Gregory Coates is an urban postmodernist.
Experimental in nature, elegant in appearance his work has been exploring the possibility and nature of unorthodox material since the beginning of his artistic endeavor as a painter in the late 80s. Then, he juxtaposed various materials such as steel plates and card board, rubber hoses, duct tape, twine and paint into amalgams of texture and color. His first major exhibit at Wilmer Jennings Gallery was titled Amalgams.
Later, he concentrated more on the material itself by seducing with color and texture. To be distributed at Thread Waxing Space, in New York was the culmination of raw urban edge combined with serenity of repetition and color. Works were made with bicycle inntertubes and shipping pallets coated with pigment. As was Strut, an exhibition named to embrace stylistic differences was installed at Gallery Denkraum in Vienna, Austria; Gallery Magnan NYC, and Obama City, Japan. Coates expanded his use of rubber to include shipping plastic wrap and feathers to create experimental exhibitions such as Permission, at N’Namdi Gallery Chicago and Positions, Opalka Gallery at Russel Sage College, Albany, NY (catalogue). Site-specific Fences was installed on top of a Swiss Glacier, Verbier, Switzerland (catalogue) and Twenty at Kamigamo Shrine, Kyoto Japan, making Coates the first American to install work in this UNESO world heritage site. Coates never shies away from experimenting and collaborating as he did with friends from Japan such as for Stage with Aya Iida, where he created the stage for Iida’s dance performance, in Allentown, PA and Mitatae with Etzusan Tawara creating a sustainable environment in a public shopping area in Kyoto, Japan. Consider this –Coates’ 2014 Solo show at N’Namdi Contemporary, Miami yielded an extensive interview in Art Pulse Magazine of the same title. Minutes (catalogue) at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Detroit 2015 was his most recent significant one person show and consisted of a collection of large and midsize feather works.
Much of Coates’ work is about opposites: refined/raw, slow/fast, formal/intuitive, simple/complex all of which may well be born out of Coates’ Chocolate City upbringing embracing Washington, DC’s Go-Go and Hardcore music scene simultaneously. It explains his constant search and fluctuation between the wide margins of his artistic pursuit for balance, which in recent years expanded into site-specifics and sculpture.
Coates studied at Corcoran School of Art, Washington D.C. and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. In addition, he held numerous residencies that informed his work, such as Gasworks, London, UK; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC; Triangle Workshops, Cape Town, South Africa and Pine Plains, New York; he also spent several months in Berlin, Germany as an Artist in Residence at Tacheles and continues to be invited to be the Artist in Residence of the City of Obama, Fukui Prefecture, Japan.
Coates’ Artwork is included in museum collections, such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, The Georgia Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, City of Obama Japan, and many corporate and private collections. A large commissioned piece is installed at the Pennsylvania Convention Center (Extension) in Philadelphia, PA. He is a Joan Mitchell- and New York Foundation Fellow and was awarded the Pollock-Krasner- and Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (Emergency) Grant. This year he is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell New Orleans Residency, 2017
Coates currently lives and works in Allentown, PA.