ROSS NORMANDIN

Vinyl and stone; high and low chroma; side-by-side and vis-à-vis—Ross Normandin’s recent works rely on their constituent parts and associative installation techniques to nurture states of levity and weight. In each of the several torso-sized panels all titled, wins, crashes, knotted balloons enter through slabs of marble that occupy the composition’s center. Alongside, sterile hand railings shine while hunks of matter, adhered to the wall, play dead. Taken alone, the works are playfully self-deprecating, fragmentary, and somber. Together their arrangement amplifies this condition and marks a palpable separation. In the presence of the broken, bent and deflated, one might endure not only the imagined, phantom pain of discarded ephemera but also one’s own ragged breathing in response.

Ross Normandin lives and works in Massachusetts. He earned his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 and is currently a Teaching Assistant in the Visual and Environmental Studies Dept. at Harvard University. Recent and upcoming exhibitions and residencies include – Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago Urban Art Society and the Sullivan Galleries in Chicago, IL, Distillery Gallery, Lincoln Arts Projects and Bromfield Gallery in Boston, MA, GRIN in Providence, RI, and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnston, VT.