Adam Ross

Hales Gallery - London

By Michele Robecchi

Adam Ross is an artist who periodically hops from abstraction to realism. As with many painters, the ostensible reason for doing so resides in his desire to examine his medium of preference and to establish a critical relationship between its two historical representational forms. But there is more. His landscapes are characterized by a deliberate use of strong colors and adventurous compositional configurations - a combination that brings to mind the work of Futurist artists such as Umberto Boccioni and Antonio Sant’Elia mixed with a touch of Neo-Geo on acid. Conversely, his abstract paintings, although equally chromatically explosive, are suspiciously structured. Geometrical grids are juxtaposed with vivid brushstrokes, and although the overall slickness contributes to maintain a fundamentally cohesive aspect, the feeling of visiting a somewhat conflicted area persists.

Adam Ross, The Eternal Space Between #4, 2010, oil, alkyd and acrylic on canvas over board, 47.9” x 37.9.” All images are courtesy of Hales Gallery.

“The Eternal Space Between,” the title of his second solo show at Hales Gallery, as well as of seven out of eight exhibited paintings, summarizes the concept pretty well. Issues like time, space, and form are all addressed in tantalizing fashion within the same restricted place. While elaborated, his canvases are surprisingly direct. The result is genuinely disorienting, and there’s little doubt that part of it can be tracked down to the city of Los Angeles, the environmental setting where Ross chose to operate and the subtext of his inspiration.

Almost 150 years ago Charles Baudelaire wrote in The Painter of Modern Life about the necessity of paintings to be more alive and vibrant than reality because ‘life is always unstable and fugitive.’ Today the world we inhabit is a lot more complex, and Los Angeles, with its irregular architecture, the long highways, film industry, and deep social divisions is possibly the most appropriate location to express this. The contemporary painter is called to respond to the increasing speed of today’s progress and rapid changes of scenario with the most traditional weapon. It’s a daring challenge for an artist, and fortunately one that Adam Ross seems only too happy to take.

(January 14 - February 19, 2011)

Michele Robecchi is an Italian writer and curator based in London. Former managing editor of Flash Art (2001-2004) and senior editor at Contemporary Magazine (2005-2007), he is currently a visiting lecturer at Christie’s Education and an editor at Phaidon Press, where he published monographs on Marina Abramovic, Francis Alÿs, Jorge Pardo, Stephen Shore, and Ai Weiwei.

Filed Under: Reviews