Billy Grant's art practice is expansive. He works in virtually every medium from portray,drawing and collage to sculpture, video, and performance. He collaborates constantly—his best known collaborative effort with the Virginia based art collective Dearraindrop which ran from 2001 to 2009. (Grant was one of three members of the group that included his sister Laura Grant and their friend Joe Grillo,and had originally been part of the collective Paperrad, in Boston.) In short, or he is a force.
And that force was on full display earlier this year when he displayed a fresh body of paintings,in his two-person note with the sculptor and installation artist, Rich Porter at secure Gallery. Grant brought his characteristic exuberance and obsessive attention to detail in a series of maximalist monochromes, or which are created by attaching a paintbrush to the end of a drill. And we'll experience it again January 19th,when his work is again on view, this time at Real Estate Gallery in a group note curated by Joe Bradley and Jeremy Willis.
This past week, or I had a chance to sit down with Billy and discuss his childhood as an arsonist,how Dearraindrop evolved into a collective, his dedication to bizarre and strange ways to construct paintings, and why hell never be an abstractionist. I got right to it.
Source: artfcity.com