When you step into Greg Gossel’s Northeast Minneapolis studio, it’s tempting to think that the artist creating the enormous Roy Lichtenstein-meets–street art paintings is a baby boomer obsessed with the pop culture artifacts of his generation. There’s JFK in a coat and tie, staring pensively from a paint-splattered canvas. Next to him is Princess Diana with a coy smile. Piles of Silver Age comics are shelved next to pulp fiction paperbacks and Led Zeppelin is blaring from the speakers.
But the truth is that Gossel, 26, doesn’t remember most of the icons that appear throughout his gorgeously layered pieces. “It’s all vintage to me,” he says, pointing at a teary-eyed romance comic heroine. Gossel’s art may not be of his time, but it is certainly striking a chord with art lovers across the age spectrum. Even in the middle of the Great Recession, Gossel’s work is being snatched up by collectors all over the world, including romance novelist Danielle Steele.
Born in Barron, Wisconsin, Gossel spent his childhood doodling, drawing and painting, including a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mural in his parents’ basement. When it came time for college, people close to him suggested that he’d be a natural at graphic design. He took their advice and earned a B.F.A degree in the subject from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
While at college, Gossel immersed himself in the studio art department. By senior year, he was working on large format projects, and the seeds for what would become his profession were sown.
The financial realities of post-college life temporarily shrunk Gossel’s canvases. When not working at Sassafrass, a boutique graphic design firm in Minneapolis, he used the tiny living room of his Uptown apartment as a studio, and showed his paintings in Twin Cities coffee shops and clothing stores.
In 2007, Gossel moved to a house in Northeast Minneapolis, which gave him enough room to think and work on a larger scale. The industrial/residential mix of the neighborhood complements his aesthetic, which fuses pop art with the distressed layers of street culture. “Maybe it’s because I grew up in a rural area, but I’ve always loved old walls with graffiti and posters that are half torn off,” he says. “I’ve always thought they were beautiful.”
Gossel gets his inspiration from spending time in rundown areas of the Twin Cities and from regular trips to thrift stores, where he thumbs through old magazines and comic books. Girly magazines, corporate logos, junk mail, and even an image of Saul pulled from a Jehovah’s Witnesses comic find their way onto his canvases.
To create his signature, beaten-up look, Gossel layers silkscreened images with hand stenciling and images torn from magazines. He applies spray paint and drips and then sands down certain areas to make them appear more distressed.
The color-drenched results have an almost frenetic intensity. Women weep. Text—pulled from those old comic books—shout, “What if he doesn’t call?” and “How do I face life without him?” The effect is ironic but not snarky; there’s always room for sincere societal messages to poke through the layers. “I try to bring up questions instead of statements,” Gossel says as he puts the finishing touches on a collection that is getting ready to be shipped to San Francisco. Racism, sexism, addiction, consumerism—it’s all there amidst the damsels in distress and Big Pharma logos.
When Gossel decided he was ready to move beyond the coffee shop circuit, he posted photos of his paintings on Flickr and began emailing galleries across the country to see if he could drum up any interest. “I was fairly naïve,” he admits, acknowledging that galleries receive hundreds of solicitations each week.
His big break came during the summer of 2007, when Gossel emailed art dealer Justin Giarla, owner of The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco. Moments after he pressed ”Send,” Giarla was on the phone. “When I opened them up, I saw three of my favorite things,” Giarla remembers. “I love color. And Roy Lichtenstein is still one of my favorite artists of all time. I loved the way Greg’s techniques were a combination of spray paint, silkscreen, and hand painting. He made them look like they could be seen out on the street.”
A small test-run in one of Giarla’s smaller galleries sold out–a first for one of his non-established artists. “A lot of imagery in Greg’s work are images that people remember from their childhoods,” Giarla says. “They are very conceptual but also very decorative. They’re really pretty and people can imagine seeing them in their houses.”
Since then, it’s been one success after another. This past June, Gossel had his largest show to date at The Shooting Gallery. He’s also had shows in New York City, London, and Miami. In October, his first solo show in the Twin Cities will open at the Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis.
The shows have given Gossel, who had only been on a plane once before Giarla’s phone call, the opportunity to travel. But despite these heady successes, Gossel remains a surprisingly grounded Midwesterner who loves to bike, grill out with friends and vacation in Minnesota’s Northwoods. “He’s very humble,” Giarla says. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”
Gossel is cautious enough about the fleeting nature of success that he still works a day or two a week at Sassafrass, even though he can now support himself with his art. Not that it’s a chore to go to the office. “Design is a complex visual problem,” he says. “Doing that work keeps me fresh.”
Inside his studio crammed with silkscreen frames and paint-splattered drop cloths, Gossel is still getting used to the one downside of being a successful artist. “These will be gone soon, and hopefully never come back,” he says, pointing at canvases destined for The Shooting Gallery. “It’s bittersweet to spend so much time with a piece and then to never see it again.”
