Gregory Coates (born March 5, 1961) is an African-American artist known for working in the realm of social abstraction. Coates also works in three-dimensional formats including wall sculpture, sculpture in the round,

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific art, site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior intervent ...

, and public sculpture, and less frequently in

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

and

performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...

Early life and education

Gregory Coates was born in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, on March 5, 1961. He grew up in the Carver Langston Neighborhood in the North East part of the district. Coates, the oldest of eight children, grew up in a working class household where his mother and father worked to support him, his six sisters and brother. . Gregory Coates attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., from 1980 to 1982 and later the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture 1990.

Career

During the mid 1980s Coates moved his art studio to Düsseldorf, Germany. While in Germany Coates experienced events leading up the fall of the

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were countries connected to the So ...

and the impact of those changes. Upon returning from Europe, Coates began living in

Williamsburg, Brooklyn Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordered by Greenpoint to the north; Bedford–Stuyvesant to the south; Bushwick and East Williamsburg to the east; and the East River to the west. It was an independe ...

. Coates met artist Al Loving during the late 1980s, through his (now) wife Kiki Nienaber. He was working primarily as a figurative painter and Loving encouraged Coates to extend his practice into assemblage. Coates credits this as a breakthrough that allowed him to embrace the physical aspect of painting and to mature as an artist. Then during the late 1990s Coates took an artist residency in

Cape Town, South Africa Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

. In 1996 Coates experienced aftermath of the official end of

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

and encountered extreme poverty, which resulted in another shift in his work via the use of repurposed materials. He saw this as a moral imperative in response the gross wastefulness of industrialized societies and the economic inequities he witnessed while living in Cape Town. As a result, Coates began using almost exclusively, recycled materials to create his work. Materials used included feathers, bike tubes, cardboard, crumpled papers, dirt, vinyl records, and the heads of push brooms, which he pairs with provocative titles to address topics such as the problematics of Cold-War politics, poverty, racism, domestic labor, and Black aesthetics.

Collections

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), colloquially known as the Blacksonian, is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in 2003 an ...

* Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art *

Georgia Museum of Art Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

* The Studio Museum in Harlem * Kamigamo Shrine in

Kyoto, Japan Kyoto ( or ; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it the ninth-most pop ...

. A large commissioned work by Coates is installed at the

Pennsylvania Convention Center The Pennsylvania Convention Center is a multi-use public facility in the Market East, Philadelphia, Market East section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, designed to accommodate conventions, exhibitions, conferences and other events. The L-shaped ...

(Extension) in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

. Coates did a residency and installation in Verbier 3-D Foundation in Verbier, Switzerland in February, 2011, in a series called "Go Tell It on the Mountain: Towards a New Monumentalism."

Awards

Awards that he has received includes the "

Joan Mitchell Foundation Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants". He was also presented with " Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (Emergency) Grant".

External links

This website is for artwork that show prices of Gregory's Coates work.

References

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Coates, Gregory American male sculptors 20th-century American male artists 21st-century American male artists African-American sculptors 1961 births Living people 21st-century African-American artists 20th-century African-American artists Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni George Washington University Corcoran School alumni