Steve Gianakos

was born in 1938 in New York City. He trained at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. Gianakos taught at various institutes, including the School of Visual Arts New York, the University of Colorado and the Memphis Academy of Arts. 

His work is restricted to an unconventional interplay of sheets of paper in several layers, which is interpreted as a still from a comic strip. He can be regarded as a representative of a second generation of Surrealists with a penchant for comics and cartoons, all with a strongly erotic flavour. The works come across as 'cheap' collages that have emerged from the vaults of the subconscious. 
One can assume that in order to be able to create this work, the depths of personal circumstances and relationships have been plumbed. Women play a central role, but the cutting and pasting put limbs, breasts and heads in all the wrong places, anatomically-speaking. The addition of animals, furniture and pottery turn Gianakos' visual world into a worldly or 'underworldly' happening. Fetishes and lingerie of all kinds add suggestions that evoke suspicions of both good and bad dreams. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, things run through one another in all shapes and sizes. They relate to each other in a way never shown before.