About the Exhibition:
Fool Spectrum presents a new body of works on paper by Los Angeles-based artist Ross Caliendo (b. 1988, Pittsburgh, PA), exploring perception, uncertainty, and the shifting relationship between what we see and what we understand as reality.
Caliendo’s practice centers on the material possibilities of painting, using the structures and rhythms of the natural world as a starting point for an intuitive investigation of color, vision and sensory experience. His landscapes and organic forms move between the recognisable and the imagined, transforming forests, flowers and other natural motifs into spaces where realism gradually gives way to ambiguous and dreamlike sceneries.
Caliendo’s paintings move between surface and depth through a process he describes as “painting backwards”, where he builds up layers of colour before scraping and reworking the surface to reveal what lies beneath. Vibrant warm and cool tones create a sense of movement and instability, while the recurring structures and marks draw attention to the physical process of painting. Alongside these colourful works, the exhibition also includes a series of pen-and-ink drawings. More restrained and precise, they introduce a different visual language, one that feels analytical and almost diagrammatic in contrast to the sensory intensity of the paintings.
This new body of work developed alongside a period of profound personal change for the artist. Following the birth of his son, Caliendo found himself increasingly drawn to questions that extend beyond painting: What are we inheriting? What do we pass on? What does it mean to create a life, an image, or a painting? These questions have led him to reconsider the stability of the world around us and, in particular, the idea that reality is something fixed and objective.
For Caliendo, this uncertainty is not something to be resolved, but a space in which to remain curious. If perception is unstable and meaning is always contingent, painting becomes less an act of representing a fixed reality and more an encounter: a temporary organisation of colour, sensation, thought, and belief. This sense of uncertainty lies at the heart of Fool Spectrum, a title that gestures toward the shifting range of perception, emotion, and understanding, while leaving room for the productive possibility of foolishness.
There is something humbling and tender in recognising that, beneath our systems and performances of certainty, we are all improvising our way through a world we do not fully understand. Fool Spectrum embraces that condition. The works do not attempt to provide answers, but instead create spaces in which uncertainty can become a source of curiosity, possibility, and wonder.
The exhibition will be on display and open to the public from November 19, 2026 through January 17, 2027 at the Anthony Gallery location in Amsterdam at Prinsengracht 405-H, 1016 HM. Visitors are encouraged to come and explore the works on display with free admission. For more information about the exhibition, please visit the Anthony Gallery website or contact info@anthonygallery.com.
