Ross Bleckner
Untitled
Lot Closed
August 5, 06:06 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 40,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Ross Bleckner
b. 1949
Untitled
Oil on canvas
30 by 30 in.
76.2 by 76.2 cm
Executed in 2019.
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As such, there is no buyer's premium in this auction - all sale proceeds will go directly to the Aspen Art Museum to support its programs. Certain amounts paid above the value of the property or services provided may qualify as a tax deductible donation to the museum. Replica Shoes ’s does not offer tax advice. Please consult your tax advisor, and for any tax related inquiries please contact bid@aspenartmuseum.org at the Aspen Art Museum.
Kindly donated by the artist and Petzel Gallery, New York
Ross Bleckner (b. 1949 in New York). Emerging as a prominent artist in New York during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Ross Bleckner’s paintings are an investigation of change, loss, and memory, often suggesting meditations on the body, health and disease, much like a memento mori. “The idea that the body is so perfect, until it’s not perfect. It’s a fragile membrane that separates us from disaster.” His immersive paintings, whether pure abstraction of stripes or dots, or more representational renderings of birds, flowers, and brains, elicit a powerful hypnotic and dizzying effect. Smoothly layered on the canvas surface against a darker gray background, Bleckner’s famous multicolored volumetric circles or “cells” look like droplets of blood or molecules viewed under a microscope.
To this day, Bleckner is the youngest artist to receive a midcareer retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, at the age of 45. His paintings can be found in several major museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art and in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, as well as numerous exhibitions, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Reina Sofia, Madrid; L.A. County Museum, Los Angeles; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern; and Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.
Bleckner studied with Sol LeWitt and Chuck Close at New York University, where he earned a BA in 1971. Two years later, he completed an MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where he met David Salle.
Ross Bleckner’s work often touches on human vulnerability, evoking both the psychological struggles of the mind and the viruses that attack the physical form. He started his practice in the 1980s, when New York was in the grip of the Aids epidemic. He responded to this time through painting, and by starting an organisation which focused on alternative therapies and education. As he tells me, “that’s when I realised there are limitations to being an artist. You can say as much as you want to say, but some things you have to do outside your studio.”
Emma Steer on Ross Bleckner, Elephant, 2020
