Alexandra Grant
LOS ANGELES, CA
ALEXANDRA GRANT
“I use painting as a platform to discuss themes that are literary and social, political, and feminist. There are so many angles and access points to Antigone's phrase. These works are created on enormous sheets of paper. I pour acrylic paint on them and then create wax rubbings of the text; the words emerge from a plaster series of letters. The collaged and drawn elements represent the rule of law coming into conflict with organic form.”
Los Angeles-based artist, Alexandra Grant, explores language, narrative, and the written word through images and text in a wide array of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, installation, social systems, and photography. Born in Ohio, she spent much of her childhood outside of the U.S., in Mexico, France, and Spain, which has contributed to the unique linguistic and cultural flexibility she applies to her practice. In large-scale works on paper and panels, Grant’s pictorial structure orbits a central theme in which literature and abstraction coalesce, pull apart, and reconfigure in densely layered compositions. Wresting words and phrases from literary texts, Grant embeds textual information within painterly fields of color pools, spatters, and linear tectonics. Her use of mirror-writing, or backward text, is effective in creating a pictorial and analytical dissonance that invites discovery and contemplation.
Alexandra Grant’s art has been widely exhibited at galleries and institutions including The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA; The Broad Museum at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She has received numerous awards, among them the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship, Los Angeles, CA, and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. She is represented in museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Alexandra Grant was interviewed at Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles, CA during her solo exhibition titled Born to Love.
“Why has one story lasted 2,500 years? Because it remains important generation after generation. In this body of work, I call it Antigone 3,000, I’m trying to imagine Antigone for the next 1,000 years. It has been an incredible experience as an artist to have a personal, private investigation of this text, using it in my painting and bringing it into the world at a time when there is such a need for discussion.”
