ALEXANDER ROSS: Terrestrial Exemplars

The stu­dio of New York artist Alexan­der Ross can best be descibed as a lab­o­ratory where the nat­u­ral and artis­tic worlds collide. His pro­cess is exper­i­mental, but essen­tially simple. Each work begins with his cre­ation of plas­ticine mod­els that sug­gest cellu­lar struc­tures, plants and sci­entific spec­i­mens. After photograph­ing the mod­els and manip­u­lat­ing the result­ing images in Photo­shop, he then paints these newly altered and dig­i­tized ver­sions of real­ity.

Like a micro­bi­o­log­ical sor­cerer’s apprentice he cre­ates worlds that appear to be based on sci­entific accu­racy, but orig­inate entirely in the artist’s imag­ina­tion. The sug­ges­tive power of his paint­ings lies in the the synthe­sis of abs­trac­tion and rep­re­senta­tion, nature and artifice - and his dramatic play with scale. Known for his color palette of muted greens, grays, and blues, Ross’ sensual applica­tion of paint and labored surfaces convey a syn­thetic qual­ity rem­i­nis­cent of sci­ence-fic­tion and unearthly dis­cov­er­ies. At the same time the works evoke landscape and eco­log­ical ele­ments found in the nat­u­ral world. The forms ren­dered in the paint­ings look like com­puter gen­er­ated images, empha­sizing their oth­erworld­li­ness.

Recently, Ross has become inspired by the tra­di­tion of paint­ing en plein air. This new inter­est has expanded his practice in the stu­dio to evoke the spontane­ity and romance of recre­at­ing nature as if he were stand­ing in the midst of it out­doors. For the first time, real­is­tic landscapes appear in his paint­ings as though we are expe­r­i­enc­ing the images from an air­plane or an over­looking mountain. The light and col­ors of these new works are more vibrant but still have the flat graphic qual­ity that is the artist’s signa­ture. They embrace notions of virtu­al­ity, spann­ing from Yves Tan­guy’s iconic skies to the con­tem­po­rary aes­thet­ics of Google Maps.

Nolan Judin are pleased to pre­sent 20 new paint­ings and draw­ings in Terres­trial Exemplars, the gallery’s sec­ond exhi­bi­tion with Alexan­der Ross in Berlin.

Born in Denver, Col­orado in 1960, Alexan­der Ross earned his B.F.A. from Mas­sachusetts Col­lege of Art in 1983. His works have been exhib­ited in muse­ums and gal­ler­ies worldwide since the mid 1990s. In 2005, he was part of the piv­otal group show Remote View­ing at the Whitney Museum of Amer­ican Art, pro­pelling his name into the interna­tional spot­light. The same year, he was hon­ored with a solo show at The Con­tem­po­rary Art Museum in St. Louis that sur­veyed the pre­vi­ous eight years of his work. Many muse­ums, includ­ing the Museum of Mod­ern Art in New York, have acquired his work for their per­ma­nent col­lec­tions.