Synthesizing elements of street art, modernist theater, and B-movies, Gronk creates dynamic, politically-charged work that spans mediums and movements. A native Angeleno and autodidact, Gronk began his art practice alongside other self-taught Chicano artists in Los Angeles. He was a founding member of Asco, a conceptual Chicano artist collective which infamously tagged LACMA’s façade with their names in 1972 to protest the museum’s exclusion of Chicano artists. He created the mural Tormenta Cantata, Echoes from the Past, live at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1996, and for the past 20 years, he’s devoted much of his creative talents to set design for the operas staged by Peter Sellars.
These political and theatrical influences saturate Ego Rising, Gronk’s latest solo show at Craig Krull Gallery. The show’s title is a reference to experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, an exploration of the relationship between sex, pain, and power. Gronk considers these themes through images of La Tormenta, a femme fatale figure he’s been painting since the ‘80s, who joins a rich art historical lineage of subjects such as the biblical Judith and Salome—women with physical, and therefore political, power. Gronk’s most recent series of large-scale, expressive Tormenta paintings call on Aristophanes’ tragic comedy Lysistrata, in which the titular character rallies the women of Sparta to refuse all sexual contact with men until they end the Peloponnesian War that had been raging for over twenty years. Created during modern conflicts, Gronk’s Tormentas become powerful agents of peace.