Isaac Aden: "Immersion"

About

Immersion, the exhibition of fifteen new Tonal Paintings by Isaac Aden focuses on the formal and sensational qualities of Aden’s most recent additions to his newest series of paintings, Vespers and Auroras. Specifically, the exhibition examines the subtle transition of color values, essentially gradients of saturation and desaturation of each color, across groups of 6 to 9 paintings as well as within each painting and the subtle shifts between the colors of the limited palette of red, blue and yellow. Like the rest of the Vespers and Auroras series—the subject and title of the artist’s exhibition at the gallery in the fall of 2020—they are painted wet on wet to allow for gentle atmospheric blending of colors on a grey ground. However, all of the paintings in the current presentation are of uniform size measuring 60 x 48 inches (the previous solo exhibition had the same size canvases as well as larger and diptych canvases in vertical and horizontal orientations). Pushing the current group of Tonal Paintings further toward his objective of achieving the sublime, Aden also delivers radiance and luminosity through: (i) variations in saturation of each hue (as noted above) and (ii) overlaid on various shades of grey grounds as well as (iii) the highly effective use of fluorescent paints.