Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, “Crossing the River,” an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles-based artist Aaron Morse. “Crossing the River” investigates Aaron Morse’s approach to color, composition, motif and narrative structure.
The action in Aaron Morse’s paintings and works-on-paper is situated in wide open spaces, be they those of the American West where he grew up; the Sierra Nevada mountains where he sketches and hikes; the Pacific Ocean as it stretches away from the beaches of Los Angeles to the coast of Japan. A fourth generation Westerner, Aaron Morse’s work is attuned to the presences and absences of the United States, its grand vistas, diverse peoples and histories. “As an American, I have tended to be interested in the history of that place, which as a country is not very long, but as a continent is just as old as anywhere else,” he notes.
Aaron Morse stacks space vertically and horizontally moving the eye of the viewer up, down, in and out of the picture. Like the grand studio landscapes of Albert Bierstadt, or the travel prints of Hiroshige, standing in front of Morse’s works one has the sense of a world bigger than one’s own. Dynamic lines of clouds, mountain tops, distant peaks, shooting stars and comets highlight finer-grained moments such as plants, rocks, reptiles, insects and other animals, all laid in by way of gradated washes of color, expressive brushwork and stippling with an array of brushes and other tools.
Morse’s long-standing interest in art history, popular media and textbook illustration lends a timeless yet insistently present quality to his work. “Even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive of such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit,” Orson Wells once said. “A text’s unity lies not in its origin, but in its destination,” Roland Barthes notes. Aaron Morse’s work draws attention to the role of both the viewer and the maker, each as sites in which art and images are figured, with one question leading to another, moving with attention towards a world of never-ending possibility.
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.
Aaron Morse’s exhibition, “Crossing the River,” is online October 28 - November 11, 2026. All works can be viewed at the gallery by appointment.
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.
