Charles Ross: Mansions of the Zodiac

Charles Ross: Mansions of the Zodiac is an exhibition of Ross’s artwork inspired by sunlight, starlight, time, and planetary motion. Charles Ross emerged in the 1960s with the advent of minimalism and earthworks, and is considered one of the preeminent figures of land art. This exhibition opens as Ross nears the completion of his earth/sky work, Star Axis, a monumental architectonic sculpture, and naked eye observatory located on the eastern plains of New Mexico.

The works in this exhibition span critical moments in Ross’s career and have never before been exhibited. The twelve Mansions of the Zodiac, Star Map Paintings (1976/78) map the Precession of the Equinoxes. Point Source / Star Space: Weaves of Ages (1975/86) is a Star Map Painting that explores space from the vantage point at the center of the earth looking out to the space of the stars. The making of these Star Map Paintings meaningfully corresponds to the building of Star Axis, as Ross is immersed in revealing earth to star geometries in different ways. The final piece, a film co-edited with Peter Campus and titled Sunlight Dispersion (1971), depicts the solar spectrum that’s created with one of Ross’s prism sculptures, as it moves through his New York studio, propelled by the turning of the earth. Now, as Ross completes Star Axis, this exhibition gives us a glance at his art and art making in New Mexico, a place that is elemental to his life and work.

Charles Ross (b. 1937, Philadelphia, PA) discovered his passion for making sculpture while studying mathematics at UC Berkeley, where he received his BA in Mathematics in 1960 and an MA in Art in 1962. Ross is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant in 1999. He has also received grants from the NEA, the Thaw Charitable Trust, the McCune Charitable Foundation, The Frost Foundation, and many others for the construction of Star Axis. Ross has created 25 permanent solar spectrum artworks around the world including Solar Spectrum, at the Dwan Light Sanctuary, United World College, Montezuma, NM; Spectrum 14, Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2024; Spectrum Chamber, Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart, Tasmania; Conversations with the Sun, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan; and Spectrum 8, National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Washington DC.

His artworks reside in the permanent collections of numerous institutions internationally, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.