Gretchen Faust (born 1961 in Stoneham,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, USA) is an American contemporary

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

performer The performing arts are The arts, arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which involve the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art ob ...

art historian Art history is the study of artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Traditionally, the ...

, and

yoga Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...

instructor who lives and works in

Totnes Totnes ( or ) is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England, within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is about west of Paignton, about west-southwest of Torquay and ab ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, United Kingdom. She is known for her visual art and performance work at galleries in New York, Pittsburgh and Zürich.

Education

Faust earned a BA at Smith College ( 1983)and an MFA (1986) at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

Work

In the early 1990s she became known for using the tip of an ice pick to write text fragments from lectures on art history into gallery walls. In her more recent works, she produced mandala-like paper cutouts, engraved plinths made of Portland stone, photographs of paired handguns, or pairs of large, rug-like circles made of rabbit skins, and camouflage material laid out on the floor. In 2013, Martin Herbert wrote in

Frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

magazine: "there are consistently continuities: symmetry and asymmetry, sophistication and violence and a variable and explicit focus on cutting, punching, firing - penetrating the surface of things". Faust has described her artwork as similar to yoga: "I’d say the personal process is the same. Cultivating presence and intimacy. And the outcome can result in different forms, depending on the circumstances of intention".

Exhibition history

Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the

Kunsthalle Schirn The Schirn Kunsthalle is a Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, located in the old city between the Römer and the Frankfurt Cathedral; it is part of Frankfurt's Museumsufer (Museum Riverbank). The Schirn exhibits both modern and contemporary art ...

, Frankfurt,

the New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-nam ...

, New York (with Kevin Warren), , Vienna, MAGASIN - Centre National d’art Contemporain, Grenoble; Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montreal; Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, (with Kevin Warren), the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, among others. In 1988, Faust had a solo installation at the

Mattress Factory The Mattress Factory is a contemporary art museum located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a pioneer of site-specific installation art and features permanent installations by artists Yayoi Kusama, James Turrell, and Greer Lankton. The museu ...

, Pittsburgh. In 1991, she had a solo show at Pat Hearn gallery in New York. 1992, Faust had a one-person show at Marc Jancou Gallery, Zurich. In 2003, Faust had a solo show at greengrassi, London. During the 1990s, she had several two person collaborative shows with Kevin Warren. In 2010, Faust created a floor installation, ''Shroud 1 (Start) and Shroud 1 (Stop)'', consisting of two 13-foot diameter circles; one fabricated from sewn together rabbit pelts, and the second constructed from commercially printed camouflage fabric. The work referenced the notion of hunter and prey. Faust has created performances that have been presented at Pat Hearn Gallery and the

, Faust has been represented by greengrassi gallery in London since 2003.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Faust, Gretchen 1961 births Living people People from Stoneham, Massachusetts American women sculptors American women performance artists American performance artists Conceptual artists