The newest series of paintings by Isaac Aden and his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery are monumental in scale with single canvases measuring 144 x 108 inches and triptychs with overall dimensions of 80 x 120 and 80 x 132 inches. The paintings fill the galley as each canvas and triptych was planned and scaled specifically for each wall. Beyond the grand size of each canvas, the palettes are ethereal and complex in that they are reductive, canvas-filling, physical mixtures applied in a pointillist approach (or pixilated in a contemporary digital vernacular) using only primary colors: red, blue and yellow. At first glance, each painting (and in the aggregate within the gallery) evokes a monochrome reading, while the stronger sensation is a moodiness that each conveys with the adjacent canvases, within the room, and more importantly, with each viewer. The palettes and stoic compositions convey a range of interpretations from serene and meditative to somber and almost dystopian.

This new series of paintings as well as prior related series are all rooted in the history of painting. At first glance, they appear Minimalist, almost Monochrome and very much Color Field painting. Yet, they are informed by the history of landscape painting with references to the Hudson River School and Claudian landscape and a strong relationship to representation and naturalism. Listening to Aden discuss these paintings and his historical research and approach to applying the paint to the canvas there are strong influences of romanticism, impressionism, tonalism and monochrome painting, with each having a different and direct impact on each of the previous and current related series of paintings. These art historical and theoretical influences are the subject of the online catalog and associated essays as well as video recorded discussions with Aden, all of which are posted on the exhibition pages on the DavidRichardGallery.com website.

Isaac Aden’s exhibition, The Numinous Sublime, will be on view from February 2 – February 25, 2022
on the Ground Floor at David Richard Gallery located at 211 East 121 Street, New York, NY 10035, Phone: 212-882-1705, email: [email protected] and

Website: DavidRichardGallery.com. Images of the artworks, installation views and videos as they become available will be available for viewing at the following link https://davidrichardgallery.com/exhibit/575-isaac-aden.

About the Exhibition:  This newest series of paintings is a continuation of a much larger body of work that Aden created over the past several years and the subject of three prior solo presentations at David Richard Gallery. The earlier series (that comprised the first two solo presentations) are also ethereal, reductive compositions of red, blue and yellow colors, each applied with an aerosolization of the oil medium and pigment, allowing gravity to place each droplet (point or pixel) onto wet tonal gray oil paint on stretched canvases horizontally situated on the floor of the studio (or outdoor terrace) to create a wet-on-wet application, while the viewer’s eye does the color mixing to blend the primary colors in different densities, proportions, and layers to create subtle, elegant transitions of the hues from one to the other. The canvases in these earlier series are smaller in size, mostly 60 x 48 inches in the vertical orientation and titled Tonal Painting then larger, up to 94 x 60 inches, also vertically oriented and titled Vesper, as well as several horizontal canvases measuring 60 x 94 inches titled Aurora. The palettes are bright with internal relationships between each series creating arrays of colors influenced by sunsets and sunrises and subtle color shifts within each array to generate in the aggregate a full spectrum of colors.

The third solo exhibition for Aden, The Numinous Sublime and The Romantics, was a series of monumental scale paintings ranging from single panels measuring 108 x 144 inches and a triptych measuring 144 x 324 inches. These paintings are related to the earlier series in that they were colorful, inspired by landscapes, but more specifically, sunrises and sunsets and all titled Tonal Paintings. These were clearly a transition to the grand scale of the current presentation noted above but with different, darker and moodier, color palettes..

Aden experimented with this approach to painting several years prior to embarking on the larger series of paintings and monumental scale in a much more organized and systemic fashion in the past two years during the Covid pandemic with the lockdowns and isolation. Over those two years, the color palettes changed from bright and colorful arrays strongly referencing nature with the light source at different times of day and the tonal quality of atmospheric perspective impacting the perceptual depth within the compositions. The later monumental series were also rooted in nature, but more influenced by art history and the complexities of the extreme astral and landscape atmospheric depths evoking questions about infinity, the abyss and sublime, as well as formally with monochrome paintings also conjuring such moods, wonder, and awe. Hence, the shift to the darker palettes, larger scale, and reductive compositions as well as references to Rothko, religious alters, and chapels.

About Isaac Aden:  Isaac Aden is an artist and curator. His work engages the arc of history through the lenses of the human condition.  Aden’s Post-Medium practice has centered its primary research in the area of New Institutionalism.  Aden makes bodies of work often tangentially related and even visually disparate with no desire to ascribe an aesthetic conclusion.  In this way the practice becomes absorbent and generative.

Aden has exhibited internationally, including: dOCUMENTA 13, MassMOCA, The Fedricianum, White Box, Kassel Werkstadt, David Richard Gallery, Gallerie Rasch, Ulrike Petschel Gallerie, Ethan Cohen Fine Art, SPRING/BREAK, Art Miami, Contemporary Istanbul, VOLTA Basel, Sotheby’s, The Jerome A. Cohen And Joan Lebold Cohen Center for Art. The Bertha and Karl Luebsdorf Gallery, The International Gallery of Contemporary Art, The Parthenon Museum, The New York Public Library, and The World Trade Center.

Aden is on the board of White Box and formerly the Senior Curator at the Jerome A Cohen and Joan Lebold Cohen Center for Visual Arts.  He was named the Chief Curator of four art fairs including the AD ART Show at Sotheby’s and the World Trade Center, New York and the Accessible Art Fair. As part of this he developed and executed the first city wide digital art fair, partnering with corporate sponsors including Systech Systems and NBC Universal. Over 13 million people viewed the fair.  He has curated over twenty exhibitions, including Jeffrey Hargrave, Escape Route, at the Bronx Museum. He has been awarded Fellowships from the Kossak Foundation, Creative Capital, The New York Foundation for the Arts and the United States State Department. He is currently represented by: Gallerie Rasch in Germany, Marat Guelman in Russia and the Balkans, and David Richard Gallery the Americas.