Greg Colson

Greg Colson
Born	Greg Colson (1956-04-23) April 23, 1956 Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Nationality	American
Known for	Painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography
Movement	Assemblage, conceptual art, arte povera

Greg Colson (born 1956, Seattle) is an American artist best known for works that straddle the line between painting and sculpture, while implying a skepticism towards established concepts of order and efficiency.  Using scavenged materials, Colson allows the physicality of his makeshift constructions to intrude on the precise systems he paints or draws upon their surfaces – striking a balance between subject and context, image and support, intention and accident. “Distraction is an important part of my art,” says the artist.  “It’s the condition of our lives in the information age, where the trivial and significant are put on an equal footing.”

Biography

Greg Colson was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in the Oildale section of Bakersfield, California with his parents and two brothers Doug and Jeff, who is also an artist.  His father Lewis Colson was a social worker but also a skilled mechanic and inventive with improvised repairs and adapting materials to new uses, which inspired his son’s appreciation of the ordinary and the rejected. The industrial environment of the Bakersfield/Oildale 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.

Colson received his B.A. from California State University Bakersfield where he studied with George Ketterl, Ted Kerzie, Michael Heivly, and visiting artists John McCracken, Joe Goode, Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, and Ed Moses.  From 1978-80 he attended Claremont Graduate University, studying with Tom Wudl, Michael Brewster, and Roland Reiss and earned his M.F.A.  During the 1980s he supported himself by working as an apprentice for artists Vija Celmins, Ruscha, and Wudl.  In 1987 he had his first solo exhibition with Angles Gallery.  Colson works and lives in Venice, California with his wife, writer Dinah Kirgo.

Works

The diagrams and maps that Colson deploys in his art speak to the detached, abstract quality of much human analysis, while smuggling social critique into each work. Roberta Smith, in her The New York Times review, described Colson’s 1990 debut exhibition at Sperone Westwater Gallery: “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."

Among Colson’s body of work is a series of ‘Stick Maps’ of cities such as “Cleveland’ (1991), “San Jose” (2001), and “Baton Rouge” (1988).  These sculptures are built of found lengths of various materials; ski poles, curtain rods, metal pipe, wood moulding – the structure becoming a metaphor for the manifold influences on a city.  In his catalogue essay for the “Mapping” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, curator Robert Storr wrote: “The maps of Californian Greg Colson derive their character from the aesthetic convergence of the strip and the scrap.  The strip is the dominant axis of the U.S. car-dependent metropolis, and should be used as a collective rather than a singular noun, since the more they mushroom outward, the more intricately our cities are criss-crossed by such matrices.  The scrap is the antithesis of the strip: it is an absolutely particular thing, the discard people traveling and consuming at high speed have no further use for.  Colson’s ‘Portland’ is an engagingly makeshift template of a streamlined world.”

In his constructed ‘Pie Chart’ paintings based on socio-cultural surveys, Colson parodies our obsession with efficiency, data, and analysis – which are typically seen in the sleek, nonmaterial setting of the computer screen.  Colson’s pie chart titles have included subjects such as “Workplace Perks” (2004), “Unfriending” (2011), and “Top Concerns of Midterm Voters” (2023).  HYPERALLERGIC art critic John Yau characterized Colson’s 2023 exhibition at The National Arts Club: “Rendered in a straightforward, documentary style, complete with graphic signs and changing typefaces, Colson’s pie charts can be funny, perverse, and unsettling, all while inducing alternating waves of laughter and despair.  Looking at “Leading British Phobias” (2011), viewers learn that a large percentage of the British populace has a phobia about “spiders,” “clowns,” and “needles.”  Among the other fears cited, Colson lists “dentistry, driving, and heights.”  Taken together, these sound like the key ingredients to an Alfred Hitchcock film.”

Other bodies of work include his ‘Directional’ sculptures, ‘Solar System Models,’ and ‘Aggregate’ paintings.  More recently, Colson has designed and created large scale site-specific sculptures and outdoor installations, including “Composite Fence,” “Action and Counteraction,” and “Bern (for Robert Walser).”

Exhibitions

Greg Colson’s art has been the subject of over 40 solo exhibitions internationally, including Sperone Westwater Gallery (New York), Craig Krull Gallery (Santa Monica, CA.), Konrad Fischer Galerie (Dusseldorf), Cardi Gallery (Milan), Gian Enzo Sperone (Rome), Thomas Park Gallery (Seoul), Baldwin Gallery (Aspen, CO.), William Griffin Gallery (Los Angeles),  Kunsthalle Lophem (Bruges, Belgium), Krannert Art Museum (Urbana-Champaign, IL.), and the Lannan Museum (Lake Worth, FL.).

Selected collections

Colson’s work is in collections throughout the United States and Europe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Panza Collection (Varese, Italy), Sammlung Rosenkranz (Berlin), and Moderna Museet (Stockholm).

Selected bibliography

Monographs

• Greg Colson: 14 Day Juice Challenge. Interview with Nina Holland. Little Steidl, Gottingen, Germany, 2022.
• Greg Colson: Paintings, Wallworks, Pie Charts. W.L. Griffin Editions, Santa Monica, CA., 2010
• Greg Colson: The Architecture of Distraction. Interview with Genevieve Devitt. W. L. Griffin Editions, Santa Monica, CA., 2006. Exhibition catalog
• Greg Colson. Essay by Robert Evren. Cardi Gallery, Milan, 2001
• Greg Colson. Forward by Pontus Hulten. Interview with Peter Wegner. Whale and Star Press, Venice, CA., 1999
• Greg Colson: Krannert Art Museum. Essay by David Pagel. University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, 1996. Exhibition catalog
• Greg Colson: Lannan Museum. Essay by Bonnie Clearwater. Lannan Foundation, Lake Worth, FL., 1988. Exhibition catalog

Selected books and catalogues

• American Bricolage, Sperone Westwater, New York. Todd Alden, David Leiber and Tom Sachs, 2000
• Mapping, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Essay by Robert Storr, 1994
• Panza: The Legacy of a Collector, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Texts by Kenneth Baker, Cornelia H. Butler, Rebecca Morse and Giuseppe Panza, 1999
• Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector, Abbeville Press, New York. By Giuseppe Panza, 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 Hulten, 2002

Selected articles

• Greg Colson in HYPERALLERGIC, Seeing Ourselves in Greg Colson’s Quirky Pie Chart Paintings by John Yau, January 25, 2023.
• Greg Colson in HYPERALLERGIC, Ways of Traveling by John Yau, April 4, 2020.
• Ken Johnson. “Greg Colson-review.” The New York Times, February 16, 2001, p. B37
• John Russell. “Greg Colson-review.” The New York Times, January 12, 1990, p. C27
• Roberta Smith. “These Are the Faces to Watch.” The New York Times, January 5, 1990, p. C21
• Sharon Mizota. "Art review: Greg Colson at Griffin." Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2010
• George Melrod. “Greg Colson at Sperone Westwater.” Art in America, September 1994, p. 112
• David Hunt. "Spotlight: Greg Colson." Flash Art, November–December 1998, p. 105
• Jerry Saltz. "Greg Colson: Liberating Materials From Materiality." Flash Art, May–June 1990, p. 150
• Tibby Rothman. “Beyond the Image – Interview with Greg Colson” Venice Paper, October 2006
• Maartje Den Breejen. "Intentie en Ongeluk-Als het Leven Zelf." Het PAROOL (Amsterdam), September 6, 2002, p. 11
• Sally O'Reilly. "Greg Colson at Sprovieri." Time Out (London), January 16, 2002, p. 48
• “Goings on About Town: Art” The New Yorker. February 19 & 26, 2001, p. 40

External links

• Official Website
• Greg Colson at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Greg Colson at the Whitney Museum of American Art
• Greg Colson at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Greg Colson at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
• Greg Colson at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Greg Colson at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Greg Colson at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm
• Greg Colson at the Panza Collection
• Greg Colson in Mapping, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Essay by Robert Storr, 1994, catalog, pg 15-16, 27.
• Greg Colson book at Steidl
• Greg Colson at Sperone Westwater