January 24, 2022
MCLA Gallery 51 announces its next exhibition, “Come Inside: Works by Joshua AM Ross” will run from Feb. 4, 2022, to May 20, 2022, with an opening event in person at the gallery on Main Street in North Adams from 5-7 p.m. on Feb. 4.
Ross has been creating work for this exhibition as part of his MCLA Artist Lab residency, which began in fall 2021. To cap off his residency, he will offer closing remarks at a reception at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 1, in Murdock Hall Room 218 on the MCLA Campus.
Both events are free and open to the public. Proof of vaccination is required to attend, and masks must be worn during the event regardless of vaccination status. Details may change based on any potential shift in MCLA COVID policies and protocols.
About the exhibition
This body of work by Ross is a representation of his continued search to bring the world, as he sees it, to life. Self-identified as a photographer, Ross reveals his talent for using pencil and exploring the palette beyond imagination.
“Come Inside” is an invitation for viewers to participate in Ross’s journey through the works. It invites us to be present as we navigate through images which are intentionally disorienting, necessarily so, to more fully experience his perspective. Ross’s works can be viewed as an exercise in finding comfort within the discomfort, as well as being unclear about the orientation of the work and the viewer’s relationship to it. For Ross, drawing is a type of performance, similar to what a painter may experience as the brush touches the canvas. The dozen large- and small-scale colored pencil drawings are meticulous, precise, and abstract, but still represent what is organic.
Ross also questions weight and opacity, central components of his practice. In these works, he creates a place to better discuss Blackness or Darkness, history, space and contexts, versus the conventional ways and spaces. These works are environments with figures, in which the viewer has to question their gaze. Ross has searched for what he wants to see in what he sees. Instead of looking head-on at what is in his range of vision, he looks to the sides and the corners, searching for what is not in view. Ross proposes we de-center our view and step inside his spaces to see what he sees.
About Joshua AM Ross
Joshua AM Ross holds an MFA in Art at the University of California, Irvine, and a BFA in Photography from Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. Ross’ research-based practice is an entrenched phenomenological approach that investigates institutional, bodily, and spatial structures that organize and influence perception. Ross’ multi-disciplinary practice employs and appropriates a variety of material and media developed through relationships to methodologies inherently related to his research and archival experiences of photography. Some recent notable exhibits Ross has featured artwork include Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Queens LA, and Human Resources Los Angeles.
