Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Alexandra Grant, on view 27 April through 3 June 2023 at 520 West 21st Street. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Sarah C. Bancroft. 

The exhibition features monumental new paintings from Grant’s ongoing series, Antigone 3000. Beginning this series in 2014, Grant takes inspiration from Sophocles’ classic Athenian tragedy—most prominently Antigone’s quote, “I was born to love, not to hate.” The proclamation weaves its way throughout the work, rendered through the lens of Grant’s prolific use of text, both echoing and questioning the innate decency of humanity. 

These paintings mark a departure from earlier iterations of the series as Grant abandons her prior use of structural guides for an energetic spontaneity. “The compositions have exploded (or perhaps imploded) this structure, and there is a dizzyingly satisfying sense of compression and expansion,” writes Bancroft. “The architectonic superstructure has given way to amorphous accretions, palimpsests, and patterns—shattering the strictures to a sense of freedom or liberation… These six works are at once a structural breakdown and a breakthrough.” 

Riddled with concentric dots, striped beams, and cascading drips, each full-bodied canvas hums with rhythm and movement. Inky pools of pigment appear portal-esque, superseding instances of cosmically speckled foreground. Washes of color give way to arabesques of graphic line. Instances of text simultaneously pop and recede with the hero’s words reverberating throughout. The sheer force and feeling of Grant’s compositions act as a sounding board, demanding attention to the contemporary urgency of Antigone’s mantra.