Christian Rosa

“I never choose painting, it chooses me,” says contemporary painter Christian Rosa. Though he has also worked in photography and film, he concentrates on producing the abstract, large-scale, mixed-media-on-canvas compositions for which he is known. While his earlier paintings featured dense, heavily worked surfaces, his more recent ones are radically pared-down. Against the raw ground of unprimed canvas, he floats geometric shapes, scribbled patches, lines, and other marks that seem casually made. He uses materials including oil stick, pencil, charcoal, spray paint, and resin, incorporating the occasional pop of bright color into his otherwise largely monochromatic compositions. For Rosa, the best part of painting is not necessarily success but rather, as he explains, “the dark side: failing, getting back on your feet, and confronting problems in the best way so people be like, WTF, this shit looks awesome.”