Join artist Sandow Birk in conversation with AGO curator Alexa Greist about his recent work, including The Horrible & Terrible Deeds & Words of the Very Renowned Trumpagruel, a series of prints inspired by François Rabelais’s 16th-century Gargantua and Pantagruel, a satirical tale about a pair of giants. The prints seem directly descended from the work of 19th-century caricaturist Honoré Daumier, which has the added effect of placing President Trump in a long line of historical crooks and bullies.
Los Angeles artist Sandow Birk is a graduate of the Otis/Parson's Art Institute whose work has dealt with contemporary life in its entirety. Past themes have included inner city violence, graffiti, various political issues, war, prisons, surfing, and skateboarding. He is the recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Recent projects have dealt with the war in Iraq, the Constitution of the United States, and the Holy Qur’an. Sandow is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, P.P.O.W Gallery in New York City, and Koplin del Rio Gallery in Seattle.
Alexa Greist is Associate Curator and R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints & Drawings at the AGO. Selected exhibitions include Mail Art, Break the Rules: The Shit Must Stop Portfolio (2019), French Prints of the 1890s (2017), and Rise of the Rock Poster and the Summer of Love (2017). Prior to joining the AGO in 2016, Alexa Greist held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. She holds a Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania focused on Italian printed drawing books, and a Master’s degree, also from the University of Pennsylvania, with a M.A. thesis on the early drawings of Joseph Stella. Greist’s area of specialty is Italian Renaissance and Baroque prints and drawings.
