Alexander Ross Recent Drawings
David Nolan Gallery
This event has ended.
David Nolan Gallery presents exhibition of new drawings by Alexander Ross that move between representation and abstraction to explore issues of looking, as enhanced and distorted with the aid of machines. During his residency in Giverny in 2000, Ross found himself working along the left banks of the Seine River in the rural countryside that inspired Monet and could be considered the heart of Impressionism. Ross’s lifelong fascination with the emerging sciences flourished here, as he began borrowing from life outside his window to inform his palette and process. He set up a microscope on his drafting table to study his samples, treating the canvas as a scientist would: to record, manipulate, speculate, ponder, measure and store highly maintained visual data. But the resulting hyperclear articulations are not to be trusted. Their lushness has the feel of a squeaky, synthetic virtual reality.
Ross introduced the microscope to his working process to achieve a higher intellectual and visual clarity, while distancing himself, as author, from the material. He works from what he sees through the lens to render the relationships of light and movement on paper or in clay. Acid, eucalyptus, olive, pea, beryl, malachite, true viridian and soylent green line up purposefully in neat Morandi-like
rows, or shift in controlled molecular patterns that seem to germinate out of one another.
For this series Ross begins his work by sculpting clay models, which he then draws from, or alternatively, photographs before working on paper. In some instances, he edits the images of these models on Photoshop. A 67-foot inkjet mural currently on display at the Renaissance Court Wall at the Worcester Art Museum explains how far Ross can go. In the end, it is uncertain whether we are experiencing the privilege of an enlightened truth or a technological fantasy.
Media
Schedule
from March 22, 2008 to April 19, 2008
Opening Reception: March 22, 6-8pm