Time of Disquiet : Ross Bleckner
His delicate flowers betray a form of anxiety that their apparent fragility makes evident.
Born to the generation of American artists who appeared on the international scene in the early 1980s, Ross Bleckner (born in New York in 1949) witnessed the explosion of the AIDS epidemic which hit the gay community and the art world hardest. From then on he created paintings that cross existential notions. Behind the seduction, the beauty of his compositions question loss, death and memory.
His delicate flowers betray a form of anxiety that their apparent fragility makes evident. Even if the artist does not conceive his paintings as vanities, they nonetheless remind us of an art form that goes beyond the elegance of a bouquet or a still life and reveals to the viewer a work tinged with spirituality.
In the past decades Bleckner has become well known his support of humanitarian causes, including the fight against AIDS. He is also the first artist to have been appointed Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations, in 2009.
