photo is by Barron Claiborne
David Aaron Greenberg is an artist, poet, singer-songwriter, curator, and art critic whose multidisciplinary work spans music, literature, and visual art. Greenberg began his creative career performing poetry on bills with Allen Ginsberg at legendary New York venues, including the Nuyorican Poets Café and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. He is the author of two poetry collections: Feeling Gravity’s Pull (Soft Skull Press, 1994) and Trap Poems & Lit Drawings (Trops Publishing, 2023). His writing has appeared in Long Shot, Rolling Stone, Parkett, Frank 151, The Fader, Art in America, and even the Ralph Lauren Polo catalogue. As a musician, Greenberg is the founder, singer, and guitarist of the NYC indie rock band Pen Pal, which released its album Best Boy in 1996 and toured extensively across the United States throughout the late 1990s. In 1999, he partnered with producer and composer David Sisko to form the New York City-based duo Disco Pusher, co-writing for a wide range of international artists, including reggae icon Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals and Brooklyn-born artist Sandflower. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Greenberg played a meaningful role in the New York’s downtown cultural scene. In the early ’90s he curated performance events at CB’s Gallery featuring notable figures such as Herbert Huncke, Taylor Mead, Tuli Kupferberg, and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. As an independent curator, he presented exhibitions at the Pat Hearn Gallery alongside Diego Cortez, as well as numerous pop up shows in Chelsea. In 2003 he founded mad little gallery, a conceptual space devoted to smaller-scale artworks, where he organized exhibitions with artists, including Darren Bader, Melissa Brown, Jon DeCola, George Condo, Ryan McGinley, and Dash Snow. Later, in the late 2000s, he co-curated Casual Disco, a monthly art and music salon in Chinatown showcasing artists such as Brian Belott, Lance de los Reyes, Carlton DeWoody, and Mordechai Rubinstein. Greenberg’s own drawings and paintings have been exhibited at galleries throughout New York City. His portrait of Allen Ginsberg is held in the permanent collection at Stanford University, and his artwork appears in numerous private collections, including those of Diego Cortez and John Cheim. He is the co-author of Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith (Andy Warhol Museum) and has contributed essays to catalogues for artists, including Donald Baechler and Roy Nachum. A graduate of Rutgers University and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, David Aaron Greenberg currently lives in New Jersey and maintains a presence in New York City.
