Coming Home | Gregory Rick

The gallery is honored to show Gregory Rick’s new paintings less than a month after his solo show at SFMOMA and his prestigious SECA Award. The show at H+N is a literal coming home — the artist came up in South Minneapolis and roots his work in family influence from a young age. Often huge in scope and scale, Rick’s paintings telescope between the personal, the historical and the political. Vibrant, harsh, beautiful, collapsed and exploding. Coming Home at HAIR+NAILS is Gregory Rick’s first full-building solo exhibition with the gallery.

IN THE ARTIST’S WORDS:

“I see my work as History Painting, promoting the obscure, the forgotten and the common knowledge. My life has been full of tribulations, I look at them as initiations. For every hardship I endured my art has grown with me. My father went to prison when I was 8 for murder. Although losing my dad was rough, him giving me two books, one on history and one on art, started my infatuation with both and serves as a means of connection with my pops. Similarly, art was a bastion of light after I returned from Iraq and help me deal with my guilt about the war.

This work comes from my personal experience but is not entirely personal. I tell stories that reflect my story, but they are not totally personal and are still in dialogue with the wider world. Where myth gives voice to the underbelly, the lumpen in tandem displaying the familiar and grandiose. My work tethers together seemingly opposing ideas as I teeter between the personal, the historical and the political. I am painting on a shaky historical line cemented in humility and conviction. I occupy my pictures with characters who serve as archetypes in conjunction with memory and self-exploration, reflecting on the absurdness and monumentality of history.”

— Gregory Rick

ARTIST BIO:

Gregory Rick was born in 1981 and grew up in South Minneapolis. Rick received his BFA from CCA and his MFA in art practice at Stanford University. Developing a historical imagination and a fondness for drawing stories, Rick collapses history while confronting personal trauma. Rick’s works exist as reflections of his personal experience while being in dialogue with the wider world. Rick has received the Yamaguchi print making award, the Nathan Oliviera fellowship, and the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award, the Artadia Award, the Daedalus Award, the SFMOMA SECA award and has shown in museums and galleries in both Minneapolis and California. Rick has lived in the Bay Area since 2012 and currently lives in Oakland.

Gregory Rick has previously been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS in RIGHT NOW (2020-1), The Dancing Plague (2021), The Human Scale (2021, at Rochester Art Center), and Painting Show (2022).

GALLERY HOURS:

Thursdays/Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays: 1:00-5:00 and appointments can be scheduled 7 days/week via hairandnailsart@gmail.com

Images: GREGORY RICK Protest Goddess (2023) oil, oil bar, acrylic, pigmented ink on canvas. 55”x 65” and Gregory Rick. Photo courtesy of the artist.