Steve DeFrank
Bronx, NY
Summer 2026 * Art
Artist Statement
I didn’t discover art in museums. I discovered it from a La-Z-Boy and the wacky world of Looney Tunes. Even as a kid, I seemed to have a talent for finding hidden layers of queerness and subversion, almost like deciphering a foreign language. Watching Bugs Bunny in drag kiss Elmer Fudd gave me a peculiar thrill. That tension still sits at the center of my paintings: traditional painting colliding with suburban popular culture. The images come from hours of television, mind-numbing malls, graffiti, cartoons, and an attraction to men that, for a long time, had to be disguised and subverted. I am interested in how a painting can be queer without relying on the usual shorthand. I don’t want glitter, drag queens, or Tom of Finland to do all the work for me. I want the queerness to be built into the painting itself, into its shapes, its relationships, its behavior.
I spend a lot of time looking at graffiti. I read its shapes almost like Mayan glyphs. They can look like displaced pieces of Disney: bulbous, cartoonish forms that seem familiar but refuse to explain themselves. I borrow their fearlessness, awkwardness, and color and combine them with the discipline of academic painting. I think of myself as a figurative painter who doesn’t paint the figure. I use casein, an old milk-based paint, to make work that feels contemporary, cartoonish, urban, suburban, serious, and ridiculous at the same time. I like those contradictions. I never quite know where a painting is going. That is the hair-pulling part and also the reason I keep painting. Eventually I have to stop trying to control it and let the painting tell me what it wants to become.
The artist in the studio.
Works
Clyptic, 2025, casein on panel, 12" x 9" x 2"
Glyphic, 2025, casein on panel, 40" x 30" x 2"
Back door to Now, 2025, casein on panel, 40" x 30" x 2"
Disanthropomorphized, 2024, casein on panel, 20" x 20" x 2"
Clyptographic, 2026, casein on panel, 12" x 9" x 2"
Fluent Forever, 2024,casein on panel, 12" x 9" x 2"
Urgency and Despair Don't Get Along Very Well, 2024, casein on panel, 40" x 30" x 2"
Open Wide, 2026, casein on panel, 12" x 9" x 2"
Moon Reflection, 2025, casein on panel, 40" x 30" x 2"
La Chingada, 2025, Casein on panel, 40" x 30" x 2"
Grid Group. 2022/26, Casein on panels, each painting is 12" x 9" x 2"
Death is a Conspiracy
The artist at work in his studio.
About the Artist
Steve DeFrank is a New York based artist and educator whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, and mixed media. His work reflects an ongoing engagement with material, form, and the possibilities of contemporary art-making, moving fluidly between traditional and experimental approaches.
DeFrank received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Washington University and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts. He has presented his work at The Drawing Center, Islip Museum of Art, Sonnabend Gallery, White Columns, SculptureCenter, the New Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. His work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, The Village Voice, Artforum, ARTnews, and New York magazine. He is a recipient of the Willard L. Metcalf Award and Art Purchase Program Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Read the Interview
Steve DeFrank’s Embrace of the Impossible as a Source of Inspiration
Grant Recipient
Summer 2026 * Art
The artist at work in the studio.
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