March 6, 2014—March 9, 2014

Alexander Kroll’s works utilize tactility and pictorial space to assert the painted object as a vehicle of presence. Kroll conceives of the pictorial surface as a space to consolidate a diverse set of relationships between body, mind, support, and surface whose specific interplay activates the work as its own context and closed system of signification. Kroll’s assertion of painting as intellectual construction forms the basis for encounters of unmediated relational intensity between artist and object as well as object and viewer.

Individually, Kroll’s compositions represent a collision of ideas that often culminate into the illusionistic space of ethereal landscapes, particularly in his large-scale pieces. These paintings are softer and flatter than his previous works, with a liquidity emerging in the form of emotionally-activated drips and splatters, and sheer veils of light and color blending like glass. Rather than pushing outwardly from the canvas with the thick materiality of the paint, Kroll’s new works lure the viewer into their veiled lacuna in an exploration of what lies beneath each layer.

But more often, these works concern themselves with their capacity to assert an identity as a whole, with each subtle articulation adding to the narrative in much the same way that a sitter in a portrait is recognized by their expressive idiosyncrasies. The layering of information within Kroll’s paintings extends beyond the physical presence of the work of art, however. With his captivating pictorial fields, Kroll presents us with intriguing new realms that are both enterable and static, an anomaly of spatial navigation in painting that is as innovative as it is assured.