Cris Gianakos
Artist Statement:
I am a sculptor, painter, photographer, student, teacher, designer. I think of my studio work and my collaborative installations as separate parts of my practice but regard everything as interrelated. It is difficult to specifically trace the origins of my creative practice. I have always been a very good athlete, requiring discipline and stamina, pre-requisites for a sculptor. My work is influenced by the boundaries, parameters, geometry and intuitive thinking of ice hockey and squash. Two cultures inspired me: contemporary architecture, art and design in the American; the ancient world and its art in the Greek. Ancient sites particularly gave the perfect handle for my site-specific works and interventions, which always involve projecting an aura. Influenced by architecture and archeology, which led me to my indoor/outdoor site-specific installations, I am inspired by architecture but am neither an architect nor an engineer. Intuitively I know how to put things together and make art.
Artist Biography:
Cris Gianakos (b. 1934 in New York, NY, lives in New York and Chania, Crete, Greece) Since the 1960s he has had a strong presence in the American avant-garde, and his work has been exhibited and reviewed globally and is in numerous museums and collections throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Moderna Museet (Stockholm) and EMST (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens). Gianakos’ work moves freely between different mediums, with his sculpture, installations and two-dimensional work (drawing, painting, prints and photography) engaging in a continual dialogue. In the late 1970s, he began making small and large-scale ramps, known as “Rampworks”, as a solution to the problem of organizing forms in space. These post-minimalist works, showing his fascination with transforming industrial building materials into works of art, contrasted or reinforced the existing character of the surrounding space, fusing a work with a site.
AAA:
Member Since: 2018
Committees: Exhibition 2023-present
