Gregg Deal
Tutse Nakoekwu (Minor Threat)
January 31 - March 1, 2022
Celebration with the Artist February 17th, 5 pm to 8pm
Gregg Deal is an unapologetic artist. His provocative artwork challenges, questions, instigates, and sometimes even laughs with his viewers. Engaging with art history, stereotypes, racism, and popular culture, he deftly weaves narratives through painting, performance, and sculpture. Deal’s art explores the world we live in through his lens of being Indigenous in modern America.
Deal’s paintings smartly dialogue with modern art historical movements, including Abstract Expressionism, High Modernism, Conceptual, Performance, and Pop. The profoundness of his work is revealed through the symbols, stories, and questions that emerge as he explores the clash between stereotypes and assumptions of a traditional western viewer versus his lived experience and the aspirations of the disenfranchised.
As a teenager, Deal gravitated to Punk because he related to the music’s expression of the marginalized outsider. References in Deal’s art come from the lyrics of his anti-establishment Punk heroes: Sex Pistols, Minor Threat, Black Flag, and Misfits. Growing up in a predominately white neighborhood in Park City, Utah, Deal did not experience a childhood with other children who looked like him or viewed the world like he did. It was not until he was in college, studying visual art at George Mason University, that he came across the work of James Luna. It was the first time he experienced another artist who was “unapologetically Indigenous.”
Most art depicting Indigenous people in the U.S. reinforces stereotypical tropes of assumed 19th or early 20th-century imagery––as if Native Americans are a uniform people frozen in time and trapped in sepia tones. Deal underscores the incredible diversity among the Indigenous who live within the borders of the United States. The federal government currently recognizes 574 Tribes speaking over 300 languages. Deal is careful to say he does not speak for Indigenous people; rather he speaks to his own experience.
Deal threatens boundaries in an art world steeped in imperialism. Having suffered censorship from art institutions, these conflicts have pushed him even further to explore his voice and stake his own space. His work grapples with challenging topics such as boarding schools, representation, visibility, racism, and historical atrocities, all of which are a threat to systemic expectations of how Indigenous artists exist within spaces not traditionally created for them. Yet it also celebrates individuality, hope, identity, and community. Gregg Deal asks us to “Rise Above” and glimpse the world through each other’s eyes.
This exhibition and program are generously supported by CU Denver’s College of Arts & Media, Colorado Creative Industries, WESTAF (the Western States Arts Federation), and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support also comes from HIDEit Mounts.
