RON MOROSAN
(b. 1947)
WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC is the representative for artist Ron Morosan.
ARTWORK
Ron Morosan’s paintings are semiotic constructs: the blocks of color, ambiguous organic shapes and purposefully crude drawings (some populating more than one painting), create compositions in which unintended narrative threads overlap. The titles often include cultural references which provide clues to enter his multiverse and to understand its private system of signs.
Morosan’s work reflects on the contemporary world with its plethora of images and lack of focus on the underlying meanings. Geometry and categorical imperatives co-exist with Maeterlinck, Aldous Huxley, Max Weber, the “culture glut” and Louisa Mary Alcott in the pictorial space. Influences and correspondences range from early Dada at the Cabaret Voltaire, Surrealism, Hans Hofmann, but also Matisse’s line drawings. The paintings are not intended as solutions or archetypal narratives, but rather as fragments of a diary in which blocks of information facilitate fortuitous encounters that generate meaning and ultimately their own stories.
© 2021 Ron Morosan.
"Morosan’s work reflects a contemporary world in which no one answer will suffice, in which we are almost always “multi-tasking,” in which we contemplate a long history of the uses of line and color, now being free to mix all in one world. Unable or unwilling to opt entirely for the world of universal truths and stability, but not ready to abandon it altogether for the compelling nature of a totally personal language that sometimes abandons linear reasoning in favor of a dreamlike inner reality, Morosan sets these two worlds, the universal and the personal, together in an amalgam that he challenges us to enjoy if not to decipher, and to accept on the authority of the artist himself.”
- Barbara Valenta
BIOGRAPHY
“Encountering art is a time-based, psychologically rooted, complex personal as well as public theatre. Those of us who devote great periods of time making, thinking about, and viewing it are performers in this theatre.”
- Ron Morosan
Ron Morosan is an artist, writer, educator and curator. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the American Pavilion of The Venice Biennale and the Circulo De Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain. He has written extensively about art and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant; museum collections include MOCA Chicago, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC, New Jersey State Museum, Islip Art Museum and others.
GALLERY EXHIBITIONS
EXHIBITION HISTORY
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 - Miriam Bloom and Ron Morosan: IN-TER-WO-VEN, Westwood Gallery NYC, Sep-Nov
2018 - Loft Nota Bene, Cadaques, Spain
2014 - KNOCK, KNOCK, WHO’S THERE?, The Studio, 194 Bay Street, Staten Island, NY
2012 - ART WORLD PORTRAITS, Loft Nota Bene, Cadaques, Spain
2010 - PORTRAITS, Loft Nota Bene, Cadaques, Spain
2009 - ECOLOGY OF AESTHETICS WITH MOTTOS, Islip Art Museum, Islip, New York
2009 - Andre Zarre Gallery, NYC
2005 - ILLUSION IS PERCEPTION, Gallerie Schulgasse 18, Eibelstadt, Germany
2003 - PAINTINGS, DEMYTHIFIED AND CRITICAL, Andre Zarre Gallery, NYC
2001 - TOPICS, TWISTS, AND TURNS, Loft Quadratur, Cologne, Germany
2001 - CHANGE OF MEANING, Gallerie Schulgasse 18, Eibelstadt, Germany
2001 - THE NUDIST, THE TRAVELING CASE, AND JOHN CAGE’S SHOE, Chamot Gallery, 111 First Street, Jersey City, NJ
2001 - DRESS CODE AND INTELLECTUAL NUDIST, Bronxville Art Center, Bronxville, NY (w. Juergen Wolf)
2001 - ALMOST LIKE THAT, Germaine Keller Gallery, Garrison Landing, NY
1998 - MUSEUM OF UNEXPLAINED CONVENTIONS, (solo room installation) Newhouse Center For Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY
1997 - YES-NO LOGIC AND PARTICIPATOR, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
1996 - STRANGE ATTRACTORS, Gallerie Schulgasse 18, Eibelstadt, Germany
1996 - IF NOT: CITE EVIDENCE, Conde Fine Art, NYC
1994 - THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE, SchloB Overhagen, Lippstadt, Germany
1993 - THE REIMAGINATION OF ZIKI ZAKI HOIHOI, AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS, Bemis Center For Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE (with Juergen Wolf )
1993 - ENCODE AND DIALOGUE, The Willis Gallery, Detroit, MI (two-person)
1990 - RECENT WORK, Sheldon Ross Gallery, Birmingham, MI
1977 - RON MOROSAN/CLAIRE MOORE RECENT WORK, Robert Freidus Gallery, NYC (two-person)
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2015 - EITHER ISLAND, Wagner College, Staten Island, NY
2014 - THE SUITCASE SHOW, Galleri Schaeffers Gate, Oslo, Norway
2013 - SILHOUETTE, Blackburn 20/20 Gallery, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, NYC
2010 - ART AGAINST FRACKING, EXIT ART, NYC
2008 - COUPLES, Islip Museum of Art, Islip, NY
2008 - PRESIDENT TV, Alley Culture, Detroit
2007 - DISASTERS OF WAR, Treadwell Museum of Fine Arts, Treadwell, NY
2006 - CASE STUDIES, Katonah Museum, Katonah, NY
2005 - KOPF HOCK ZUM GLUCK UND ANDERES ( Head-up good luck and other things) KunstWERK, Cologne, Germany
2005 - OVER THE TOP, AND UNDER THE RUG, Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Branch, NJ 2003 EVENT HORIZON, Alley Culture, Detroit, MI
2003 - DECADENCE, Gallery 111 First Street, Jersey City, NJ
2001 - WORKING HERE, Artists at 111 First Street, Jersey City, NJ
2001 - LOCAL COLOR, Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA
1999 - AMERICAN IN CADAQUES, Gallerie Loft Note Bene, Cadaques, Spain
1998 - ASSEMBLAGE, Center Galleries, College for Creative Studies, Detroit
1997 - ART+SUITCASE, WILL TRAVEL, Shoestring Gallery Jersey City, NJ to (traveled to) Alley Culture, Detroit; Conductors Hallway, London England; DNA Gallery, Provinctown, MA; Gallery Gertrude Stein, NYC
1994 - WITHIN THE ABSTRACT, B4A Gallery, NYC
1993 - NEW DRAWING, B4A Gallery, NYC
1991 - EXPOSE/EXPLOIT, WHY WAR, Kentler International Drawing Space Brooklyn, NY
1991 - JFK IN MEMORIUM, Renee Fotouhi, East Hampton, NY
1989 - WHITE, BLACK, AND GREY, Henry Feiwel Gallery, NYC
1988 - DENOTATION, CONNOTATION, IMPLICATION, Eisner Gallery, City University of New York, NYC
1985 - RELATIVE MEANING, Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY
1985 - PARADISE LOST/PARADISE REGAINED, State Painting and Sculpture Museum, Ankara, Turkey Nov 10-Dec 9
1985 - PARADISE LOST/PARADISE REGAINED, King Stephens Museum, Budapest, May 15 to Jun. 30
1984 - PARADISE LOST/PARADISE REGAINED, American Pavilion, The Venice Biennale, Venice, traveled to: Municipal Art Gallery, Athens, March 10 to April 30; Calouste Gulbenkian Fd. Lisbon, Oct. 30-Dec. 10
1983 - FIVE PAINTERS, Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
1978 - GROUP SHOW, Pam Adler Gallery, NYC
1977 - MEMORY, New Museum of Contemporary Art, C-SPACE, NYC
PUBLICATIONS
Catalogue, Case Studies, Katonah Museum, essay by Susanne Ramljak
Catalogue, Ecology of Aesthetics with Motto, essays by Paul North and Janet Goleas
Catalogue, New Jersey State Museum, essay by Daphne A. Deeds
Catalogue, Islip Art Museum, Multi-Tasking, essay by Karen Shaw
New York Times, Art+ Suitcase, review Bill Zimmer, June 7, 1997
Brochure, The Modern Landscape, Queens Library Gallery, Queens, NY
Catalogue, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, essay, Marcia Tucker, Lynn Gumpert, Ned Rifkin pgs 212, 116
East Village Eye, NYC, J. Snyder
The Detroit News, Exhibition, Sheldon Ross Gallery, J. Colby pg.8f
Arts Magazine, Robert Freidus Gallery, 1977 pg 62
Brochure, Relative Meaning, Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY, essay Robin Dodds
COLLECTIONS
> Phyllis Ross, New York, NYC
> Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, NYC
> New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
> Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
> Henry Feiwel estate, NYC
> Peter Stern, NYC
> Mort Feigenson, Detroit
> The Lannan Foundation, CA
> Sidney Lewis, Richmond, VA
> The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
> The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC
> M.O.S International, Tokyo
> Catherine Sagnier, Barcelona
> Martin Art Gallery, Baker Art Center, Muhlenberg College, PA
> Bemis Center For Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE
> Robert Freidus, NYC