Douglas Ross & Philip Vanderhyden

New York-based artist Douglas Ross constructs and frames forms of physical, technological, and cultural mediation, while often, as he says, “inviting recognition of the contingent.” In The Front Room, Ross exhibits an installation of new sculptures—a slightly disordered sequence of discrete images quietly pedestalled upon wristwatch bands and watch-display-stands. Concurrent with their implied mobility, the title of each object is changed each day of the exhibition. On The Front Room walls, New York artist Philip Vanderhyden hangs a seemingly-timeless series of intensely-pigmented, atmospheric, and concentrated red paintings. Beginning with a complex ground that is sanded almost to a polish, he builds up images through the intricate balance of application and removal of color, and reveals inconsistencies in what at first appears to be a self-evident, pure surface. Image: Untiled, 2008. Oil on canvas, 38 x 33 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Hudson Franklin Gallery, New York. General support for the Contemporary’s exhibitions program is generously provided by the Whitaker Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; William E. Weiss Foundation; Nancy Reynolds and Dwyer Brown; Regional Arts Commission; Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; Arts and Education Council; and members of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.