CRIS GIANAKOS

From the artist:

Cris Gianakos was born in New York City, raised in Crete and grew up in the Cretan community of New York. His immigrant parents with a strong work ethic inspired a firm artistic discipline in him and his artist brother Steve. As a child, he did not adapt to school well but excelled in athletics, drawing and physics and made gas-powered model airplanes, which taught him structure and balance. He played street hockey on the steep streets which gave him the diagonal that was a huge influence later; ice hockey gave him the geometry of the rink and camping, his first experience of being in a site-specific environment. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts, where he has taught for 55 years, and early had a successful graphic design career while starting to make art. He states that he is "mostly self-taught".

In the mid-60’s he rented his first lofts on Howard Street and took part in performances in the burgeoning Manhattan dance scene and made various ephemeral installations. In 1967 he bought a loft on Prince St and West Broadway with a group of artists. There he continued to make his resin works, which he showed at the Jewish Museum and in the 1968 and 1969 Sculpture Annuals at the Whitney Museum. During this time he was also included in the Museum of Modern Art. In a transition in the mid-70s Gianakos began to examine the idea of using a diagonal ramp form in his sculptural installations. He made a series of large- and small-scale structures of industrial materials, known as RAMPWORKS, as a solution to the problem of organizing forms in space and marrying the work with the environment, with one of the first installations at Soho’s 55 Mercer. He exhibited them in group shows in New York, including a large survey exhibition at Nassau County Art Museum. He installed large-scale public commissions in the United States, Greece and Sweden, splitting his time between them. Gianakos’ work is considered part of the post-Minimalist movement. A practice of drawing has continued throughout his career; his work moves freely between installations, sculpture, drawing, painting and printmaking.

His most recent 49 solo exhibitions include SITE, a large survey exhibition at the Municipal Art Gallery of Chania, Crete; Minus Space, New York; Galleri Andersson/Sandstrom, Stockholm; a retrospective at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, and a site-specific installation for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, Greece. His work appeared in the Capital City of Europe, Thessaloniki, Greece. Gianakos is represented in significant public collections worldwide, including Museum of Modern Art, New York, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Fogg Art Museum/Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; MOMus State Museum of Contemporary Art-Costakis Collection and MAM, Greece; Watkita Museum of Art, Tokyo; Max Bill Haus, Zurich, Switzerland; and Brooklyn Museum and has been widely reviewed. He continues to live and work in New York and Europe.

Website: www.crisgianakos.com