When I speak with painter Alex Gross, the artist is just one week away from his latest solo show “discrepancies.” This is what he had to say about Art, Advertising and commerce
alex Gross has been working on his latest body of work entitled Discrepancies for about two years now. Progression is the father of the game here. Alex’s work has grown from an already immense and recognizable style to what has become something both emulated to no avail and marveled at constantly.
“I was always developing what you would call my style of painting,” Alex explains.
Alex’s new work stands alone. A lot of the new work deals with more contemporary images and themes than previous bodies of work.
“Half of the paintings in the show probably have cell phones in the images somewhere,” Alex explains. “That’s something I’m really focused on in the show, it’s something that’s going on around me in the world.”
Alex contrasts this contemporary edge by using a bevy of vintage and antique imagery. His masterful landscapes look like scenes from 100 years in the past and the future at the same time.
“I’ve been trying to bring in more contemporary stuff and talk about communication and how technology related to. I’m also using a lot of advertising images in this series,” Alex says of the body of work.
“We’re bombard with advertising everywhere its just getting worse, in a way it’s the current language for people, using type and the image of an ad selling something, that’s what people understand. It influences me too, I’m not immune to the power of advertising.” He later adds.
"Signals," Oil, 2010 by Alex Gross
Accessibility is every artists’ concern. Alex does want people to be interested in the work, and ultimately sell these images.
“I want people to be interested in the work,” Alex explains. “I’m not too concerned that people understand all the themes I’m talking about because in my experience everyone almost always does get a lot of what I’m saying.”
Alex tells me the story of when his framer’s brother asked about the piece we used for the cover, entitled “Premonition.“ The brother was as Alex explained “dead on,” with his analysis of the painting. Alex prefers to not be literal in his rationale behind a painting.
“People always have a good story and it’s usually related or very close to what I was thinking,” Alex says. “I just want people to find the work compelling enough that they’re willing to put some time into it and get an idea in their head of what it’s talking about it’s not. There’s no agenda in my work.”
“Some of my work may make commentary on society but it’s all very personal and each person will interpret it a little differently, I don’t want to hit people over the head with some obvious statement in the painting,” Alex later explains.
If Alex’s Gross’ work were a relationship status it’d be involved. Very involved. Alex takes his figurative oil paintings to extreme heights. These works that populate his new monograph “Discrepancies” are phenomenal. There is a nod to the hysteria of surrealism. Faces playfully float in mid air, dystopia runs rampant, chaos here and there. The artists stark opinion of media and mass culture pop up as logos and branding of companies such Prada, Coca Cola, etc are cast amongst the dystopian worlds he creates.
“The mixture of imagery I throw together sometimes seems unusual some people might call that crazy but I think it’s crazy in a disturbed anti-social kinda way,” Alex says.
Art may be Alex’s first love, but these days Alex’s Influences come more from Music then other visual artists.
“I’m very influenced by music and lyrics,” Alex says. “Radiohead is a huge influence on me. I have a lot of pieces that are very influenced by them, Pink Floyd also.”
The topic of influence shifts to Christopher Nolan. Alex isn’t on the bandwagon of Nolan’s latest film “Inception,” which was a Trending Topic on Twitter for weeks throughout the Summer.
“I used to like Christopher Nolan until I saw “Inception,” Alex says with a laugh. “I think [the film] is so overrated. It has endless pointless sort of gun babble scenes, it’s way too long. I really feel like it was purposely made for 21 year olds, with the idea that we know this generation has less of an attention span then ever before so all we’re going to do is make every scene visually really excited and five or ten minutes that’s all we need to blow kids minds.”
There is a parallel between Gross and Nolan’s work. Both over the top action, subtle hints of criticism and a unique sense of storytelling that is intrinsically their own style. Gross notes the connection too.
“I love his sensibility,” Alex says of Nolan. “I love “Batman Begins” I thought that was great. He’s obviously influenced by comic books and that was a huge early influence of mine. We’re close in age but he’s a million times richer than me.” We share a laugh.
The economy is tough on everyone, but artists are seeming to get the short end of the short stick. People just aren’t buying art right now. Alex Gross knows this. In most years if he doesn’t have a solo show to support himself, Alex can count on selling prints on his web site, in addition to private and public commotions. This has of course slowed as the economy slipped further into a recession.
“As soon as this whole crisis hit like two years ago all my print sales slowed down big time,” Alex says. “It seems like everyone was broke or conserving what they had. Hopefully that’s looking up now.”
Apparently it is. Before the opening of “Discrepancies,” a majority of the pieces were already sold. Alex is already working on a new body of work for a show in Los Angeles in 2012.
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