Exhibition

ANDREW ROSS | Scattered Castle

28 Sep 2019 – 18 Nov 2019

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
Closed
Wednesday
Closed
Thursday
12:00 – 18:00
Friday
12:00 – 18:00
Saturday
12:00 – 18:00
Sunday
12:00 – 18:00

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Scattered Castle, Andrew Ross’ second solo exhibition with False Flag, is on view from September 28 through November 18, 2019.

About

Andrew Ross (b. 1989, Miami, FL) has exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Artists Space, The Drawing Center, Greene Naftali, White Columns, and the Center for the Humanitiesat CUNY. He has mounted solo shows at Signal Gallery, American Medium, Clima Gallery (Milan), and False Flag. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Mousse Magazine, and Cultured Magazine, among other publications. His first solo show at False Flag was an Artforum Critic's Pick in 2017. Upcoming exhibitions include a two-person show with Craig Kalpakjian at Kai Matsumiya Fine Art and a solo presentation at Clima Gallery in the fall of 2019.

ANDREW ROSS || Scattered Castle September 28 – November 18, 2019

Archetypal objects and humanoid creatures are born butchered, reassembled, then cast into new scenarios. These dissociated figures mark detachment from an anxious reality, yet remain accessible and rational, engineered and reverse-engineered. Evoking multiple imaginations, allegorical and material forms reflect a fragmented mind grappling with the Information Age.

Each sculpture begins with an open-source, online template. Ross renders these anonymous virtual designs into physical form by carving hundreds of foam components with a self-made CNC machine. The exhibition’s title, Scattered Castle, refers to “scatter art”: large-scale installations organized around specific themes, in which objects appear randomly strewn throughout a space.

In If Elevators Were Never Invented, based on a model found by searching for the phrase “rhinoceros orc,” constituent parts are cut at unexpected angles and refashioned into a landscaped plane. Ross modifies the composition with an eye towards how a person might experience the environment as they walked through it: repurposing an orcish horn as a bridge; adding rectilinear blocks that recall administrative buildings. Decaying limbs loom above the sewing machine of Auto-Didact. Bones protrude from the hovering arms, confusing skin and structure, blurring the distinction between armature and surface.

Ross’ subjects, suffused with so much predetermined data, are always at work, laboring, building, and becoming what they make. Ross sees a certain comedy in this horror—the labor feels inescapable. References range from Frank Gehry and Edward Hopper, to Fischli and Weiss. While these contingent narratives have endless associations attached to their own designated histories, they remain open to arbitrary interpretation. No one owns these primordial imaginations, these narrative models, these tropes we use to make sense of the confounding present. Uncanny yet familiar, Ross’ Sphinx-like sculptures are both immediate and mysterious, elegant and spontaneous.

Scattered Castle reveals the background conditions embedded and naturalized in our everyday experience. The given becomes contentious. The permanent opens to revision. Rather than insisting upon a conclusion, Ross offers a compelling perspective: illumination of the world around us.

- Alex Bienstock

Scattered Castle is Andrew Ross’ second solo presentation at False Flag. The exhibition will be on view from September 28 through November 18, 2019. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 28 at 5pm.

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Andrew Ross

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