
August 7 - October 14, 2006
Reception: Monday, August 7, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
For this exhibition, Bogin continues his examination of the evermore porous boundaries between painting and sculpture. Greg Bogin’s work is informed by the mundane and the ordinary that surrounds us, and infiltrates our subconscious, even without our knowledge. Truck logos, supermarket signage, IKEA catalogues and highway markers are all sifted through and distilled onto shimmering jewel-like surfaces. Emblematic, and vaguely familiar, Bogin creates from the everyday detritus of our collective peripheral vision, the inverse of the commonplace.
Greg Bogin has been keenly decoding our ubiquitous stimulae for several years now. In this new grouping of works, we see the progression of an artist technique to articulate and expand on an idea, that in lesser hands, could have become rote. Previously working with silk-screening on canvas, Bogin now uses automotive lacquer to make his paintings. Initially experimenting with the lacquer to achieve a more subtle gradation of color, that the silk-screening prohibited, Bogin instantly took to the new medium, preferring its directness and the luminous quality of the surfaces.
As always, Bogin’s titles relate a deadpan humor, that currently chronicles his interest in the optimism of science fiction series, such as Star Trek. Embedded metal flake obviously evokes ideas of hotrods and visions of warp speeds, but the static paintings in odd, component-like shapes, allow for an easy, symbiotic dialogue with his sculpture, evoking a cooler form of covetousness. A contemplative, visionary desire emerges…, pondering the questions that besieged Buckminster Fuller his entire career, as to why there are so many triangles in the future.
The exhibition “Greetings Earthlings” will be accompanied by a 74-page color monograph by the same title, published by Leo Koenig Inc.
Greg Bogin has shown extensively in the US and in Europe. Most recently, he has exhibited at Starmach Gallery in Krakow, Poland and Galerie Jablonka in Cologne, Germany. Greg Bogin lives and works in New York City.