PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rainer Gross: New Contact Paintings - Singles and Twins

March 9 - April 15, 2006
Opening Reception with the artist: Thursday, March 9, 6 to 9 pm
Castleberry Art Stroll: Friday, March 10, 7 to 10 pm

Marcia Wood Gallery is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition of new paintings by Rainer Gross. The works in the new show are part of a series called "Contact Paintings" 1998-2006. They were featured in a traveling solo exhibition in Germany, 2003-2005, originating at the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Dueren. A catalog titled "Doppelgaenger" with an essay by David Moos was published for the show and is available at the gallery. A recent catalog of new paintings was published in 2005 in Spain for an exhibition at the Fúndation Sala Robayera in Cantabria, near Santander.

Rainer Gross, born in West Germany in 1951, has lived and worked in New York since 1973 and has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the United States. His work has been reviewed and received critical attention for over 25 years in over 50 publications, most recently in the April issue of Art in America. A dozen catalogs and books have been published. His work appears in major collections including Museum Vilnius in Latvia, the Stadtmuseum in Cologne, the Ludwig Collection and Folkwang Museum in Germany, UBS Bank of Switzerland, Chase Bank Collection and the Hirschhorn Collection in Washington, D.C., among many others.

His working process is quite unique. He begins by applying several layers of water based pure pigments to one canvas. A second canvas is then covered with oil paint and placed face to face on top of the first. He then carefully presses them together applying pressure only with his hands before separating them, revealing the different broken up layers of pigment fused with the wetness of the oil paint. Calculated, yet unpredictable, a painting in two parts is born.

The separation of the two canvases produces a range of weathered-looking textures, suggestive of fossilized organic matter frozen in time. These paintings succeed in engaging the viewer on an immediate visceral, conceptual and emotional level. Gross creates the rare bridge between beauty and concept, randomness and control, feeling and reason. Through his innovative technique, Gross distills painting to its bare essentials. He creates a new language for painting at the beginning of the 21st century.

David Moos, curator for contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and author of the essay in the "Doppelgaenger" catalog, describes the work this way: "These are paintings that declare their presence by virtue of another."