Sandow Birk
Fine Arts - 1988
Born in Detroit in 1962 and currently living in Los Angeles, Birk ('88) has established
a reputation that has grown exponentially over the years.
A winner of the J. Paul Getty Fellowship for Visual Arts, a Fulbright Scholarship,
and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Birk has exhibited his work internationally, and been
featured in recent years at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Contemporary
Arts Forum, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (SUNY/New Paltz, N.Y.), San Jose Museum
of Art, Katzen Art Center (Washington, D.C.), and the Laguna Art Museum (Laguna Beach).
...
He has been featured in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall
Street Journal, London Guardian, Art News, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco
Chronicle, and on National Public Radio.
Art critic Ray Zone notes, "Birk's drawings are sombre, filled with a dark somnolence.
But there is great wit in small details and, as with all of Birk's oeuvre, a fine
and dry satire quietly evident."
"For over a decade, Birk has revisited historical genres and come up with satirical
contemporary turns on age-old human foibles. In Birk's busy and capable hands, everything
old is new again and it all takes place in a post-apocalyptic California littered
with the remains of popular culture."
"Whether he's ridiculing fascism with his Prisonation series or aping historical
works in the Great War of the Californias, Birk is Southern California's preeminent
artist of dystopia."
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