Gregory Volk

The talk derived from a personal view and experiences with contemporary art. Rather than coming from the viewpoint of the critic, Volk’s talk arrived from the standpoint of the general audience or the passionate art viewer.

Gregory Volk is a New York-based art writer, freelance curator, and former Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He writes regularly for Hyperallergic and Art in America, and his articles and reviews have also appeared in many other publications. Among his numerous contributions to exhibition catalogues and books are essays on Vito Acconci, in Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body, 1969-1973 (Charta, 2007); and Icelandic artist Ragna Róbertsdóttir, in Ragna Róbertsdóttir Works 1984-2017 (Distanz Verlag, 2018). His book-length essay on German artist Katharina Grosse appears in the monograph Katharina Grosse (Lund Humphries, 2020), which focuses on the artist’s renowned painting installations. A graduate of Colgate University (B.A) and Columbia University (M.A.), Volk has curated numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad.

Gregory Volk has long been known as an internationaly minded art writer and curator. He first visited Iceland in 1999 and has returned numerous times since then. He has written many texts on Icelandic artists and included Icelandic artists in international exhibitions, including Ragna Róbertsdóttir and Ragnar Kjartansson. He is the current Curator in Residence at the Icelandic Art Center. Volk will discuss his own life-changing experiences with selected contemporary artworks. The talk will not focus only on how artworks are made, how they appear, what they mean, or how they fit into an historical canon – but rather what effect they have and what their intellectual and emotional impact really is. Volk will take examples of artists and artworks from Iceland, the U.S. and elsewhere. Several of these artworks may be delightful and surprising: a sculpture that let one walk on water, a painting made in less than a second, lovely sculptures made by trash falling from the ceiling, and a 64-minute song.