ALICIA ROSS: HOT
MESS
October 22 -
November 21, 2010
Opening Reception:
Friday, October 22, 6-9pm
Black & White
Gallery, Brooklyn, NY is proud to present Hot Mess by Alicia Ross, the
artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.
In Hot Mess, Alicia Ross explores the
mechanism of the consensual production of symbolic values. She passionately
tackles difficult subject matter and taboos within society and presents them as
naked truth. The works’ often provocative appearances highlight the
artist's ongoing exploration of ideas surrounding conflicting views of
feminine identity in the contemporary society and the ubiquitous
virtuous/voracious societal impulses towards the female form. Ross
appropriates images from online media sources and digitally translates them into
cross-stitched constructions, using the sewing machine as a drawing tool. The
finished pieces reflect a fusion between hand-made traditions and digital
aesthetics.
The exhibition centers around the series
Phrenology Studies (2010), a group of 14 abstracted cross-stitched head
studies of media-made female celebrities.The series was inspired by the basic
theory and aestheticts of the debunked pseudoscience of phrenology which
associated the shape and look of one's skull with the person's moral character
—“reading” the surface of the head to determine personality,
morality or character and illustrating with a map of the head. All portraits are
appropriated from online news sources depicting various celebrity women. These
women, many household names, reflect society's finicky praise of some who
seemingly stray from societal norms while condemning others for similar
behavior. Juxtapositions astutely point out these inconsistencies like the
Octomom, Michelle Duggar and Kate Gosselin. Moreover, several head studies
embody the madonna/whore conflict, which has been so prevalent in other works by
Ross.
The exhibition also includes other works, such as
Motherboard_11
(Down Boy) (2010), Philosophy
Devouring Uranus, (2009) and
Motherboard_8 (2008) with some of the figures remidiated from
pornography sites, others appropriated from sites that display famous works of
art and fashion websites.
Over the last decade, Alicia Ross has been focusing
her artistic practice on questioning the public dissection of female roles by
the media and society at large. Her work has evolved to encompass various facets
of female identity using photography, fiber, video, and installation. Raised in
a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Ross now splits her time between Ohio and Texas
after receiving her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Ross's solo
exhibition Sacred_Profane
debuted at Black & White Gallery in 2008, receiving New York Magazine's
Critics' Pick and favorable reviews in Flash Art Magazine and
The Village Voice. Most recently, an
interview with Ross was featured on the blog of the PBS Documentary
Series Art:21.
For more information and to request images, contact
the gallery: info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com
Images: Phrenology Studies of Miley Cyrus, Anna
Nicole, Mackenzie Phillips, Lady Gaga, Lindsay Lohan, Kendra Wilkinson, 2010
each 11 x 14 in oval, cross-stitch on
cotton
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DENNIS MAHER: END WALL (site-specific installation) / BLACK & WHITE PROJECT SPACE
Maher has transformed
the rear outdoor project space into one of his amalgams of urban refuse
revealing the anatomy of all sorts of demolitions: both fictional and real. This
is an investigation of the afterlives of the neglected and the discarded,
disclosing lost and found itineraries, heaped and piled trajectories, aggregate
structural possibilities, and systems of organized disuse. Collected
debris becomes the site for an archaeology of the post-consumed, and the
foundations of wasted architectures, salvaged and restored.
End Wall is supported in part with funds
from the Strategic Opportunity Stipends Program through New York Foundation for
the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts.