Greg Drasler
Crowded Places/Open Spaces
January 28 – March 20, 2021
Greg Drasler
Reservations, 2014
Oil on linen
40 x 44 inches
GD15782
Greg Drasler
Open Ride, 2014
Oil on linen
11 x 14 inches
GD15773
Greg Drasler
After hours, 2014
Oil on linen
11 x 14 inches
GD15771
Greg Drasler
Wiggle Room/steamer, 2006
Oil on canvas
40 x 44 inches
GD11935
Greg Drasler
Stratocaster Suite, 2014,
Oil on linen,
70 x 400 inches.
Greg Drasler
GREEN SCREEN I, 2007
Oil on canvas
72 x 94 inches
182.88 x 238.76 cm
GD12541
Born in Waukegan, IL, Greg Drasler received a BFA and MFA from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana. He has exhibited regularly in the US since the mid 80's. Widely collected privately, Drasler’s work can be seen in the collections of Dow Jones, Inc., New York; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, IL; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; The Emily Fisher Landau Collection, New York and Thurston Twigg-Smith, Honolulu, HI.
Drasler has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1993, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1991 and a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2019. He is currently an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute and has also taught at Princeton University.
For full biography click below.
"One Question, One Answer: Greg Drasler"
By: Daniel Wiener
"Metaphorical depictions of construction sites and workers have inspired Greg Drasler’s paintings since the early 1980s. Accumulations of tools and objects populated his paintings, addressing the construction of identity. Crowds of men in hats along with the baggage paintings contained humor, nostalgia, and memory in ongoing assemblies of selves. Drasler describes his painting process as packing and re-packing an empty suitcase or painting the inside out."
"Greg Drasler: Crowded Places / Open Spaces at Betty Cuningham Gallery, in Dialogue with Greg Drasler"
By: Etty Yaniv
"Greg Drasler came to be a metaphorical figurative painter when he lost everything he owned in a fire in 1978, except for two paintings. At that moment he decided to focus exclusively on painting — he was a painter and painting would be everything he needed."
The result manifests in “Stratocaster Suite,” a series of six luminous 70 x 400 inch oil-painted panels Drasler created for the show. Stretching across the length of a room, “Stratocaster Suite” is an ode to the open road.
Drasler is fond of metaphors. For instance, he once noted in an interview, “I think about the car as a camera, and painting as a vehicle.” But a vehicle for what? In a conversation, condensed and lightly edited below, Drasler expanded on this metaphor and other symbols contained within his work.
Entering the Castle Gallery at the College of New Rochelle, visitors encounter an arrangement of cherry blossoms in a glass vase. At least that’s what it appears to be. Closer observation reveals that the branch holding the flowers is actually a segment of plumbing pipe and that each delicate bud is a tiny pink toilet made of urethane foam.
