NYAB Event - Alex Gross "Product Placement"

Alex Gross "Product Placement"

Jonathan LeVine Gallery

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Jonathan LeVine Gallery presents Product Placement, a series of new paintings and mixed media works by Los Angeles-based artist Alex Gross, in what will be his third solo exhibition at the gallery.

In Product Placement, Gross expands upon themes that have appeared in his prior work. Branding, Consumption, Celebrity, Globalism, Love, and Mortality are just a few of the points being addressed in this group of 19 new oil paintings on canvas, panel and paper. Dramatic cloudscapes and erupting volcanoes coexist with pixelated faces, floating bubbles and smartphones, in a postmodern hybrid of advertising, propaganda and surrealism.

Gross layers his finely rendered paintings with a wide array of imagery—from the exotic, like moths, lizards and cyclops’—to the mundane, like laundry detergent, cigarettes, hot dogs and Coca-cola. Brand names such as Fendi, Dior, RVCA and Volcom are featured prominently in more than half of the works, hence the title of the exhibition. Typographic elements in a variety of languages appear throughout the work, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and English, accentuating the universality of the artist’s subject matter.

In conjunction with Product Placement, the artist will release a new book published by Gingko Press, entitled Now And Then, The Cabinet Card Paintings of Alex Gross, which features 98 mixed media paintings done over the last four years. Gross’ Cabinet Cards are a series of works painted on antique Victorian photographs dating from the 1880s—early 1900s. Using oils, acrylics and a bit of collage, Gross re-imagines each of these portrait subjects in a new form, referencing comic book characters, classic television and film characters and various other pop culture icons.

Alex Gross is currently based in Los Angeles, California. In 1990, he received a BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. In the summer of 2007, Gross’ first retrospective museum show was held at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California. Gross is a recipient of the prestigious Artist Fellowship from the Japan Foundation, and several faculty grants from Art Center College of Design. In 2011, his work was featured in the ABC series Castle, appearing regularly in several episodes. In 2006, Chronicle Books published The Art of Alex Gross, the artist’s first monograph. Discrepancies, Gross’ second fine art book was published by Gingko Press in 2010, and accompanied an exhibition of the same name. 2012 sees the release of the artist’s third fine art book, entitled Now And Then, The Cabinet Card Paintings of Alex Gross. Published by Gingko Press, Now And Then contains 98 mixed media paintings on antique photographs.