Ross + Kramer is pleased to announce the opening of Near and Dear, an exhibit of nine new large-scale paintings from American artist Todd James, in his second solo show for the gallery. These works on linen, featuring intimate settings painted in oil stick, fully inhabit and humanize our New York space.

These works showcase an emergent style from James, a style which first debuted via smaller works exhibited in Copenhagen during the fall of 2023. The natural linework and loosely rendered compositions are created on clear primed linen, resulting in an earthy foundation that’s visible through the electric field of oil paint, grounding these paintings both visually and psychologically.

The viewer is offered a tour through vivid old-world interiors, rendered in rich, deeply saturated jewel tones, applied via oil stick or oil paint applied straight out of the tube. These works are populated with familiar James iconography such as cats, teapots, and lush foliage. Plants spill in and out of these compositions, drawing nature deeply into the realm of these interiors. These largely unpopulated or solitary spaces exude a meditative calm: long hallways, slanted rooms, paintings within paintings, all humming with a vibrant humanity that underpins the lively linework. These paintings verge on—and lean into—the edge of abstraction, and James’ influences for these works can be traced to Fauvism, subway graffiti letterforms of the 1970s, and the CoBrA movement of the mid-twentieth century. Their analog vibration and airy compositions highlight the human hand of the artist and offer aesthetic respite to the viewer through the affectionate domestic touchstones with which James populates these important new works.

Todd James’ (b. 1968, New York, NY) work has been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally. Along with Barry McGee and Steve Powers, James is the co-creator of Street Market, a major work of the post-graffiti movement that debuted at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art in 1999 and was expanded at Deitch Projects, NY in 2000. Street Market was subsequently exhibited at the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and, a decade later, was recreated as the central installation of the LA MOCA’s Art in the Street exhibition. In addition, James’ work was exhibited at the 2015 Venice Biennale and has been shown at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA), and the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY, USA) and The Geffen Contemporary MOCA (Los Angeles, CA) and is held in a number of important private and public collections including the MIMA Museum (Brussels, Belgium). He has also found success in the commercial realm, designing album covers and graphics for cultural icons like Iggy Pop and the Beastie Boys.