The weight of the world is perfect for keeping our atmosphere in just the right consistency

Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present new paintings by celebrated American painter Ross Bleckner. The exhibition also includes works on paper produced in collaboration with Canadian artist Zachari Logan.


Ross Bleckner admits that the idea of beauty has always been a personal fascination, and the result of his compelling interest is the production of bodies of work that aspire towards and achieve the condition of the radiant and the sublime. At the core of his expression is a profound affirmation of the human spirit, and one of its deepest manifestations is a spiritual dimension that has little to do with conventional religiosity and everything to do with an unwavering humanist epistemology.

[...] Throughout his work he has effortlessly moved back and forth between contrasting states, the inside and the outside, the microscopic and the telescopic, the absent and the present. Perhaps nowhere is his skill in this shifting visual architecture more apparent than in his portrayal of light. His intention in all his paintings has been to produce a persistent, internally generated light. He told Border Crossings that he has been “trying through all the chaos to find the space of light and clarity.” Elsewhere he has said, “The main thing for me is how the image is disembodied, almost vaporized, into this continuous pulsating glow that emanates from something.” Bleckner will admit that he doesn’t know how he achieves this disappearing presence, but it is one of the singular achievements of his painting. He has been able to make visible the absent, to embody the disembodied. It is a paradox of considerable depth and it has resulted in paintings of—and we go back to where we started—radiant beauty.

-- Robert Enright, from the intro to his interview with Ross Bleckner in the Fall 2019 issue of Border Crossings.


Ross Bleckner was born in New York City and raised in Hewlett, NY. He received a Bachelor of Arts from New York University in 1971, and a Master of Fine Arts from Cal Arts in 1973. He has taught at many American universities.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art held a major retrospective of Bleckner’s work in 1995, summarizing two decades of solo exhibitions at museums including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1988), the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston, 1989), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburg, 1989), the Art Gallery of Ontario (1990), the Moderna Museet (Stockholm, 1991), and the Kolnischer Kunstervein (Cologne, 1991).

Works are held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Pulitzer Museum (St Louis), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst (Oslo) and the Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid).

Bleckner’s philanthropic efforts include serving as president of the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America (ACRIA), a non-profit community-based AIDS research and treatment education center. More recently, he has been working with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Northern Uganda to help rehabilitate and raise money for ex-child soldiers. In May 2009 Bleckner was awarded the title of Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations.

Recent exhibitions include Architecture of the Sky at the Bohme Chapel, Cologne (2016), which included a selection of Dome and Architecture of the Sky paintings from 1992 – 2013, Ross Bleckner: Find a Peaceful Place Where You Can Make Plans for the Future, a survey exhibition of recent work at the Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2017), the group exhibition Blue Black, curated by Glenn Ligon at the Pulitzer Museum, St. Louis (2017), Time of Disquiet, Maruani Mercier Gallery, Brussels (2018), Ross Bleckner, Palais Schonborn-Batthany, Vienna (2018) and Ross Bleckner: Bilder 1985-2018 Paintings at the Neues Museum, Nuremberg (2018).

Ross Bleckner lives and works in Long Island, NY.