Disgruntled by a day job sometime during the mid to late nineties, I made a large stack of these Xeroxes. My intent, I think, was to replace the legitimate work documents in every drawer and file folder of the desk I kept in the office—a paper transfusion to be discovered later by my boss or co-worker. I wussed out and never did it

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Oversleepers. 2007. Lightjet print. 42,25″ x 30″
Inverted Bush. 2007. Lightjet print. 43,25″ x 29,75″

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from the exhibition “A Stack of Black Pants” at Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. 2010. Images courtesy of Cherry and Martin

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from the exhibition “A Stack of Black Pants” at Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles. 2010. Images courtesy of Cherry and Martin

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Composite. 2008, light jet print mounted on reproduction of original photograph by PETER DEAN ROSSI, wooden camera made by RUYELL HO. 52,5 × 30,75 × 2,5 inches

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Yin Yang Bandana. 2010. Grand scale inkjet print on fabric, embroidery thread, acrylic and wax. 96 x 12 inches

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Irreconcilable Indifferences. 2010
Chromogenic color print. 44 x 34 3/16 inches

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Expose for the Shadows, Develop for the Highlights (Perforated Sampler): White Light, Crewel Point, Triangle 208.33%, Glasses (His), Portrait (Hers). 2010 . Hand-drilled Sheetrock, wood, latex paint, chromogenic color prints, CNC-cut acrylic, acrylic on canvas . 96 x 72 x 5 inches

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The Skies The Limit (LEAVE ME ALONE). 1998–2009. Hand painted, rainbow tie-dyed T-shirt, acrylic, graphite, and oil pastel on canvas

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The work of AMANDA ROSS-HO can be difficult to get a handle on from any one perspective: full of jokes, inversions and feedback loops, personal anecdotes and family history, obscure taxonomies and seemingly random associations, all routed through giddy myriad media. But after seeing her work at MoMA last week, I was haunted by her installations. And when, for the second times in the week, I stumbled upon her work at New Museum of Contemporary Art, I knew she is a talent to watch!

AMANDA ROSS-HO received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Southern California. Ranging from sculpture, installation, painting, and photography, she uses collected items as newspaper articles, narcotics agency records, old photographs, home-craft instruction booklets and bits of jewellery, to develop her idea that everything —from old memorabilia to tools—can be recycled in the creative process. Her assemblages draw from the histories and associative meanings of discarded objects to describe points of cultural intersection.

“In a really basic sense, I wanted to produce pieces that were frontloaded with familiarity but in the end proposed a completely different legibility. To say something different with the same terms. Or to say something the same with different terms.”

She grew up in a family of artists and commercial photographers. In her work, she has said, “family structure is mined not for the nostalgic or for the autobiographical but rather as a fertile framework of proximal relationships and connectivity, as well as a peripheral zone that informs the self.” Within this framework, the artist renegotiates the conventional definitions of the medium photography.

AMANDA ROSS-HO is one of the four artists featured in New Photography 2010 organized by ROXANA MARCOCI, a curator in MoMA’s photography department. This exhibition is on view until January 10, 2011.