Aaron Morse’s work engages with human and environmental concerns, often with a view toward our greater narratives about ourselves and the world in which we live. Morse's paintings and works-on-paper invite us to consider myth, nature and culture through dynamic compositions that combine their elements in colorful and complex layers.
"My goal is not to dominate the viewer or demand that they feel or see the view I'm presenting a certain way," Morse writes. "The art is living with ambiguity and contradictory assessments. I always try to make paintings that are rich but open — that might have a life of their own without me — images that can support multiple interpretations, mirror our own unique respective experiences and consider history and its aspects.”
Aaron Morse's paintings draw on textbooks, guidebooks and artwork produced by a range of peoples, at a range of time periods, from around the world. "I am drawn to the mutability and malleability of images, the way that an image or set of cliches might be altered and changed into another thing," Morse notes. "Paintings are real and unreal. My paintings, though broadly representational, are not so realistic as to be confused with reality, so what then is a Wild West or Sci-Fi image actually doing? It's emotional and symbolic, it calls upon our memories of other pictures, both overtly and subconsciously." Aaron Morse's work invites us to experience the sublime in the manner in which grand landscape paintings are designed to do, while at the same time asking us to consider the complexities of both image-making and narrative — as it has existed in past — and as we create it today.
Aaron MORSE (b. 1974, Tucson, AZ) received his BFA from the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) and his MFA from University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH). Aaron Morse’s recent and upcoming solo and group exhibitions include, “Sea and Land” Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); "If the Sky Were Orange: Art in the Time of Climate Change,” Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA); Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA); Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA); Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston, TX); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (Logan, UT); Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC); Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery At Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY). Aaron Morse is included in the Museum Collections of Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA); Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA); Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Hilbert Museum of California Art (Orange, CA); Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (Logan, UT); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX); Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY); Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); Rhode Island School of Design, (Providence, RI). Morse's work has been reviewed in such publications as Los Angeles Times, Time Out, Flaunt, Tema Celeste, and Artweek. Aaron Morse lives and works in Los Angeles.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday from 11-5. For additional images, or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 323-507-2037. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles, CA 90065 in the Glassell Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.