(b. 1937, USA) Lives and works between New York and Mexico
With practice spanning across various art forms including land art, large-scale prism and solar spectrum installations, paintings, film and photography, Charless Ross explores the effects of light, time and mathematical structures and reveals optical, astronomical and perceptual phenomena. Using sunlight and starlight as his artistic tools, Ross creates large prisms to project solar spectrum into architectural spaces and draw the quantum behaviour of light with dynamite. His other medium called ‘solar burns’ constitute paintings created through dynamite and powdered pigment being burned when exposed to the powerful beams of light guided by a prism. Ross is well-known for his long-term project of building the geometry of stars into his earthwork titled ‘Star Axis’, now nearing completion in New Mexico after 51 years. His work, ranging from monumental to delicate, is a true adventure in time and space.
Ross has exhibited at venues including the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), PS1 (NYC), Dwan Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); and Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago). His artworks are collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other institutions. In 2011, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.