Erik Foss (b. 1973, Elgin, Illinois) was raised in the desert outside Phoenix, Arizona, and moved to New York on Halloween 1996, where he still lives and works. Self taught, he came up through skateboarding, underground music and the DIY gallery scene, and works across painting, sculpture, photography and installation. The recent paintings are airbrushed in neon, built around snakes and cobras that carry the visual memory of 1970s van art, and studded with the debris of American pop culture: smiley faces, rainbows, a landscape dropped in the background. The kitsch is the point, and it is how he says where he comes from.
In 2002 Foss co founded Lit Lounge and its adjoining Fuse Gallery in the East Village, running it until 2015 and organising more than 180 exhibitions, including H. R. Giger's first New York solo show in over a decade.
Solo exhibitions include Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, Castor Gallery and PADRE in New York, Paul Loya Gallery in Los Angeles and Gallery Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm. He has been included twice in the juried group exhibitions of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which acquired two canvases, one of them now in the collection of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. His cobra design was used by Supreme, and his work has been covered by Artforum and the New York Times.
In 2024 Foss took part in Triumph Over Self at Plan X Milan, alongside DotPigeon and Canyon Castator.
