Ross Blecknerâs immersive, large-scale paintings elicit a powerful hypnotic, dizzying effect. Whether pure abstraction of stripes or dots or more representational renderings of birds, flowers, and urns, Blecknerâs work recalls Op Art and the obsessive and mysterious luminosity of Yayoi Kusamaâs Polka-dot paintings. Smoothly layered on the canvas surface against a darker gray background, his multicolored volumetric circles or âcellsâ look like droplets of blood or molecules viewed under a microscope. Emerging as a prominent artist in New York during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Blecknerâs paintings, like memento mori, often suggest meditations on the body, health, disease, and especially AIDS-related death.
