Steve Greene

Frosch & Portmann is pleased to present I Used to Wake Up, Steve Greene’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The show features the artist’s most recent series of works on paper.

Last year, Steve Greene, after spending forty years in New York City, relocated to the childhood home of his wife in a small town in Connecticut. All of the works in this show were created in his new studio there.

In Greene’s latest series of drawings and collages, there is a tension between man-made geometric forms and more natural organic shapes. Stains and spills seem to float beyond the frame, but foreground shapes are confined and push at the edges of the paper, lending a sculptural feeling to the drawings and making them as much objects as images. Interlocking collage elements and text fragments work like found poetry, and the artist continues his practice of referencing sound and noise.

After moving into the new home, Steve Greene began sorting through the boxes of papers and letters his in-laws had left behind. Many of their notes and lists have found their way into his new body of work. One such find was a small chapbook published in 1897 called Mental Nuts - Can You Crack’em? A book of 100 Catch or Trick Problems. Greene used a few of the puzzle titles and answers as titles for some of the works here, and the name of the book is a useful guide to the conception and viewing of these drawings. The title of the show, I Used to Wake Up, is taken from a page of a moldy old romance novel from the thirties, and is an apt sentiment for these times.

This is Steve Greene's sixth solo exhibition in New York. Born in Crawfordsville, AR, the artist lives and works in Collinsville, CT. He received his B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.