AARON FINK

OBJECT BEAUTY

May 1 - June 28, 2002

Aaron Fink's first show in New York was in 1987 at Leo Castelli Uptown. He has since exhibited in several galleries in New York in '88, '90, '91, '95, and '96 as well as across the United States and in The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland. This exhibition of new paintings marks and celebrates the publication of a new monograph on Fink's work published by Hard Press Editions. The text, written by Eleanor Heartney, is a treatise on the unquestionable and inevitable record of painting. Video, conceptual, and installation art, new technologies and paradigm shifts have given rise to new visions and mediums, but painting will always be a part of the cultural record-past, present, and future.

"Representation dissolves into its material parts. We are reminded that the painted canvas is an object in itself, not just a transparent window through which we view a fictional picture."

Aaron Fink's paintings of objects are as much about the inherent and emotive qualities of the item pictured as they are about the seduction of the medium through which they are captured. Broad swathes of oil paint are brushed, scraped, and incised across the canvas, at times nearly losing all reference to the object that inspired Fink to paint in the first place. Fink's subjects are essentially prosaic representations of our everyday world-cups, flowers, fruit, and vegetables-the very things that speak of private life and domesticity. These subjects lie within autobiography and memory, and sustain a connection to the long standing tradition of still life and its psychological associations.

"The image in the painting is of the commonplace, but it is also the point of departure. What is painted becomes the vehicle, the way into a realm of sensation based on experience and the physical nature of the paint. There is the image, the form, the volume, the illusion, a sign from the world. Then there is the reality of the canvas, the flatness of the painted surface and the physical nature of the paint itself and the hand. The attempt is to create a synthesis of contradictions based on intuition."

Aaron Fink, 1995

The artist and book author will be present for a reception and book signing on Thursday, May 16th from 6 to 8pm. Please call with questions or to receive additional information or visuals.

View Images