Artist: Justin John Greene
Exhibition title: Secret Slob
Venue: Andrew Rafacz, Chicago, US
Date: October 29 – December 22, 2016
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Andrew Rafacz, Chicago
Submitted for your approval
By an author’s loyal ghost
Endlessly toiling
Through the night
Staring at a screen
Splayed across a mattress
Where we lay our scene
And when at last
Its glass goes black
The reflection shows
The Slob
Outside amongst the concrete
A system rigged and mean
Some try-hard leans against a hood
Devising of a scheme
Heavy baskets of deplorables
And dishes in the sink
He hasn’t time to give a shit
He hasn’t space to think
Ladies and germs
The slob
See his haggard stare
When will he pay the mounting debts
Against integrity
Described in J.D. Salinger’s The Cather in the Rye, a ‘secret slob’ is someone who behaves as outwardly virtuous while hiding their sordid habits. Where his last exhibition, Moonlighting, described the incessant hustle that one participates in as a worker striving in a precarious economy, Justin John Greene’s newest body of work examines the dubious and dangerous consequences of that ongoing hustle. Forced to bluff, concede, and bend or mask one’s own being in order to get by, the characters in Greene’s paintings are engaged in a murky, complex narrative of contemporary survival.
JUSTIN JOHN GREENE (American, b. 1984) lives and works in Los Angeles. He earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, and studied art history at Lorenzo de’Medici, Florence, Itay in 2005. Solo exhibitions and projects include Moonlighting, Loudhailer, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Raw Deal, DIANA, Los Angeles, CA (2015); and A Dusk That Never Settles, Actual Size, Los Angeles, CA (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Logic Frog, Allen & Eldridge, New York, NY; Surreal, König Galerie, Berlin, Germany; and Tickles, 356 Mission, Los Angeles, CA. He has been exhibited at art fairs in Chicago and Copenhagen. This is his first exhibition with the gallery.
Justin John Greene, Neighborhood Watch, 2016
Oil on canvas, 41 in x 27 in
Justin John Greene, Secret Slob, 2016
Oil on canvas, 41 in x 27 in
Justin John Greene, Dice Eyes, 2016
Oil on canvas, 20 in x 16 in
Justin John Greene, Bar Scene, 2016
Oil on canvas, 45 in x 71 in
Justin John Greene, Actor, 2016
Oil on canvas, 41 in x 27 in
Justin John Greene, The Slob is Dead, 2016
Oil on canvas, 41 in x 27 in
Justin John Greene, Ghost Writer, 2016
Oil on canvas, 48 in x 40 in
Justin John Greene, Bar Tender, 2016
Oil on canvas, 20 in x 16 in
