Michael Workman

Born in McAllen, Texas in 1955, Gaylen Gerber grew up in many places, including Salt Lake City and Rochester, New York. The son of an artist mother and biographer father--Phillip Gerber, known for his studies of Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser and Robert Frost--Gerber's geographically diverse background may have influenced how he works (cooperating with other artists to finish his own canvases), but not his decision to become an artist. Gerber says he was one of those rare people who always knew what they wanted to do, and that art was always an imperative.

Gerber recalls a stunning encounter with art during a visit to the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo as a young man. He was 11, and the show was a survey of pop art filled with Warhols, Lichtensteins and Rosenquists. As a kid, the work seemed plain and wondrous, an uplifting experience that he was able to relate to his own life. Gerber went on to study at the State University of New York at Brockport and the State University of New York in Manhattan, and then the New York Studio School of Painting and Drawing before moving to Chicago at the age of 23. After living in lower Manhattan, he thought his goal of becoming an artist would take a long time and wasn't sure it would happen at all if he stayed where he was. Chicago just felt right.

That intuition has certainly borne fruit: work from his Support Series, now on display at Donald Young Gallery, started when he stopped painting his Gray Still Life paintings in 1992. That year, he had nine paintings in the Renaissance Society show at Documenta IX, and was suffering a creative roadblock. Los Angeles artist Hirsh Perlman picked him up upon his return from Kassel, Germany and, listening to his worries, reacted with a simple, "You'll do something else." Gerber had to confront the fact that he was using his art as a way of structuring his life, though he didn't want to let it go completely. And he didn't. His first "cooperative" painting (he rejects the term "collaborative") was with Joe Scanlan, a work that developed into a philosophy of pairing with other artists to complete his own work, a practice as sound today as when there was only one layer: a solid, unimpeded gray.

(2004-10-27)

Also by Michael Workman

Eye Exam
In Chinese artist Maio Xiaochun's show "Phantasmagoria" at the Walsh Gallery, viewers may find themselves playing a game of "Where's Waldo?"
(2004-10-20)

Von Kommanivanh
Arriving in the United States in November 1983 from Laos in the highlands of Southeast Asia, where he was born in a refugee camp, Von Kommanivanh moved with his family and five brothers to a new home in the River Park neighborhood
(2004-10-20)

Tip of the Week
This is the first time an outside group has been allowed to use the Vietnam Veteran's Museum space, since its founding in 1996, for anything but works of soldiers in that tragic war
(2004-10-13)

Huong Ngo
Born in a refugee camp in Hong Kong, Ngo's parents, originally from Vietnam, fled to North Carolina
(2004-10-13)

Eye Exam
(2004-10-13)

Big brothers
(2004-10-06)

The Barack and Alan Show
(2004-10-06)

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
(2004-10-06)

Eye Exam
(2004-10-06)

Tip of the Week
(2004-09-29)

Eye Exam
(2004-09-29)

Chicago--yes, Chicago--Fashion Week
(2004-09-14)

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