RAINER GROSS - RECENT WORK
Dates: March 31 – May 12, 2001
Opening Reception: Saturday March 31, 5–7 pm

Marcel Sitcoske Gallery is proud to present new abstract paintings by New York based painter Rainer Gross. This is the first solo show of work by this German-born artist on the West Coast.
What one notices initially about these "Contact Paintings" is their color. The raw pigments Gross uses give these works remarkably saturated hues. In some of the paintings the colors are deep, pulsing and electric, as in "Aleman" (48 x 48 inches), where a ground of rich red, green and purple is punctuated by disruptions of shocking orange. His colors can also be soft and powdery, as in "Ballentine" (80 x 60 inches) where areas of dark purple peek through a covering of lighter purple, establishing a subtle relationship between the two.
We are also drawn in by the texture of these canvases, by their physicality. What first appear to be areas of color lying side by side reveal themselves as layers of paint and pigment torn open in places to reveal deeper layers. These heavily textured surfaces range from violent fragmentation to a sense of organic (de)composition.
Behind the seductive surfaces of these paintings, as is true of all of Gross' work over the past 30 years, there is a strong conceptual framework. The unique process he uses to create these works results in freeing the paintings from any narrative content as well as from the intrusion of his own hand. He further removes himself conceptually by choosing titles at random from a phone book. Gross has reduced painting to its essentials: color, material, and process. His paintings speak to the "relationship between gain and loss," destruction and creation, and to notions of originality. These are works of quiet power that function on a number of levels, containing both "the quiet contemplative aspect as well as the violent physical one."