ROSS BLECKNER
On 11 February 2010 the Mary Boone Gallery will open at its Fifth Avenue location an exhibition of new paintings by ROSS BLECKNER.
Time – and, by extension, mortality – has been a prevailing theme of Bleckner’s work since he began exhibiting in the late 1970s. With two distinct new series, Bleckner here focuses on physical and perceptual changes that result from even hourly progression. Both groups of works depict expanses of flowers that are profuse and brightly colored, yet deliquesced, scraped away, and abstracted until they become blurs of paint.
Seven six-foot-square canvases integrate this floral imagery with the rough configuration of a clock face. Demarcating the hours are bold numbers heavily veiled by layers of paint, or numbers subtly delineated within the brush strokes. One work upends the traditional analog face with a succession of digital numbers that reverberate as if from accelerated movement.
Large works on mounted photographic paper integrate the literal passing of time. In Rorschach-like formation, skeins of fragmented flowers painted on the surface react with the emulsion so that they seem to occupy a deep, unsettling and distinctive void between light and dark, positive and negative.
The exhibition, at 745 Fifth Avenue, will continue through 20 March 2010. Please contact Ron Warren at the Gallery if we can be of further assistance, or visit our website www.maryboonegallery.com.
