Situating her work at the juncture of word and image—an intermedial locus where, in her case, verbal content is at once borne and engulfed by complex painterly structures —Alexandra Grant has, in fact, had to struggle to achieve a coherent balance between her twinned disciplines. The struggle was real and has proven successful. “Ceremony,” Grant’s latest solo show, brings together a hefty selection of recent large abstractions with a smaller roster of less recent canvases. There is an intricate and muscular, yet expansive interplay of diverse, even contrasting formal elements that figures in both groups. But where the dispersion of forms in the earlier work seems stiff and overthought, every recent painting moves gracefully and powerfully in its own choreographed dynamic. Even their color regains a lusciousness that the earlier pieces bury. 

The works in both groups build themselves around Grant’s mantra, “I was born to love, not to hate,” declared by the heroine in Jean Anouilh’s play (based on Sophocles’ original) Antigone. Formal tricks—highlighting, mirroring, dripping—visited on the phrase buzz about the earlier paintings, consuming and often compromising vital compositional maneuvers. In the most recent tableaus, however, it’s the language that dissolves into the picture, without loss of meaning or presence. The language in the paintings is harder to read, and stronger for it. Even the problematic earlier works, however, prove joyous and ominous, given that the tenet they declare is one that humans, not least the artist herself, have truly lived and sacrificed for.   

Alexandra Grant: Ceremony
Alloy Project Space, Curated by John Wolf
525 S. Santa Fe Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90013
On view through April 15th, 2025