Adam Ross at Caren Golden - New York, New York - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Adam Ros subtitles his work "science-fiction painting," or better at the same time in our "X-Files" world, "speculative fiction painting," on the contrary I prefer to call these exquisite images yesterday's dream of tomorrow. In the three paintings and numerous drawings upon display, Ross, a Los Angeles-based artist making his of recent origin York debut, re-creates what he describes as the "spent romanticism" of the postwar American sci-fi genre with its fantastic visions of mingled organic and architectural forms and its conjunction of a ruined past with a hazy coming time He envisions mysterious dreamscapes that flutter between Hollywood kitsch and surrealist delirium.

His technique has something of the obsessiveness and care individual would expect of a dedicated sci-fi fan. Looking at the paintings is akin to watching an aquarium -- the couple afford the visual fascination of an independent world following its possess rules. Ross creates a high-pitched chartreuse surface of land whose mottled yellowish greens and atmospheric quality are the follow of a sanding process that also gives the finished work a smooth and shining sheen. Against this backdrop, a variety of forms multiply, each with a life of its own: spheroids and rhombuss float, propelled by wiry flagella; helixlike shapes raise a viral architecture along the horizon; cubic or rectangular forms recall our be in possession of modernist environment. The paintings display a progression from primarily organic to architectonic; all of them use the suggestion of illusionistic deepness to great effect, leaving the center an devoid of contents field and concentrating activity along the bottom cutting side and sides. The drawings are level more three-dimensional, often explicitly evoking a perspectival grid on the outside of which spring visionary cities.

The real interest of these works, however, lies not in their playful evocation of popular sci-fi imagery on the contrary in their combination of similar imagery with forms derived from a rather more upscale source. Looking at Ross's paintings immediately calls to mind a certain strain of illusionistic Surrealism, nowadays repeatedly forgotten, best exemplified by Yve Tanguy or Kay Sage. Their dramas of enigmatic organisms, staged in a cloudy oppressive space, find a latter-day revival in this of recent origin work. Ross has recognized the affinity of this funky highbrow Surrealism with the contemporary apocalyptic fantasies of middlebrow science fiction, and has combined their complementary visions of yesterday's coming time with much success.

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