SANDOW BIRK

Sandow Birk (b. 1962) is a well-traveled American visual artist from Los Angeles whose work explores contemporary American culture in its entirety, using a range of media including painting, drawing, and printmaking. Aside from his art pieces, eight books have been published on his work, and he has produced two films. With a strong focus on social issues, Birk frequently addresses themes such as inner-city violence, graffiti, political matters, travel, prisons, surfing, and skateboarding. His projects are often ambitious and epic in scope, including a series on "The Leading Causes of Death in America" and a portrayal of the invasion and second war in Iraq. He completed a hand-made illuminated manuscript of the Qur'an, transcribing the English text by hand in a personalized font inspired by graffiti while illuminating the pages with scenes of contemporary American life. As Holland Cotter, co-chief art critic for The New York Times, says, "Birk is paying close, complicated attention to what may be the single most important, and least understood, book in the world at present. Just by trying to introduce it to a new audience, and to do so with maximum ease and minimum harm, 'American Qur'an' is an ambitious and valuable undertaking."

Between 1996 and 2001, Birk created a pseudo-historical series entitled "In Smog and Thunder”, describing a "Great War of the Californias" in which Los Angeles and San Francisco wage all-out war for control of California. The culmination of this work came together in exhibitions at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art and the Laguna Art Museum. A book was published followed by a mockumentary made in collaboration with Sean Meredith and Paul Zaloom.

His series of landscape paintings of California's 33 state prisons was exhibited at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in 2001. A book was published on the project, entitled Incarcerated: Visions of California in the 21st Century. In 2002, Birk expanded this project by depicting all of New York State's maximum security prisons in the style of Hudson River School artists from the 19th century. 

In 2005, Birk illustrated the “Divine Comedy,” made a drawing for each of the 100 cantos, and with writer Marcus Sanders created their own contemporary translation. The artist reimagined Gustave Dore's classic engravings into 21st-century imagery. Birk again collaborated with Meredith and Zaloom  – along with Elyse Pignolet – on a feature film of Dante’s “Inferno” shot in the flat paper puppetry style called Toy Theatre. The film was screened at over thirty film festivals (garnering six awards), numerous museums including the Getty, and is part of the MoMA film archive.

Birk is a graduate of Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles. His studies included a semester in Paris at the American College, Paris and Parsons School of Design, as well as a semester at the Bath Academy of Art in England. Further studies included time at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo and Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He was a recipient of an NEA International Travel Grant to Mexico City in 1995 to study mural painting, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, and a Fulbright Fellowship for painting to Rio de Janeiro in 1997. In 1999 he was awarded a Getty Fellowship for painting, followed by a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Fellowship in 2001. In 2007 he was an artist in residence at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2008.

"As a fascinated observer of local customs and art forms, Birk could step outside of his native California culture and prevailing notions of appropriate styles and subjects for contemporary art." – Tyler Stallings

Painters on Paintings
Sandow Birk on John Trumbull
June 19, 2024

Artillery

Gallery Rounds: Sandow Birk

by Randall Davis

April 28, 2022

Art and Cake

Sandow Birk at Track 16

by Shana Nys Dambrot

April 27, 2022

Fabrik Magazine
Sandow Birk: Imaginary Monuments II
by D.Cheng

March 2019

Glasstire
An American Procession and Some Divine Ammunition in Dallas
by C.Copeland

April 27, 2019

ArtBlog
Narrative Paintings Accentuate L.A.’s Complicated History

by D. Kreiger

August 18, 2019

Art and Cake

Sandow Birk’s Depravities and Monuments
by Richard Gleaves

Feb. 4, 2017

RealStyle
Why this piece is more relevant than ever
by N. Piters

June 27, 2017