Amanda Ross-Ho

Following in the tradition of Conceptual artists Hanne Darboven and Matt Mullican, Amanda Ross-Ho has over the past decade invented a personal lexicon from pre-existing symbols. Her language is derived from the detritus of everyday life–newspaper articles, postcards, magazine cut-outs, narcotics agency records, life aspiration manuals, home-craft instruction booklets, etc–the pieces arranged (and often later rearranged) into combinations that imply visual poetry or unsolvable puzzles. Presented as sculpture, installation, painting, or photography, these "still lifes" as she often titles them, defamiliarize and depersonalize found materials in order to underline moments of cultural intersection. Ross-Ho has said that she is interested in producing something that “feels as though it could be a completely subjective set of marks, but they have a specific history and a specific point in space that they need directing back to.” Recognizing the layered meanings of her found objects, both intentionally and unintentionally evoked by the artist, the artist hopes to collapse the authentic and performed in an effort to demystify the concept of original creation.

Ross-Ho’s work has been exhibited extensively at institutions such as MoMA, Chicago’s MCA, Los Angeles’ MOCA, Cleveland’s MOCA, among others. Her work was also included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.