Rosson Crow - Life and Work

Life and Work

She is known for her exuberant large-scale depictions of nostalgia-laden interiors that blend historical allusion and theatrical illusion. Her paintings are inspired by diverse references – Baroque and Rococo interior design, cowboy culture, Las Vegas architecture, theatre and music. Night at the Palomino, 1984 (2007) describes a scene at the legendary Hollywood nightclub that, in its heyday, played host to artists such as Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson. Koenig House (2007) features Case Study House #22, as immortalised in Julius Schulman’s iconic black and white photographs of the classic modernist building, this time rendered in vivid Technicolor. Live in the Black Pussy (2007) pays homage to artist Jason Rhodes’ eponymous installation that was housed in a vast warehouse near Crow’s studio in Los Angeles.

After discovering the work of the young artist in Yale in 2005, the French art dealer Nathalie Obadia put on the first exhibition of the artist in France.

Crow was included in the 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled "The 23-Year Old Masters," which selected ten top emerging US artists including Dash Snow, Ryan Trecartin, Zane Lewis, and Keegan McHargue.

A publication of Rosson Crow’s work, Night at the Palomino, was published by Honor Fraser in 2007. It contains an essay by Norman Klein, who describes the work as “massively architectonic, very immersive, … like a Baroque castle inside a theme park, historical paintings inside a half-baked memory system, inside a desire that has been marketed, but never satisfied.”

Crow completed a residency at Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2006 and has had solo exhibitions at Honor Fraser, Los Angeles; CANADA, New York, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris. She had a show at White Cube, London in January 2009 and a Focus Exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas in April 2009.

From November 2009 to January 2010, Galerie Nathalie Obadia put on Rosson Crow's second exhibition in France. The exhibition, entitled "Paris, Texas", shown Rosson Crow's ability to blend her fascination for European history with her American and Texan inheritance into very colourful and powerful paintings.