Steve Greene

Frosch & Co is pleased to present News From Nowhere, Steve Greene’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. The show features the artist’s most recent series of works and marks his return to painting.

The paintings in News From Nowhere were made over the last year, after a period during which the artist worked exclusively on paper. A lot of the same motifs Greene uses in drawings recur in the paintings - strange sculptural architectural shapes, rays, beams and waves, collaged fragments of music lists, diagrams and his own sketches. The artist tries not to be tied too much to imagery or meaning in the early stages of a painting, leaving room for the work to develop organically. The titles and images hint at paranoia and surveillance - things that are in the air right now, but this is tempered by bright color, cartoony shapes and humor. Steve Greene’s goal has always been to make a thing that buzzes and vibrates with a sort of mysterious energy.

“I once had a teacher who asked me what I thought about when I was painting. Back then I had no idea how to answer. Right now I’m thinking about making a line straight, but not too straight. I’m thinking the paint is not gliding on the way I want it to, it’s too thin or too thick. I’m wondering if this line is like an illustration, but I’m not even sure what that really means. I’m trying to keep things loose, but there is nothing loose about them. I want spontaneity without sloppiness. I want effort to show, but not too much effort. I want it to look like I care a lot (I do) and I’m working really hard (I am), but like it is flowing out of me with the greatest of ease (it’s not) and I hope to be working on that for a long time.”

—Steve Greene