Grey Crawford

Angular Dynamics

Grey Crawford | Józef Robakowski

Exhibition: 14 September – 11 November 2023

Opening: Friday, 15 September 2023, 6 – 9 pm

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 34, 10969 Berlin

For this year’s Berlin Art Week, Persons Projects is proud to present the duo exhibition Angular Dynamics focused on early experiments with photography and film. As both media were oriented more toward image making, a lens-based practice of capturing what was in front of the camera, these kinds of experimentations were ground-breaking for later developments. This exhibition focuses on how these two experimental artists, Grey Crawford and Józef Robakowski, both from different political and artistic cultures, used their chosen mediums as a means to create and challenge the accepted borders of what art was at the time.

Grey Crawford | Chroma Figura 1978–84

Opening: Friday, 29 April 2022, 6 – 9 pm

Book signing: Saturday, 30 April 2022, 3 pm

Exhibition: 28 April – 25 June 2022

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

During Gallery Weekend Berlin 2022.

Persons Projects is proud to present Grey Crawford’s solo exhibition, Chroma Figura, which focuses upon his previously unseen color works from 1978-1984.
The Southern California art scene of the 1970s and early 80s radiated with an energy that was unparalleled to any other time it had ever experienced. This cultural pulse could be felt in everything from ceramics to the Chicano art movement and this acute sense for creativity was never more evident than in the various art schools that surrounded the LA basin. Chasing an MFA in Southern California during the 1970s, whether it be at the Claremont Graduate University, where Grey Crawford attended, or any other Grad school in California, felt more like attending an event than being exposed to the rigors of academia. The Open Studio Concept, championed by Roland Reiss at Claremont Graduate University, and John Baldessari at CalArts reflected the creative spirit that was driving the times.
This exhibition introduces his Chroma Figura series and focuses upon his breakthrough, highly original color works. In seven years, the artist created over 200 works. This selection of photographs represents an extension of Crawford’s interest in using masked geometric basic shapes we first saw in his black and white Umbra series. These photographic images still reflect his painterly roots inspired by two of California’s hard-edge painters Karl Benjamin and John McLaughlin, yet Crawford’s experimentations add a new dimension to this ongoing dialogue. Most importantly, they now establish and give credit to Crawford’s uniqueness.

Framed. Activities for the Camera

Grey Crawford | Hilla Kurki | KwieKulik | Józef Robakowski

Opening: Friday, 29 October 2021, 5 – 8 pm

Exhibition: 29 October 2021 – 5 March 2022

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects proudly presents the group exhibition Framed. Activities for the Camera, focusing on the correlation between performance and photography.
Performance as an art form, beginning in the mid-20th century, has been used and developed by contemporary artists through their use of photography as their primary tool for recording their ideas and actions. Understandably, performance art needs photography to be able to last. Yet, photography plays an even more important role, not only as a means for the documentation but especially when the performance is staged solely for the camera. This exhibition presents a selection of artists who recorded their actions specifically for this reason.

Searching for the Shapes Within

Exhibition: 21 November 2020 – 6 March 2021
Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

The Art World of the 1960-70’s experienced a healthy transformation in perception with the emergence of Performance and Land Art. These new modes of artistic expression challenged the traditional white cube scenario of what art is and how it should be exhibited. Using our natural environment as its own stage for creative interpretations in whatever form, helped in laying the foundations in how art is perceived in this century.
Searching for the Shapes Within is a group exhibition presented by Persons Projects, that focuses on the earth as a common base for these different artistic interventions. What we see, breathe and stand on is part of the natural world we build our state of being from. Yet in reality it’s a combination of numerous elements and shapes all converging together to form an environment that’s in constant flux. What all these artists share in common is a mutual sense for experimentation that creates new frames for thought. Their works form a 50-year timeline, beginning in the early 1970’s up until the present, that engages in a joined dialogue that spans from California, Iceland, Finland, Poland to Israel

watch video tour

Grey Crawford - Finding Bones

Opening: 28 April 2017, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition: 29 April – 24 June 2017

Finding Bones is more than just the introduction of a newly rediscovered body of work by Grey Crawford. It’s an anthology of photographs that embody the creative spirit that was prevalent throughout the Los Angeles art scene at the time. Southern California in the early 1970’s was an island of its own creation. A mixture of surf and sea, concrete highways winding around an ever-changing cultural climate that was challenging our assumptions of what art is. It was a moment of new beginnings in various medias.