{"id":632,"date":"2026-06-22T12:37:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=632"},"modified":"2026-06-22T12:37:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T12:37:41","slug":"alexandra-grant-brings-spirit-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=632","title":{"rendered":"Alexandra Grant Brings Spirit Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>The artist Alexandra Grant flew into Newark on a recent stormy Thursday, checked into a hotel, and zipped over to the Albertz Benda gallery, in Chelsea, just before the opening party for \u201cAntigone 3000 (Anakain\u014dsis),\u201d her new show of paintings. \u201cI woke up in Warsaw this morning,\u201d she said; her upcoming work involves German and Polish writers. Grant, who is fifty-three and tall, lives in Germany, where she has a studio, and in Los Angeles, where she has another studio and an arts-supporting business, along with a publishing company she runs with her partner, Keanu Reeves. (In 2011, as part of an earlier publishing venture, the pair released the whimsically lugubrious \u201cOde to Happiness,\u201d in which Grant illustrated original Reeves lines like \u201cI draw a hot sorrow bath in my despair room \/ with a misery candle burning.\u201d) Despite the travel mayhem, Grant appeared to be elegantly at ease: graceful swoop of gray hair; silver booties from Grandezza, a big-shoes boutique in Berlin; draped silk suit in an extraordinary blue hue. What color, exactly? \u201cI would say\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. mermaid teal,\u201d Grant said, looking pleased.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=630\">Isabel J. Kim Makes Her Own World<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Grant worked on the \u201cAntigone\u201d paintings, the gallerist Thorsten Albertz said, \u201clast fall, right across the street, while Keanu was here, on Broadway, playing in \u2018Waiting for Godot.\u2019\u00a0\u201d In the gallery, rich, bright colors burst off the canvases, at once joyful and unsettling. Before gallerygoers arrived, Grant walked through the exhibit. She paused in front of the boldly pink \u201cVolcania.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know what this says about the fall, but I was really into the orange-pink-blue-purple combo,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then this\u201d\u2014she pointed to \u201cModest Vestment,\u201d nearby\u2014\u201cis green, verdant, coastal. You have the feeling of the spill, the emergency, the accident. I have a pink obsession\u2014I\u2019m a de Kooning person. He always got the perfect amount of pink in every piece.\u201d Each painting \u201cis like a firework, a celebration,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s so much violence, but in the sense of, like, a volcano erupting\u2014the possibility that comes from crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cAntigone\u201d series originated in 2014. \u201cLike many artists, many people, I was thinking about \u2018Antigone\u2019 in relation to Michael Brown\u2019s death,\u201d Grant said. \u201cI fell in love with the idea of this teen-age girl standing up and being so wonderfully ruthless\u201d\u2014defying authority to bury her slain brother. \u201cI thought, What if I started making a body of art just about her?\u201d Grant, who started her career as a sculptor, had used text from Sophocles\u2019 play (\u201cI WAS BORN TO LOVE NOT TO HATE\u201d) before; for these new works, she took rubbings from one of her early sculptures using tombstone wax, photographed the results, then screen-printed the images on canvas using different colored inks. \u201cIt was much more free.\u201d The paintings, huge and abstract, feature text, prominent straight lines, and organic-looking circles and splotches, some created with a squeegee: \u201cThe rules, the lines, being the rule of law, and the paint mess being like real, juicy life, and her voice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=628\">What\u2019s the Point of Sex, Anyway?<\/a><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>Grant had worked on the paintings, which she\u2019d brought from Los Angeles, in Chelsea. \u201cThis is going to sound super Midwest, but I think of it as making a lasagna\u2014making, assembling, but not cooking,\u201d she said. (Grant grew up in Ohio, Mexico, France, and Spain.) She found New York life \u201cvery challenging\u201d but also exciting: Mamdani\u2019s campaign, daily surprises. \u201cThe work became about transmutation, this Greek word, <em>anakain\u014dsis<\/em>, a transformation that brings spirit back.\u201d No one knows how to pronounce it, she added. \u201cWe\u2019re all laughing, like, \u2018How do you say it?\u2019\u00a0\u201d she said. \u201cDo you think I say things out loud before naming them?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Guests arrived, including Laura Raicovich, Grant\u2019s college friend and a former head of the Queens Museum, who had first introduced the artist to Albertz after admiring the works during their creation (\u201cI call the pink one \u2018Alexandra\u2019s Broadway Boogie-Woogie Time,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Raicovich said); the directors J\u00f6rg and Anna Winger (\u201cDeutschland 83\u201d); the writers Debbie Millman, Roxane Gay, and Fred Kaplan; the WNYC host Brooke Gladstone; and Grant\u2019s mother, Marcia, in bright pink, who talked about visiting a Boston flutemaker and then said, \u201cOh, there\u2019s Keanu.\u201d Reeves, with spiky graying hair, entered, wearing a dark suit and a bionic-looking cast on one finger; all evening, he hovered in the background, near Grant. After a couple of jolly hours, a core group piled into a yellow school bus and drove to Avenue C, to the Francis Kite Club, a community-focussed bar for the \u201ccreative industries\u201d which Raicovich co-owns. Albertz made a toast to Raicovich and then to Grant, \u201ca one-woman \u2018creative industry\u2019\u2014publisher, philanthropist, writer, painter, artist. She has an interesting plus-one who is also in the arts.\u201d Grant also made a toast, enthusing about \u201cliving in the real world, with real people, with real wine.\u201d Everybody laughed. \u201cThis is how we make culture. This is how we overcome power that makes us feel powerless,\u201d she said. People snapped their fingers, coffeehouse style. \u201cWhat makes me feel powerful is us being together,\u201d she went on. \u201cPeople come along at the right time and change your life.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=626\">The NY-12 Primary Is Awash with Money but Short on Belief<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walking through her new exhibition, \u201cAntigone 3000,\u201d the artist known to online hordes as Keanu Reeves\u2019s mysterious silver-haired girlfriend reflects on Sophocles and the color pink, Sarah Larson writes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anakainosis-dept"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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