Andrew Ross
Bucket of Truth
September 22 - November 4, 2023
EXTENDED until November 11, 2023
Reviewed by William Corwin for The Brooklyn Rail
Varied states of aliveness permeate the collaged layers of Andrew Ross’s first solo exhibition at Kai Matsumiya Fine Arts Gallery, Bucket of Truth. With a focus on depicting singular objects, his newest paintings evoke opposing modalities of memento mori and the commonplace as represented art historically in genre scenes. Ross animates the everyday, albeit peculiar, vessels that surround us, such as milk crates, fruit, and organs at the butcher shop. These painted works invite observers on a contemplative journey through the enigmatic intersection of existence, decay, and re-animation.
The exhibition commences with an evocative glimpse—a lamb's heart, suspended in a butcher's shop, its inexorable decay imbued with profound significance through Ross's discerning lens. This temporal journey persists as we encounter the yellowed black and white photograph of A. Rosenberg, a grandfather that the viewer and Ross confront in nescience. The ancestor’s memory simultaneously exists through speculative whims and detached uncertainty.
Through meticulous techniques involving printing, collaging, stenciling, and painting, Ross transmutes ostensibly mundane objects into captivating visual stories. The resulting images, compellingly manipulated and distorted, evoke a strange sense of recognition. Each piece becomes a fragmented portal, capturing fleeting moments that hover between playful significance and happenstance.
Ross's artworks, crafted from cutouts that cast uncertainty over the whole, offer a tactile experience rich with the interplay between presence and absence, form and void. The application of paint infused with marble dust on buffed disjointed layers is perhaps a nod to Ross's sculptural inclinations. Reflecting his three-dimensional works, the paintings within Bucket of Truth breathe a semi-emergent vitality into their constituent geometric shards and photographic remnants, reminiscent of the intricate inner workings of a makeshift machine. These subjects, or rather the component parts that compose them, are imbued with a semblance of life in mediated form.
Ross’s latest works extend his capacity to rekindle dormant memories and reassembled fragmented resurrections. Each piece, a vignette, invites viewers to contemplate the intricate tapestry of memory, existence, and rebirth. Bucket of Truth encourages us to uncover the concealed vicissitudes and re-awakenings that weave themselves into the fabric of daily life.
Andrew Ross (b. 1989, Miami, FL) is a multimedia artist based in New York. Solo exhibitions of Ross’ work have been held at Clima Gallery (Milan), False Flag (NY), American Medium (NY), Signal Gallery (NY), Heimbold Visual Art Center at Sarah Lawrence College (NY), and the Gelb Gallery at Phillips Andover Academy (MA). He has been featured in group exhibitions at The Drawing Center (NY), Artists Space (NY), The Studio Museum of Harlem (NY), Greene Naftali (NY), and Kai Matsumiya (NY). Ross has attended numerous residencies and fellowships including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, ME), Atelier Mondial (Basel, Switzerland), International Studio & Curatorial Program, (Brooklyn, NY), and Triangle Arts Association (Brooklyn, NY).
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