ALEXANDER ROSS

ALEXANDER ROSS

8 SEPTEMBER - 15 OCTOBER 2022
MILES MCENERY GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT alexander ross's INAuGURAL SOLO EXHIBITION AT THE GALLERY. THE EXHIBITION WILL OPEN ON 8 september AT 520 WEST 21st STREET AND REMAINS ON VIEW THROUGH 15 october 2022. THE EXHIBITION IS ACCOMPANIED BY A FULLY ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE FEATURING AN ESSAY By pilomena epps.
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Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, "Alexander Ross," 8 September - 15 October 2022.
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2020

Oil on canvas

58 x 54 inches

147.3 x 137.2 cm
"The enigmatic and counterintuitive forms rendered in his paintings and drawings, invariably Untitled, elude spectatorial logic and image classification, while they also bend the conventions of art historical categorization. Viewed through the lens of postmodernism, which has eschewed hierarchies and blurred cultural distinctions, Ross’s paintings can be seen to dip in and borrow from surrealism, pop art, and photorealism, without committing to any of these movements."

- Philomena Epps in "Organic Complexity"
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2020

Oil on canvas

46 x 54 inches

116.8 x 137.2 cm
Alexander Ross studio, 2022
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2020

Oil on canvas

58 3/8 x 56 inches

148.3 x 142.2 cm
"Ross has correlated the uninhabited white walls of a gallery to a petri dish, with the empty space functioning as an environment for an intellectual and visual hypothesis to be enacted, through staging an exhibition. The artist’s blank canvas is also like this petri dish, an artificial environment used for cultivation and the act of creative contamination. Whether it is bacteria or oil paint, matter will begin to germinate and multiply through this experimental process."

- Philomena Epps in "Organic Complexity"
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2021

Oil on canvas

58 x 50 inches

147.3 x 127 cm
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2021

Oil on canvas

47 x 60 inches

119.4 x 152.4 cm
"Although Ross worked with plasticine earlier in his career, he now begins by making models using Sculpey polymer clay. A color scheme may have popped into his head—perhaps a flash of tomato red intersecting with a huddle of lime and forest green—and after a quick sketch, he’ll move to the clay. The malleability of this soft plastic allows for an intuitive process led by chance, with the artist playfully squishing, slicing, gouging, twisting, and reassembling the material. After photographing it under differing levels of light exposure, he will then enact a similar digital exercise through cutting, editing, and manipulating the images via Photoshop. The photographs are enlarged or cropped, and made bold and punchy through an emphasis on the accidental and strange arrangements that were produced by the clay work. Through this activity, Ross is searching for a tension between control and confusion. Only when he determines that there is a certain amount of organic complexity from the image—the right balance of color, proportion, shape, shadow, and texture—will he begin to paint."

- Philomena Epps in "Organic Complexity"
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2022

Oil on canvas

60 x 56 inches

152.4 x 142.2 cm
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2022

Oil on canvas

44 x 52 inches

111.8 x 132.1 cm
"There is a vertiginous oscillation between the microscopic and the macrocosmic when Ross’s paintings are viewed in series. The work is precisely scaled in order to dominate the edges of our peripheral vision. In his review of Ross’s work for Art in America, the writer David Coggins observed this changeability. He perceived 'topographies that are otherworldly and eerily familiar, sometimes sharing a domestic sensuality with Edward Weston’s peppers, at other times having a transporting sheen like the surface of a distant planet.'"

- Phiomena Epps in "Organic Complexity"
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2022

Oil on canvas

46 x 36 inches

116.8 x 91.4 cm
ALEXANDER ROSS

Untitled, 2022

Oil on canvas

57 x 51 inches

144.8 x 129.5 cm
ALEXANDER ROSS
Untitled, 2022

Oil on canvas

46 x 40 inches

116.8 x 101.6 cm
Alexander Ross in his studio, 2021, Great Barrington, MA

ALEXANDER ROSS (b. 1960 in Denver, CO) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA.

Ross’ work has most recently been the subject of solo exhibitions including Fiendish Plots, Lincoln, NE; LABspace, Hilldale, NY; David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY; Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France; Nolan Judin, Berlin, Germany; New York Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; and the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

The artist has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions such as The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Garden, Lincoln, MA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY; Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Valencia, Spain; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; P.S.1. Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.

His work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; The British Museum, London, United Kingdom; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, MO; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; and the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

He is the recipient of awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Ross lives and works in Great Barrington, MA.

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ALEXANDER ROSS

8 SEPTEMBER - 15 OCTOBER 2022