Hot Shots : Gregory Krum
Artist Statement
Here are some ideas about the work:
It is in response—that is, in combat. Photographs that explore territories or concepts of control, organization, and security, states of sensitive, deep affection, inference, isolation, complexity, importance, insecurity, vulnerability, bliss, abyss, jouissance—in direct relationship to comfort and rational things, dualism, and our tendency to understand.
It is hopeful and painfully critical. The work wishes to slow down.
The work is at odds with irony.
The work is not a stand-in for language, it is not documentary, however everything existed and nothing is made up, it is not objective, it does not wish to be an essay.
The work wants you to like it. And I think it is a little bit romantic, and perhaps embarrassed.
The prints are about 30" square.
The work seems to wonder: is a gesture of affection at least as important as a scholarly theory.
Biography
Gregory Krum was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and studied biology, sculpture and design at Portland State University. After a study abroad program in Italy with the University of Georgia, he relocated to New York where he received his Master's degree in studio art from New York University and the International Center for Photography.
His work has been shown in venues such as the Armory Show, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Soren Christiansen Gallery in New Orleans and Jen Bekman Gallery. He was awarded the Jack Goodman Scholarship for Art and Technology and his work has been written about and published in the Paris-based magazine Purple.
In 2007, he was co-curator of an art exhibition entitled The Wrong Store with Kantor/Feuer Gallery in New York and was a Summer 2007 Hot Shot. He is currently working on a group of photographs of smoke and curating a show on the fashion label Rodarte which opens early 2010 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Smithsonian Institution.
Working within the genres of landscape and interior, Krum's work explores diverse themes such as love, failure, commerce, and desire within a larger context of space and organization. His subjects have included dust, devotional offerings, seaside villages, and Parisian houseboats.