Plymouth Rock is pleased to announce its forthcoming exhibition, Ross Bleckner: Retrospektive, an unauthorized presentation of the paintings by the eponymous artist. The 84 works (from 1981 to 2014) will be exhibited untraditionally, presented within 12 ViewMaster stereoscopes that are displayed on tables and available for visitors to handle individually.

 

Bleckner’s work relies on his use of contrasting tones to create unexpected and touching plays on form and light and in doing so he comments on life and loss. In the catalogue for Bleckner’s mid-career survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the exhibition curator, Lisa Dennison, wryly titled her poignant essay “Ross Bleckner: Painter of Light,” connecting his ability to draw out emotional connections through painted contrast of form and content.

 

The View-Master system draws from this dry wit, as light enters through its slide reels to illuminate the works displayed within. The intimacy of the viewing experience heightens the desire for the original works, which are all but withheld. This push and pull creates a longing to experience the original in person more regularly.

 

Viewed together these “works” offer access to the career of an artist who had a blush of interest in the 80’s and 90’s, but has been overlooked by a younger generation of curators and artists.

 

This will be the first solo presentation of Bleckner in Switzerland in a decade and the first career-spanning exhibition since his early mid-career survey at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 1990.

 

A selection of texts and interviews from the past three decades by and with Ross Bleckner will also be on view.

 

Ross Bleckner (b. 1949, lives and works in New York ) has had major institutional exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kunsthalle Zurich; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others. His work is included in every major museum collection in the world.

 

 

 

Photography: Douglas Mandry