ALEXANDER ROSS: SURVEY
March 18 - July 17, 2005

Painting itself is a messy proposition. There’s liquid and spillage, unpleasant smells, waiting for things to dry, and of course–accidents and mistakes. In Alexander Ross’s work I see the work my father labored over for years–micro-biology. I recall as a youth my father bringing home beautiful wooden boxes filled with glass rectangles lined up neatly in velour. On the glass was a tiny speck—Horton Hears a Who?—which was invisible until he put it under the electron microscope. Looking into the glass revealed an enormously messy world. The world was amorphous, yet structured. The world of the cell was enveloping. Ross takes us there—but Ross’s world is au courant. Ross has constructed a world belonging to our time of iPods and Macs. It is very cool—detached—no mess. On the iPod planet, his world could be described as trance or trip.

Paul Ha
Director

Natural Artifice

For his first solo museum exhibition, Massachusetts and New York-based artist Alexander Ross presents paintings and drawings that play with scale, biomorphic forms, and the synthesis of abstraction and representation. As exemplified in the current survey of paintings and drawings dating from the past eight years, Ross’s works are layered with multiple references to organic and biological forms, science and nature, and linger simultaneously between life and artifice.

Ross’s process begins with his creation of plasticine models that suggest cellular structures, plants, scientific specimens, and landscapes. These hand-sculpted forms are essentially “blobs” of clay with crevasses and protrusions that have been shaped into various morphing forms and convey a variety of associations while at the same time remain abstract. Ross photographs the finished forms and then paints and draws from the photographs, which have been cropped and edited, thus further removing the models from their original state. Ross transcends his interpretations of the models from their three-dimensional form to two-dimensional representations on canvas and paper.

Known for his color palette of muted greens, grays, and blues, Ross’s sensual application of paint and labored surfaces convey a synthetic quality reminiscent of science-fiction and unearthly discoveries. At the same time the works evoke landscape and ecological elements found in the natural world. The forms rendered in the paintings look like computer generated images, emphasizing their other worldliness. His shaped canvases suggest the remnants of the original sculpted forms and are evidence of their evolution from the three dimensional realm to an image on a flat surface. The large-scale works envelop the viewer, as if he or she is standing before a magnified cross-section of a natural specimen that has been dissected and carefully examined. The delicately rendered drawings appear as meticulously analyzed samples under a microscope.

Ross’s works are influenced by cultural trends in scientific studies such as biotechnology, genetics, artificial life, topography, and perceptions of cultural advancements in such fields of study. We live in a society of cloning, plastic surgery, and technological advancements that have replaced hand-made objects and manual labor. These advancements cause us to pose, “what is natural? what is artificial? how are they entwined and how does one decipher or choose between the two?” Ross’s works exist in this gap between the natural and artificial, suggesting that, in the contemporary era, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Alexander Ross: Survey is organized by Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and co-curated
by Paul Ha, Director and Andrea Green, Curatorial Assistant.