AR 2023 publication by Miles McEnery Gallery

ALEXANDER ROSS

511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

A PLASTIC BUCKET IN THE WOODS: ON THE WORK OF ALEXANDER ROSS By Cassie Packard

To encounter Alexander Ross’s bizarro, category-eliding drawings is to be unsure of what precisely one is seeing: to open oneself, in a sense, to being unsteadied. On the level of basic description, the nine works on paper that comprise Ross’s latest exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery are composed of amorphous forms that appear to have undergone a host of manual material transformations: lumps that are variously squished, wadded, kneaded, stretched, pocked, dented, cratered, incised, and impressed with thumbprint-like concavities, occasionally with flattened circles, like smooth river stones, appended to them. In a testament to the artist’s draftsmanship, the drawings simulate a hardened, gummy texture that attracts and repulses in turn. “I work in a hyperrealistic mode to underscore the forms’ artifice,” says Ross, whose distinctive visual language is informed by a postmodern mix of surrealism, photorealism, and biology. The forms that populate Ross’s drawings bypass classificatory pigeonholes in favor of oscillation’s evasive and expansive pleasures. They visually slip and slide between mineral and plastic, between figurative and abstract. The dimensional masses are pressed, squished, or—in the case of pieces like Shift Wrung (2023), which appears to have been raked by fingers—clawed together so they appear to form an uneven, heterogeneous surface, a strange, lumpy wall of indeterminate scale that is equally likely to encompass a cell or a city. Ross’s amalgamations sit uneasily, as if they are unsure of their purpose or their viability as structures. It is unclear, for example, whether the walls’ component parts were once pliable and plastic and have since hardened into a stable configuration, or if they retain a latent elasticity—and thus the potential to be reshaped and reconfigured, reanimated, even.

Alexander Ross Untitled, 2014 Oil on canvas 90 x 79 inches 228.6 x 200.7 cm

Such a lively lack of resolution, which indeed verges on a kind of animacy, is derived not just from tensions of form but from the push-pull of color. In the late 1990s, Ross began to draw and paint moist green masses that sprawled rhizomatically, as if they were asexually reproducing, against sky-blue grounds. Morphing fluidly between vegetal, cellular, and alien categories, these biomorphic assemblages—which were more freestanding and less dispersed than the shapes that followed—were rendered in hues that ranged from verdant and chlorophyllic to artificial and noxious: gradations of green blurring the lines between the restorative and the poisonous. In works made since then, Ross’s tuberous, tentacular, and globby creations became increasingly barnacled, with fleshy red lumps that conjured up the tumors or warts that a human body might sprout. Playfully courting facial pareidolia, or the human tendency to see faces in objects, some of the more compact masses even featured red and pink protrusions and holes that resembled slightly out-of-place eyes,

Alexander Ross Untitled, 2022 Oil on canvas 41 1/4 x 37 inches 120 x 94 cm

Ross’s latest cycle of drawings, which are akin to a related series of paintings that were exhibited at Miles McEnery Gallery in 2022, expands his palette’s breadth without sacrificing its specificity. The blobby forms populating the works on view are laid down first with watercolor, and then thoughtfully clarified with layers of colored pencil, crayon, and graphite. They appear in wide-ranging hues, which give rise to evocative juxtapositions. Take Robed in the Illusion (2023), in which a pallid pink, indentation-riddled wad that resembles chewed gum—rimmed by a crinkled red ribbon, perhaps sundered from an errant balloon—abuts a smooth mass of stony grey. At the edge of the frame, a volumetric Kelly-green lump recalls the brightly colored plastic holds—cheerfully self-conscious pseudomorphs—used in indoor rock-climbing. In art as in life, the boundaries between organic and synthetic have degraded. In addition to recalling such objects, a number of the forms bear resemblance to topographic maps by dint of their subtle gradations of color and delicate contour lines. Embedded allusions to topography foreground ambiguities of scale. It is unclear whether it is mountains or microorganisms that are being mapped in these drawings. By extension, it is also unclear how to locate our bodies in relation to this unknown terrain, much less how to traverse it.

Underlying questions abound as to how we might classify the works’ content and style according to the binaries and shorthands to which we are accustomed. Are these compositions figurative or abstract? Real or fictive? Graphic or sculptural? And are the forms static or dynamic? Object or environment? Figure or ground? Embracing multiplicity and ambiguity and extending the visual plasticity of the forms into a kind of broader ethos, the answer of the works to all of these questions seems to be a winking yes. “I think about the macrocosm and the microcosm—for example, aerial views of landscapes, with their caverns and canyons and fissures, and what happens under a microscope—and I see how those things are intimately connected,” says Ross. “To that end, I’m interested in the confusion of the senses and the confusion of understanding, and the complexity of that confusion.”

Such fecund confusions, transpositions, and translations—of scale, material, and meaning—are embedded in Ross’s idiosyncratic working process. In the early years of his art-making practice, Ross explains, the objects that he painted and drew sprang directly from his mind. After noting that the forms originating in his imagination often looked as if they were made of clay, he began to experiment with building biomorphic clay models. He found that they provided him with particularly rich visual imagery, suggesting that the material world was perhaps even stranger than what could be imagined. The artist, who worked with Plasticine before moving to Sculpey, constructs these tabletop maquettes fluidly, embracing accidents and surprises as he cuts, folds, stacks, and positions the material. After taking photographs of the models, he makes minor adjustments in Photoshop and crops the images to create a composition that, he explains, “feels challenging yet cohesive.” Printouts of the images—clay turned pixels turned paper—become the basis for Ross’s oil paintings and drawings (the latter of which typically involve some combination of graphite, watercolor, colored pencil, crayon, and, on occasion, Flashe). Implicit in these generative scramblings is a rejection of notions of medium purity, an interest in the tension between materiality and representation, and an inquiry into the ways that images change and warp as they circulate, including through digital channels.

Giorgio Morandi Natura morta (Still Life), 1956 Oil on canvas 13 3/4 x 17 11/16 inches 35 x 35 cm Private Collection

The artist has doggedly worked in this mode for over two decades, during which his commitment to depicting an array of enigmatic agglomerations has amounted to a kind of world-building. While science fiction and biology are critical reference points in this world-building project, his repeated return to the subject of the biomorphic clay model—which is effectively a still life—also reads as a formalist exercise in perception for which there are a number of important art historical precedents. Ross often looks to the work of the Italian painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964), who painstakingly limned bottles and vessels against subdued backdrops in quiet interiors for over four decades. “One day I got it,” says Ross, who first encountered Morandi’s work when he was in high school. “I saw the power of focusing like that, and how a still life could be a philosophical investigation. They’re bottles, but they’re not bottles; they’re paint, they’re a mind, they’re thinking, they’re perception.” Ross recalls the perceptual shift that accompanied his own chance encounter with a vessel: not one of the thin-necked bottles beloved by Morandi, but a bright blue plastic bucket surrounded by ferns and rocks that he stumbled upon in the woods. “This bucket was so out of place, like a crumb from outer space,” Ross says. “There

was a moment of trying to reconcile it: How can this be in our world? What is it? Where did it come from? Why is here? It felt like plastic that grew.” In approaching Ross’s new drawings as tangled aggregates of organic and inorganic materials—a proverbial bucket in the woods, a picture of our times—we might also think to plastiglomerates, a new kind of Anthropocenic rock that organically arises from agglutinated natural debris and molten plastic. Even as species perish due to anthropogenic climate change (all that plastic!), nature is constantly inventing new forms. “We create these categories that label things as manmade or inorganic, but they’re part of this continuous thing,” says Ross, whose drawing Everything Is Nature (2023) depicts wrinkled and nicked forms pressed so tightly together that they virtually interlock. “I believe that everything is nature, and everything we do, even the destructive things, are an extension of that. Nature will always find new voids to fill, things to try.”

Cassie Packard is a Brooklyn-based art writer with bylines in publications including Artforum, ArtReview, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, and frieze. She is the author of Art Rules (Frances Lincoln, 2023), has contributed to art books and catalogues, and is the recipient of several fellowships.

Another Aspect of the Presentation, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 14 3/4 x 14 1/4 inches 37.5 x 36.2 cm

Everything is Nature, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 16 x 11 5/8 inches 40.6 x 29.5 cm

Intelligence Restructuring, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 12 1/2 x 17 inches 31.8 x 43.2 cm

Interdepend, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 15 x 11 inches 38.1 x 27.9 cm

Modeling the Physical, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 22 1/8 x 18 1/4 inches 56.2 x 46.4 cm

Potential Buds, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 15 x 11 inches 38.1 x 27.9 cm

Reality Sponge, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 25 1/4 x 22 1/4 inches 64.1 x 56.5 cm

Robed in the Illusion, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 12 5/8 x 11 inches 32.1 x 27.9 cm

Shift Wrung, 2023

Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper 15 x 11 inches 38.1 x 27.9 cm

ALEXANDER ROSS Born in 1960 in Denver, CO Lives and works in Great Barrington, MA EDUCATION 1983 BFA, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2023 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

2022 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2019 “Other Drawings,” FIENDISH PLOTS, Lincoln, NE 2016 “Paintings and Drawings,” LABspace, Hillsdale, NY 2014 “Recent Terrestrials,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY 2013 “Recent Paintings and Drawings,” Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France 2012 “Terrestrial Examplars,” Nolan Judin, Berlin, Germany 2011 “Collage Drawings,” New York Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY

“Recent Paintings,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY 2010 “Paintings and Drawings,” Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France 2008 “Drawings 2000-2008,” Nolan Judin, Berlin, Germany “Recent Drawings,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY “New Work,” Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY 2007 “Wall at WAM,” Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA 2006 “Recent Work,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2005 “Recent Paintings and Drawings,” Feature Inc., New York, NY “Survey,” Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO Feature Inc., New York, NY 2004 “New Paintings,” Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL “Preview of New Paintings,” Feature Inc., New York, NY 2003 “Paintings and Drawings,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Paintings and Drawings,” Feature Inc., New York, NY “New Paintings,” Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL

2001 “Recent Drawings,” Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL 2000 “Recent Work,” Feature Inc., New York, NY 1999 “Paintings,” Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY 1998 “Paintings,” Feature Inc., New York, NY GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2022 “Odd Angles/Strange Angels,” The Bransford Octagon, Catskill, NY 2021 “I REMEMBER... REMEMBER?,” Private Public Gallery, Hudson, NY “Dissecting the Cyborgian Swamp Thang,” Super Dutchess, New York, NY “The Magic Garden,” LABspace, Hillsdale, NY “The Power of 10,” Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Woodstock, NY 2019 “They Are Made of Meat,” Platform Space, Brooklyn, NY “Escape,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “Further,” George Gallery, Brooklyn, NY “Shapeshifter,” Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, CA “Among Friends,” The Clemente, New York, NY “A Fairly Secret Army,” wildpalms, Düsseldorf, Germany “Blue In Green,” Platform Space, Brooklyn, NY

2018 “The Cosmic Garden,” Orticolario, Cernobbio, Italy “The Nature Lab,” LABspace, Hillsdale, NY “Matereality,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA 2017 “The Secret Life of Plants,” Freight + Volume, New York, NY “Taconic North,” LABspace, Hillsdale, NY 2016 “Drawing Room” (curated by Markus Dochantschi), David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY “Future Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene,” University Art Museum, University of Albany, Albany, NY 2015 “Influence” (curated by Oliver Wasow), Kleinert/ James Center for the Arts, Woodstock, NY “The Guston Effect,” Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA 2014 “Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior” (curated by Phong Bui), Red Bull Studios, New York, NY 2013 “Come Together: Surviving Sandy Year 1” (curated by Phong Bui), Industry City, Brooklyn, NY “Weinberg Gallery 40th Anniversary Show,” Ambach & Rice, Los Angeles, CA “Imprinted Pictures,” Cheymore Gallery, Tuxedo Park, NY “PRISMfence,” Ursa Major, Great Barrington, MA

2012 “THING” (curated by Susan Jennings), West Cornwall, CT “Summer,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY 2011 “MELT,” Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY 2010 “Pastorale” (curated by Klaus Kertess), 80 Washington Square East Gallery, New York, NY “Summer Group Show,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY

2009 “Morphological Mutiny: Steve DiBenedetto, Alexander Ross, and James Siena,” Nolan Judin, Berlin, Germany; traveled to David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY “Drawing Itself: A Survey of Contemporary Practice,” Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT “Extreme Frontiers/Urban Frontiers,” Valencian Institute of Modern Art, Valencia, Spain “NY Masters,” Galerie Richard, Paris, France “Slough,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY 2007 “Drawing Anyone?” Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO “In Monet’s Garden: The Lure of Giverny,” Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH “Horizon,” The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY “Neo-Integrity,” Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY 2006 “Three Exhibitions Regarding Nature,” Feature Inc., New York, NY

“Surrealism, Then and Now,” Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY “Twice Drawn,” Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY “The 2006 DeCordova Annual Exhibition,” deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA “Frontiers: Collecting the Art of Our Time,” Worcester Art Museum, Worchester, MA 2005 “Remote Viewing,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; traveled to Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO “Realism and Abstraction: Six Degrees of Separation,” Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO “Survey,” Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO “Alexander Ross + Wayne Gonzalez,” Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C. 2004 “Our Grotesque” (curated by Robert Storr), SITE, Santa Fe, NM “Colored Pencil,” Kerry Schuss Art, New York, NY “Drawing II (Selected),” G-Module, Paris, France “Endless Love,” D.C. Moore Gallery, New York, NY “SITE Sante Fe’s Fifth International Biennial,” SITE Santa Fe, Sante Fe, NM 2003 “Giverny,” Salon 94, New York, NY “Mighty Graphitey,” Feature Inc., New York, NY “Nature Boy,” Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, NY “On Line,” Feigen Contemporary, New York, NY “Ballpoint Inklings,” Kerry Schuss Art, New York, NY

2002 “Invitational Exhibition of Painting & Sculpture,” American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY “Miss Universe,” Galerie Art: Concept, Paris, France “Ballpoint Inklings,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “Group Drawing Show,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL “Painting and Illustration,” Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Los Angeles, CA 2001 “Arte Contemporaneo Internacional,” Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico “Works of SOLO Impression,” Myers School of Art, University of Akron, OH “Luck of the Drawn,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “Synth” (organized by Leo Villareal), White Columns, New York, NY “Painting/Not Painting” (curated by Peter Rostovsky and Rachel Urkowitz), White Columns, New York, NY “Miss Universe,” Galerie Art: Concept, Paris, France 2000 “Drawings & Photographs,” Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY “Drawing,” Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, United Kingdom “Alex8,” Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL “Paper Trail Pt. 2,” SHAHEEN Modern and Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH “Grok Terence McKenna Dead,” Feature Inc., New York, NY

“00: Drawings 2000,” Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY “Useful Indiscretions: works on paper,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “23rd Benefit Auction Exhibition,” New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY “Almost Something: Depictive Abstraction,” Catherine Moore Fine Art, New York, NY “Anp City Projects,” Cokkie Snoei, Rotterdam, The Netherlands “Hairy Forearm’s Self-Referral,” Feature Inc., New York, NY “Group Exhibition,” M du B, F, H & G, Montreal, Canada “Greater New York,” P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY “Superorganic Hydroponic Warfare,” Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY “Group Show” (curated by Ross Bleckner), Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden 1999 “1999 Drawings,” Alexander and Bonin, New York, NY “Pictorial Abstraction,” Temple Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “What Big Is,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “Alexander Ross and Lucky DeBellevue,” Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, United Kingdom “Curious Parking @ Stupendous Strawberry,” S & H DeBuck, Ghent, Belgium “Cookie Snow Feature Inc.,” Cokkie Snoei, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 1998 “Art on Paper,” Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC “WOp: works on/off paper” Anp, Antwerp, Belgium

“Paper View,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “Spectacular Optical,” Thread Waxing Space, New York, NY “View 3” (curated by Klaus Kertess), Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY 1997 “Swamp Thing” (curated by Joel Beck), Salon 75, Brooklyn, NY “New American Talent: The Thirteenth Exhibition” (curated by Robert Storr), University of North Texas Art Gallery, Denton, TX; traveled to Texas Fine Arts Association at Center Space, Austin, TX

1996 “Relief Pieces,” Feature Inc., New York, NY “Ab Fab,” Feature Inc., New York, NY “A4 Favours” (curated by Pádraig Timoney), Three Month Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom Gramercy International Contemporary Art with Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY AWARDS 2020 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY

2006 The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, New York, NY 2002 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, New York, NY 2000 American Artists at Giverny Residency Grant, New York, NY Art Production Fund, Brooklyn, NY 1998 The Tesuque Foundation Artist Fellowship Grant, San Mateo, CA SELECT COLLECTIONS Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL British Museum, London, United Kingdom Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, MO Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY

2012 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant, New York, NY Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

2010 New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship, New York, NY

Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI

Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

ALEXANDER ROSS 14 December 2023 – 3 February 2024 Miles McEnery Gallery 511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2023 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2023 Cassie Packard Photo credit: p. 9: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome Courtesy David Zwirner Publications and Archival Associate Julia Schlank, New York, NY Photography by Dan Bradica, New York, NY Catalogue layout by Spevack Loeb, New York, NY ISBN: 979-8-3507-2327-4 Cover: Modeling the Physical, (detail), 2023