NYAB Event - Sheila Ross "{I am} just the birds in the grass..."

Sheila Ross "{I am} just the birds in the grass..."

A.I.R. Gallery

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A.I.R. Gallery announces a solo exhibition of new photographs by Sheila Ross: {I am} just the birds in the grass...

Ross’ recent body of photographs transforms our view of the natural world so that we see its aliveness anew. The infrared film used captures a wavelength beyond our normal visual spectrum. Such a shift in tonality gives the viewer a sense of rediscovering the once familiar flora. Furthermore, the interaction of film type and local conditions causes the very air to appear visible, a vortex of energy out of which plants crystallize in the moment of our glance.

The artist relates: “The camera captures what we find hard to see, although meditation practice and quantum physics agree that it is true: we are not separate from the phenomenal world. The observed cannot be separated from the observer. We are just the birds in the grass.”

The point of view—close up, at ground level with shallow depth of field—is indeed that of a bird in the grass, immediate and intimate. The images themselves, with their range of gentle grays and rich blacks, absorb some of the character of their taking: at dawn as the plants reveal themselves to the still-naked eye, and at night, the fleeting life of flowers.

Sheila Ross is an installation artist and photographer living and working in New York City. Originally from England, she trained at the sculpture school of St. Martin’s School of Art in London. She has since shifted from the physicality of concrete materials to focus on light and space, using the mediums of video and photography.