Charles Ross (B. 1937, Philadelphia, PA) has long explored the substance of light, time, and planetary motion-qualities related to the cosmos and the long journey and multiplicities of light. As an undergraduate student studying mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, Ross developed an interest in spatial geometry, movement, and the inanimate object. In Ross’ senior year, he took a sculpture course to fulfill a liberal arts requirement and discovered great possibility, and a latent interest in making sculpture by applying the abstract and esoteric thinking he learned in math.

Ross enrolled in Berkeley’s graduate sculpture program shortly after completing his undergraduate degree in 1960, and received his M.A. in Art in 1962; in 1961, San Francisco’s Dilexi Gallery held Ross’ first exhibition. Ross’ subsequent work with the Judson Dancers, in New York during a year-long fine art fellowship, and choreographer Anna Halprin, in San Francisco, continued to inform his consideration of space and form. It was Sol LeWitt, who visited Ross’ studio in New York while Ross was developing his groundbreaking large-scale transparent prism sculptures, who enthusiastically recommended that storied gallerist and patron Virginia Dwan meet Ross. Dwan Gallery held Ross’ first solo exhibition in 1968, and continued to work with the artist until 1971 when Dwan closed her gallery. Later, in the early 1990s, Ross and Dwan collaborated with architect Laban Wingert on The Dwan Light Sanctuary located on the campus of United World College (Montezuma, NM) and dedicated in 1996. The Dwan Light Sanctuary is a place of quiet reflection in which Ross placed 24 large-scale prisms, aligned precisely with the sun to produce large solar spectrums always evolving and moving throughout the circular architecture with the passage of the sun.

Charles Ross is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, recipient of a 1999 Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Eugene V. and Clare Thaw Charitable Trust, Someland Foundation, and McCune Charitable Foundation, to name a few. His works reside in the permanent collections of numerous institutions internationally including National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Des Moines Art Center; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; and The Penn Art Collection, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Notable permanent site-specific works include: Spectrum Chamber, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania (2018); Conversations with the Sun, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan (2004); Spectrum 8, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. (2004); Spectrum 123, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan (1999); The Dwan Light Sanctuary, Montezuma, NM (1996); Year of Solar Burns, Château d’Oiron, Oiron, France (1993); and Solar Spectrum, Harvard Business School Chapel, Boston, MA (1992).

Notable museum exhibitions featuring Charles Ross’ work include: Charles Ross: Hanging Islands, as part of the exhibition Spaces, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2018-2019); By repetition, you start noticing details in the landscape, Bâtiment d’art contemporain, Geneva , Switzerland (2019);  Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2018-2019); Cosmogonies – au gré des éléments, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC), Nice, France (2018); Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959-1971, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2016-2017); Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012); and Atlas, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2010). Ross is included in James Crump’s 2015 film Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art, an official selection of the 53rd New York Film Festival, alongside other Earthwork artists as Vito Acconci, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, and Robert Smithson.