Friday, March 29, 2024

Greg Slick

Greg Slick (born 1961 in Jersey City, NJ) is a visual artist and independent curator based in Beacon, NY. Time, history, archaeology, and anthropology play major thematic roles in his work. Most recently his work was featured in the group exhibitions One Thing Leads to Another at The Lockwood Gallery, Kingston, NY, and Collective Expeditions, at both BSB Gallery, Trenton, NJ and SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY. Other group exhibitions include Take Back the Walls at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, NY; Painting in the 21st Century, at Site:Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY; and Time Travelers at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Old Bones and Broken Stones at No. 3 Reading Room & Photo Book Works, Beacon, NY and Opened Ground at the Seligmann Center, Sugar Loaf, NY. Slick is the founder and co-curator of the artists’ collective The International Society of Antiquaries.

Slick’s paintings investigate ideas of monumentality through the geometries of prehistoric archaeological sites. Using color, texture, patterns of entoptic phenomena, and occasional references to archaeological drawing, his work examines how megalithic shapes can occupy space in different and compelling ways within an abstract language. Hardedge forms reinterpret tumbles of stones at Neolithic sites as a composition of texture/color upon a vibrant ground. Color schemes allude to changing light in rural areas where these stones are found. The intended challenge to the viewer is to read deeply and consider the meaning and politics of monument building along the human journey. Specific Neolithic and Iron Age sites that are referenced in his paintings are located in Ireland, the UK, and Spain. Visits to Los Toros de Guisando and the dolmens of Antequera in Spain, for example, galvanized an interest in the prehistory of Spain. As his practice developed around this theme, he became more invested in how traditional cultural forms, such as abstract patterns and building techniques, have persisted across millennia. The long shadow of prehistoric cultures can still be seen today in Spain in such things as rural structures (eg, shepherds’ huts) and folk designs on clay and ceramic wares.

Books mentioned in this interview include Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and The Neolithic of Britain and Ireland by Vicki Cummings.

Cave Consciousness, 2021, acrylic on wood panel, 36 x 30 in.
Old Materiality, 2021, acrylic on wood panel, 24 x 20 in.

 

Previous articleKristan Kennedy
Next articleKetta Ioannidou
RELATED ARTICLES

Vincent Donato

Chase Biado

2 COMMENTS

  1. […] Greg Slick joined us from Beacon, New York in early September. He said during the middle of the pandemic Beacon began booming with people coming in as they fled the city and opening businesses and new art spaces. This is not the first time that Beacon has benefitted from artists moving in from the city, and over time, Slick says, the art community has been enriched and the food scene in town is far better than it once was. During the pandemic, Slick had eye surgery and was forced to learn how to work with monocular vision. Though he still has very limited vision in one eye, he has adapted to the shift in depth perception that comes from monocularism. His work before the surgery was somewhat monochromatic, but now perhaps because of his limitation in vision, Slick has begun including tremendous amounts of color in his work. To hear more about his own work, including an in-depth discussion about the work included in this newsletter, listen to the complete interview. […]

  2. […] Greg Slick joined us from Beacon, New York in early September. He said during the middle of the pandemic Beacon began booming with people coming in as they fled the city and opening businesses and new art spaces. This is not the first time that Beacon has benefitted from artists moving in from the city, and over time, Slick says, the art community has been enriched and the food scene in town is far better than it once was. During the pandemic, Slick had eye surgery and was forced to learn how to work with monocular vision. Though he still has very limited vision in one eye, he has adapted to the shift in depth perception that comes from monocularism. His work before the surgery was somewhat monochromatic, but now perhaps because of his limitation in vision, Slick has begun including tremendous amounts of color in his work. To hear more about his own work, including an in-depth discussion about the work included in this newsletter, listen to the complete interview. […]

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here