ROSLYN HARBOR, NEW YORK.-The Nassau County Museum of Art presents Red Grooms: Ruckus in Roslyn, on view through February 5, 2006. Red Grooms is a singular artist, one who is widely treasured for colorful large-scale three-dimensional assemblages and painted installations that reveal boundless good-natured satire and a wryly whimsical pop style that always brings smiles to the faces of viewers. In Red Grooms: Ruckus in Roslyn, curators Constance Schwartz and Franklin Hill Perrell have worked closely with the artist, his gallery, Marlborough, and private collectors to gather examples of Grooms' best-known themes, especially that of the gritty reality of New York City. Never before seen together, these large- and small-scale works in painting and sculpture exemplify a rich range of the artist's interests including entertainment, sports, the work of other artists and, most of all, the enduring scenes and people of the streets of New York.

A highlight of Red Grooms: Ruckus in Roslyn will be Hot Dog Vendor, a 10-foot-high multi-figured “sculpto-pictorama” scenario depicting an enormous umbrella shading a vendor who is serving up street treats to eager customers. Exhibition visitors will also revel in The Bus, a life-size New York City bus filled with passengers inviting the viewer to hop aboard for the ride, and in Grooms’ reinterpretations of famous paintings by Pollock and Picasso.

Born in Tennessee and nicknamed Red for his carrot-colored hair and preference for red clothing, Red Grooms studied at the Chicago Art Institute but, finding it a bit too academic, traveled to Europe to study briefly with Hans Hoffman. Upon his return to New York he met artists such as Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal and Allan Kaprow who were creating “happenings” that explored the intersections of art and theater. Soon Grooms too was performing these unstructured live performance/art events as well as creating films and experimenting in printmaking. By 1960 he had embarked on the lively, mixed-media three-dimensional works that would capture the public’s imagination and bring him fame. Grooms’ work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at major museums and is included in many private and public collections, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Arts, Museum of Modern Art, National Academy of Design among many other important art institutions in this country and abroad.