Amanda Ross-Ho’s Huge Pen
Amanda Ross-Ho, MY PEN IS HUGE. Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.
In middle school boys scribbled with black ink on my hand “PEN15". I drew hearts and tildes around my new faux tatts (both of my brothers later informing me I was now a part of the Penis Club). Amanda Ross-Ho, photographer, performance artist and prop-maker, presents My Pen is Huge at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. A play on words and objects for our current sociopolitical climate. Ross-Ho anxiously scribbles, doodles, calculates, diagrams, and notes her ALL CAPS time-sensitive duties on twelve paper clocks lining the gallery walls.
Amanda Ross-Ho, MY PEN IS HUGE. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.
For over a decade, scale-shifter Ross-Ho has worked and played with oversized objects, fabricating studio ephemera into intimate props. Her scale method is what she calls a ‘sculptural close-up,’ an understanding of the anatomy of objects through theatrical representation. Hair ties appear 100x their size. Coffee rings and wine stains are bigger than your head. All traces are authentic, a result of realtime work in the gallery twisted with readymade objects, a new venture for Ross-Ho. A mix of her speciality fabrications touch on her own production versus the existing world of mass-produced novelty items.
Amanda Ross-Ho, MY PEN IS HUGE. Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.
Past exhibitions incorporate her literal workspace, importing wall panels and pegboards. The loss of her Los Angeles studio space last year turned into the focus of working on vintage face dials from eBay as work surfaces. This series of clocks, created on-site, coverts the gallery into her studio.
Amanda Ross-Ho, MY PEN IS HUGE. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.
Amanda Ross-Ho, MY PEN IS HUGE. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.
Layered facades become dense, life and art intermingled: the personal with the addition of the job of the Artist (capital A). The clocks' supposed hands hang at the entrance of the space, the lost mechanisms separate from their counterparts.
Amanda Ross-Ho, MY PEN IS HUGE. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.
Amanda Ross-Ho, MY PEN IS HUGE. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY.
My Pen is Huge is on view until October 14 at Mitchell-Innes & Nash (534 W 26th St).
