Aaron Morse "Timeline & Topography"
I-20 Gallery
This event has ended.
I-20 presents an exhibition of painting by Aaron Morse. Included will be two large-scale works of acrylic and collage on canvas along with a watercolor on printed paper and four oil and acrylic abstractions recently executed by the Los Angeles-based artist.
Morse’s large-scale collages on unstretched canvas hang like banners or tapestry on the wall. Aptly titled Timelines, they galvanize widespread imagery from a media-saturated culture and history to create a symbolic parallel world. The source material for this world is widely disparate and ranges from natural history to sporting memorabilia and found images from the Internet. Having assembled a dense and subjective timeline of history, rich in images, the Morse Timeline spans the Big Bang to the future in a dynamic and scale-shifting zigzag. This body of work has also been realized as large-size installations and murals within The UCLA Hammer Museum and outside the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Taking a different cue for creation, Morse restricts himself to paint and pure color alone in smaller acrylic and oil canvas works. While they may resemble satellite views that feel very familiar, in fact they are purely personal topographies. Within these paintings, the source material is the artist’s own painterly gesture and abstraction taking the place of dynamic realities, history, or even real geography.
Whether it’s personal topography or reimagined history, Morse has a surprising power to reconceive the familiar as strange and to make that which is known seem alien. This dynamism of Morse comes with a shared intensity both in the pleasure of color and the saturation of imagery that creates a unique viewing experience.
Aaron Morse was born in 1974 in Tucson, Arizona, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA in 1996 from the University of Arizona, Tucson, and his MFA in 1998 from the University of Cincinnati.
Media
Schedule
from February 15, 2012 to March 17, 2012