Gregory Sale is a multidisciplinary artist with a socially-engaged art practice. He considers the involvement or responses of his viewers to be paramount in his partnerships with them. The form and content of his work reflects a hybrid approach which incorporates the wry sensibility of Pop art, along with the optimism of Yoko Ono, the provocation of Happenings, and the raw intensity of art in the age of AIDS.
Sale is currently developing a new project to be featured at the ASU Art Museum in Tempe, Arizona. Opening in February 2011, the three-month project will be the seventh project in the Museum’s Social Studies series that challenges the traditional exhibition format and context by opening with an empty gallery and an artist-in-residence who considers social interaction a crucial part of his artmaking. Sale will produce a learning environment featuring forums, panel discussions, and social actions within the rubric of a social art experiment. The project will provide a framework to examine both Arizona’s criminal justice system and the complex cultural fabric that determines contemporary practices of punishment and discipline.
His work has been presented at Photo Miami; University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; and Arizona State University Art Museum. Recent awards include artist residencies at Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, WY, 2006 and at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, 2007; and Elly Kay Fund Award, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ, 2008. Sale has a MFA in Art from University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, and a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in French Literature from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. He currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Intermedia at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Before that he served as the Visual Arts Director for Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Curator of Education at ASU Art Museum and as a public art project coordinator for the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture.