ROSS CALIENDO: TWIN HABIT

Ross + Kramer is pleased to announce the opening of Twin Habit, Ross Caliendo’s fourth solo presentation with the gallery.

December 3, 2024 – January 18, 2024

Ross Caliendo (b. 1988, Pittsburgh, PA) is a Los Angeles-based painter who, through his vibrant, textural paintings, constructs surreal depictions of the natural world that investigate light, energy, and color. Landscape, the primary subject of Caliendo’s work, functions as a conduit for the artist’s exploration and expression of such ideas.

This new body of work demonstrates an evolution in the artist’s approach to layering and transparency. Caliendo’s work is often characterized by his layering of rich, opaque pigments, and while these techniques are still readily present, they are met with areas of sheer washes of color. Here, Caliendo embraces negative space, using stippling patterns over a blank white background or translucent hues to create a sense of depth without the visual weight, suggesting at times a more fluid and ephemeral quality.

When viewed up close, the artist’s large-scale works are charged by intricate, discernible brushstrokes and sgraffito—a technique in which a preliminary layer of paint is covered by an additional layer of a different color and then scraped away to reveal the lower color. Heightened by the artist’s frequent use of contrasting color, the combination of gestural strokes and precise, abbreviated marks create a palpable state of energetic excitement.

Engulfed in symbolic space, the viewer is no longer a removed observer of paint on canvas, but rather” the work “implicates an embodied viewer, re-casted as a subject bearing witness from within” the scenes that spill from the canvas.