Anthony Ames: White Compositions

A83 is pleased to present the work of Anthony Ames in the new exhibition White Compositions featuring eleven monochromatic bas-relief wall sculptures. Ames is a practicing architect and artist in Atlanta, Georgia and has operated the architectural office Anthony Ames Architect since 1976. 

Ames, an accomplished artist/architect began painting in 1984. Paying attention to the proportions, layout, recurring forms, and symbolism used within Ames’ White Compositions it is evident that this new body of work originates from and elaborates on Ames’ painting practice. His paintings, as described by Courtney Coffman in her review of a previous solo exhibition of Ames’, “oscillate somewhere between the formality of a still life, the dynamism of sculptural relief, and the juxtaposed delight of collage.”[1] The eleven bas-relief wall sculptures appear as a natural evolution in Ames’ practice and are accompanied by documents which provide insight into the precise and accomplished nature of Ames’ design process extending from buildings to art.

A reading of Ames’ White Compositions is manifold. Emphasized by the use of a monochrome palette the eleven pieces are highly formal, operating through the play of light and shadows on volumes and within voids. Each sculpture is also a rigorous geometric and compositional exercise in which spatial complexity is expressed within a relatively shallow depth of typically six inches or less. Lastly, the pieces are symbolically charged with references that speak to Ames’ work and life as a Georgian architect preoccupied with modernism, art, and basketball, amongst his other passions and preferences alluded to within the content of the sculptures. Ames playfully collages architectural elements such as facades organized by grids and everyday objects like a vase, a pair of glasses, a can of coke, a guitar, a basketball hoop. The contrast between the (supposedly) rational, objective, and universalizing characteristics of modernism in confrontation with the particular, the idiosyncratic, and the autobiographical communicates a uniquely Ames-ian sensibility which provides a distinctive and refreshing take on the 20th century architectural movement. As thoughtfully described by Coffman, Ames’ artworks “...undoubtedly communicate the “high,” capital-A Architecture of modernism, particularly that of media- and brand-savvy figures like Corb, but they also acknowledge figures like Michael Jordan as equally influential to Ames. The latter provides a crucial catalyst for the shifting zeitgeist in architecture discourse today: uncovering alternative histories and new architectural heroes.”[2]  

The eleven compositions are meticulously constructed. Each piece is designed by Ames through sketches and then elaborated as orthographic drawings forming a complete set of dimensioned elevations and sections. The drawing sets–one for each composition–are masterfully drafted and supremely organized. As precursors to the relief sculptures the drawings form a set of instructions for construction just as Ames’ drawings do for his buildings. The orthographic sets expertly communicate Ames’ artistic intent and his practiced manipulation of space at varying scales. The process work emphatically presents the White Compositions as constructed. The drawings, preceding the execution of the physical pieces, provide insight into Ames’ working method, one greatly influenced by his educational training and professional experience. His use of architectural drawing tools for the execution of fine-art indicates a continuity and lack of need for disciplinary differentiation in Ames’ approach to his work as both an artist and architect. Just as Ames operates across boundaries–from architecture to art to basketball–with a characteristic precision, diligence, and sense of humor, his White Compositions playfully challenge the categorization of model, sculpture, painting and drawing, fluctuating between a reading of familiarity and abstraction.