NYAB Event - Clifford Ross “The Abstract Edge: Photographs, 1996-2001”

Clifford Ross “The Abstract Edge: Photographs, 1996-2001”

RYAN LEE

This event has ended.

RYAN LEE presents The Abstract Edge: Photographs, 1996-2001, a solo exhibition
of work by Clifford Ross featuring two related photographic series: Waves and Grain, shown
together for the first time. This is the artist’s first solo show at the gallery, and serves as a
counterpoint to Landscape Seen and Imagined, a 15-year survey of his work at MASS MoCA on
view May 22, 2015-March 30, 2016.

Both Waves and Grain emerge from the formal language of Minimalism and signal a new
direction in Ross’ work, where he first began to consciously push the photographic realm
from an image-centric medium to one that can present abstraction and experience. Through
inventive and unconventional methods for shooting and printing, Ross is able to construct
pure abstraction and bring forth ideas generally aligned with formalist paintings. The Waves
and Grain series lay the foundation to Ross’ more recent work, including the Mountain and
Hurricane series, which transcend the photographic image into a visceral experience.
The Wave series (1998) are among Ross’ earliest photographic attempts to traverse the gap
between realism and abstraction. “I wanted to make photographs that behaved like waves,” says
Ross. “They needed to be physically assertive themselves, not just exist as pictures of waves.” In
a collision of form and image, the wave is caught between the pure blackness in the foreground,
generated by a strobe light hitting the paper in the darkroom, and the whiteness of the paper
on top, which reads as the sky. This is the first time the complete set of 10 Waves is exhibited
together and includes Wave I deliberately printed at a larger scale than the others.
The Grain series (2001) plumbs the potential depths of abstract photographs captured on a film
camera. Here there is no subject but the medium itself: light and film. The title refers to the
grain from the film’s emulsion. Each work is a variant of tone printed from a single negative, the
result of Ross removing the lens from his camera and photographing directly into the light of
his photographic enlarger. Each photograph in the Grain series is unique and presented as single
panels, diptychs, or triptychs. Each panel is completely uniform in tone, providing a sublime
effect by its sheer purity. Ross compares this effect and the notions of the work directly to Zen
Buddhist contemplation that pushes the viewer back upon him/herself.

Clifford Ross (b. 1952, New York City) received his BA in Art and Art History from Yale University
in 1974. Following an early career in painting and sculpture, Ross began his photographic work
in 1994. His best-known work, the Hurricane series, was begun in 1996 and continues to this
day. In 2002, in order to photograph Mount Sopris in Colorado, Ross invented and patented
his R1 camera and created his Mountain (2002) photographs, which were among the highest
resolution single-shot landscape photographs in the world. Ross’ upcoming mid-career survey
exhibition at MASS MoCA, Landscape Seen and Imagined, will feature both of these series as
well as major new works including a 24 x 114-feet landscape printed on wood, his abstract
Digital Wave Cathedral (2015) built from advanced computer-animated video, an augmented
reality app for smartphones, and an immersive version of his Harmonium Mountain (2010)
video, which will be presented with live musical accompaniment ranging from Wilco to the St.
Luke’s Orchestra. In conjunction with the exhibit, MIT Press will publish two fully illustrated
companion volumes, Hurricane Waves and Landscape Seen and Imagined, with essays by David
Anfam, Quentin Bajac, Phong Bui, Jay Clarke, Arthur Danto, Jack Flam, Nicholas Negroponte,
Jock Reynolds, and Orville Schell. Ross’ work can be found in numerous public collections,
including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the
Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Concurrently on view is work by Gabriel Lester in both RLWindow and RLProject. The
forthcoming gallery exhibition is On The Exactitude of Rain: Maria Antelman, Sari Carel,
MacGregor Harp, James Hoff, Bill Stone, and REAL (The Remote Environmental Assessment Lab)
(July 1-August 28th).

Use #CliffordRoss and #CliffordRossRYANLEE in social media.

Media

• Photography

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