527 Madison Avenue is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by Greg Drasler in the Lobby Gallery from January 9 – April 15, 2024. Located at 54th Street and Madison Avenue, an opening reception will be held on Wednesday, January 17 from 5–7 PM, and the show is open to the public 9 AM – 5 PM, Monday through Friday. Produced in partnership with Betty Cuningham Gallery, this will be the twenty-seventh exhibition in 527 Madison’s ongoing program showcasing noteworthy emerging and mid-career artists, organized by Jay Grimm Art Advisory.
Drasler’s paintings blur the line between fantasy and reality, lending a surreal dream-like twist to the mundane. Imbued with playful metaphors and rich symbolism, he develops conceptual connections between lived experience and existential inquiries which unfold with patient viewing. Works like Following a Hunch appear at first to be a simple crowd of similarly dressed men, however Drasler identifies a few curious characters amongst the bunch, reminding us that each have their own identities and motivations. Country Place, part of his Cave Painting series, depicts a peaceful interior that also serves as a metaphor for the construction of our identity and the ways we relate to domestic space. These liminal spaces speak to universal human experience of inhabiting the world as an individual amongst the crowd.
Born in Waukegan, IL, Greg Drasler received a BFA and MFA from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana. He has exhibited regularly in the US since the mid 80's. Widely collected privately, Drasler’s work can be seen in the collections of Dow Jones, Inc., New York; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, IL; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; The Emily Fisher Landau Collection, New York and Thurston Twigg-Smith, Honolulu, HI.
Drasler has been the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1993, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1991 and a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2019. He is currently a Professor at Pratt Institute and has also taught at Princeton University.
For inquiries about the work, please contact Betty Cuningham Gallery at info@bettycuninghamgallery.com. For more information about 527 Madison’s exhibitions, please contact Jay Grimm, who organizes the contemporary art program on behalf of 527 Madison at jgrimm@jaygrimm.com.
527 Madison Avenue is a boutique commercial office building located at the corner of 54th Street and Madison Avenue in New York City. Completed in 1986, it was designed by celebrated architectural firm FxCollaborative. The property has recently completed lobby and elevator upgrades and is owned by an affiliate of Mitsui Fudosan America, the US subsidiary of Japan's largest real estate company, Mitsui Fudosan Co., LTD.