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Carol Ross
October 14th – November 22nd, 2003 |
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Carol Ross is a sculptor of luminous, geometric shapes. Shifting between abstract and representational while persistently maintaining their relation and tension, Ross puts into parentheses the classical conventions of abstraction and geometry- as well as the distinction between pictorial and sculptural. Her work suggests links to ancestral totems and monuments, to arcane objects now divested of their original meanings-and also to Brancusi and Maillol. The visual elegance of Brancusi's symbolic, self-contained forms and the volumeric solidity of Maillol's figures indicate a historical context for Ross's sculpture and frame it as part of modernism's concern with the exploration of the pure, dense and quasi-abstract formal unity of archaic sculpture. |
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The works on view were created within the past year. While there is a rare aesthetic cohesion to the Ross oeuvre, any sculpture by Ross may seem like a radical departure next to any other. Meant to be viewed one by one, they make ad hoc installations. As displayed here, the Haida Masks, a series of four reliefs, hover timelessly over Kiss, Swing, Shout and Curve- freestanding works linked by shape and color- and Obelisk, Petit Piton, and Urban Moon, the link between them and sculpture exhibited during the last decade at the Janos Gat Gallery (many of which are included in the November, 2003-January, 2004 Caroll Ross retrospective at the Pensacola Museum of Art). |
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