Erik Parker

B. 1968, Stuttgart, DE. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA.

Like a visual freestyle, Parker’s work seamlessly combines elements of contemporary culture into a narrative flow of politics, music, internet memes, hallucinatory dreams, conspiracy theories, and the hieroglyphics of various subcultures. Rebellious and youthful and packed with reference material, his works exploit today’s familiar feeling of ocular bombardment through a cacophony of visual sources including advertising and social media. In his employment of overwhelming content, Parker is able to poignantly comment on the human condition — what it means to be human specifically in this time, in this place, and with these politics.

Born in 1968 in Stuttgart, Germany, Parker was raised in San Antonio, Texas. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996 and a Master of Fine Arts from SUNY Purchase in 1998. Parker has been awarded several honors throughout his career, including the Durhurst Family Scholarship (1997), Rose Scholarship (1997), and the Rema Hort-Mann Foundation Grant (1999).

Parker has had solo exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world, including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; De Appel, Amsterdam; and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX. His work is in numerous important international collections including The Brooklyn Museum, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Montreal, Canada; and Faurschou Foundation, Copenhagen, DK.