Alexandra Grant Exhibition

Miles McEnery Gallery (520 W 21st St.)

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Miles McEnery Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Alexandra Grant, on view at 520 West 21st Street.

The exhibition features monumental new paintings from Grant’s ongoing series, Antigone 3000. Beginning this series in 2014, Grant takes inspiration from Sophocles’ classic Athenian tragedy—most prominently Antigone’s quote, “I was born to love, not to hate.” The proclamation weaves its way throughout the work, rendered through the lens of Grant’s prolific use of text, both echoing and questioning the innate decency of humanity.

These paintings mark a departure from earlier iterations of the series as Grant abandons her prior use of structural guides for an energetic spontaneity. “The compositions have exploded (or perhaps imploded) this structure, and there is a dizzyingly satisfying sense of compression and expansion,” writes Bancroft. “The architectonic superstructure has given way to amorphous accretions, palimpsests, and patterns—shattering the strictures to a sense of freedom or liberation… These six works are at once a structural breakdown and a breakthrough.”

Riddled with concentric dots, striped beams, and cascading drips, each full-bodied canvas hums with rhythm and movement. Inky pools of pigment appear portal-esque, superseding instances of cosmically speckled foreground. Washes of color give way to arabesques of graphic line. Instances of text simultaneously pop and recede with the hero’s words reverberating throughout. The sheer force and feeling of Grant’s compositions act as a sounding board, demanding attention to the contemporary urgency of Antigone’s mantra.

Alexandra Grant (b. 1973 in Fairview Park, OH) received her Master of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts and her Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College. Grant is the co-founder of X Artists’ Books and the founder of grantLOVE, a philanthropic project to raise awareness and funding for various nonprofits through the gift and sale of her LOVE artwork.

Recent solo exhibitions include “Mantra,” Positive Art Center, Seoul, South Korea; “Telepathy is One Step Further Than Empathy,” Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA; “Born to Love,” Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles, CA; “Shadows,” Galerie Gradiva, Paris, France; “ghost town,” Galería Marco Augusto Quiroa en Casa Santo Domingo, Antigua, Guatemala; and “Shadows,” Ochi Gallery, Sun Valley, ID.

Grant’s work has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museo Archeologico di Amelia, Italy; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO; and the USC Fisher Museum, Los Angeles, CA.

Her work may be found in the collections of Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museo Santo Domingo, Antigua, Guatemala; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; and the Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA.

The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.