griesbach

The artist who I researched was Scott Griesbach. Griesbach was known for both his digital prints and paintings. The message behind his work was historical and political satire. He was very unique contextually. He collaged other famous artists into their own works via computer, and then would paint a copy of it and it would result in two works of the same picture, only in different mediums. I'm not attracted as much for his message as I am for the concept behind his work. I have never seen an artist deal with two mediums in the way that Griesbach does, and to duplicate the same piece is even more unique. His use of the computer enables him to to parody his subjects in the sharpest possible way, because he is using actual photographs. But his paintings give a completely different feel to the same picture; they are the kind of pictures that I would hang on my wall, as opposed to his prints which might provoke the viewer's thought rather than his emotion.


This is the artist's statement, found on his website:

Artist's Statement
We live in a digital age of computers, image editing, software, scanners, digital cameras, and printers, all at our fingertips. This digital revolution offers the opportunity to look at historical, theoretical, theological, psychological, and sociological concepts from a fresh perspective. In my work I present many of these perspectives in literal, pictorial metaphors. I avoid postmodern posturing and focus on the inescapable modernity of today's social practice. The works I produce are part of an ongoing 13-year project; they are less than modernist clichés than they are historical benchmarks revisited.

Instead of simply encouraging a critical rebellion, I take ideas out of their historical perspective, retrace and rearrange them, and position them in a new philosophical context. I choose to take on historical moments and players, such as Jackson Pollack, Clement Greenberg, Marcel Duchamp, Jean-Paul Sartre, Josef Stalin, and the Pope. I invert the postmodern efficiency of removing the author(s) from the(ir) chosen work, and signal an irony that borders on aesthetic and intellectual surrealism.

My large-scale Iris prints do not function as political "agit-pop" art posters that call for a revisionist history of 20th century ideas and art. Rather they are invented propagandistic intrigues with a familiar cast of characters. Through the use of image editing software, the work of history (and history itself) is anachronistically rearranged for entertainment and reflection. It's as if, in some parallel universe, Duchamp is breaking-up the very road that art drives on, and Jean François Lyotard is modeling his latest fashionable thoughts on a fashion show runway. I don't shy away from taking shots at history and holding players and events responsible for content creation.

There is always a humorous side to this work; such as the image of Duchamp standing in a general hardware store purchasing the urinal he called Fountain. In another piece, Sartre is confounded by the existential possibilities in a house of mirrors, each reflection mirroring back a terrifying Lacanian double-entendre.

I address reverentially, and even romantically, the power of images and cultural forms of production that have created social and political challenges and changes in philosophical perspective. The work doesn't take a political stand. Rather it speaks to the course of social practice in the age of capitalism, advertising, and the co-opting of art and ideas by technology, the media, and the globalization of popular culture.

The decision to print on paper is simply that: a decision. It is a decision that reminds us that materials and tools for making art are just that: materials and tools for making art. It's what the artist does with them that matters.

- Scott Griesbach
© 2003 Scott Griesbach
Contact Webmaster