On the core of Aaron Gilbert’s painted imagery are figures that seem to resign themselves to the branded hellscapes of lives in decay. Even when he shifts his view to interiors, figures not often emote, and seem like making an attempt to mentally escape from the confines of their allotted area.
One of many main focuses of his artwork is time, whether or not to transcend it or break freed from its grip. Particularly, he’s within the temporal group of capitalism, with its perpetual obsession with progress. His current work in World With out Finish at Gladstone Gallery probe how we manage our lives, significantly at house; his imagery is peppered with shopper merchandise that each muddle our lives and assist outline {our relationships} with the world, whereas usually melting into the backgrounds of our lives.
The first determine in “The Dream Before” (2024) is shielded from the viewer by a bathe curtain; her reflection seems extra clearly within the panels of the mirrored lavatory medication cupboard, making us keenly conscious of our standing as outsiders wanting into a personal scene. The portray has shades of Édouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” (1882) — its love of reflections is each disorienting and deliciously trendy. We, the viewer, discover it tough to situate ourselves right here, whereas concurrently feeling caught within the area between these figures who do little to acknowledge each other. Not like Manet’s composition, Gilbert’s girl shouldn’t be being provided to the viewer, however relatively refracted into painterly marks that drag our eyes via the area. The male determine, who’s crouching down in the direction of the sink, can also be obscured — we’re left to our personal units to parse relationships and connections. Eyes, like in so lots of his work, are averted to keep away from our gaze. After they do meet ours, they provide little consolation, showing chilly, as if both scrutinizing us with a medical air or staring proper via us.
Set up view of Aaron Gilbert, “The Dream Before” (2024)
Gilbert overtly talks about being fascinated by Byzantine icons and their metaphysical worldviews. You’ll be able to see how he transforms the teachings he’s realized from these sacred objects to convey one other kind of temporal area, one which floats in timelessness, unmoored from consumerism even when nonetheless tethered to it, consumed as an alternative by the glowing promise of enlightenment. He creates composite pictures of metropolis life within the home areas of familiarity, and the scenes themselves act as doorways or portals that focus cosmic or divine vitality into the item in entrance of us.
Although he was previously an engineer, Gilbert’s religion in industrial manufacturing has fizzled. But he retains his love of constructing issues. Right here, he’s constructed cryptic, glowing tales of people that seem to drift via decaying urbanscapes nearly emotionlessly, seemingly burdened by one thing that we by no means fairly see, and haunted by the corporatism that stalks their lives. These are nuanced and conflicted figures, acquainted however alien. In “• g • o • p • u • f • f •” (2025), we appear to look via a punched-through particleboard wall at somebody on the opposite facet of a glass storefront watching a smartphone. A spread of human to alien kinds inscribed into the barrier within the foreground suggests one thing mysterious being shed or penetrated.
From the Byzantine masters, he’s realized to inform the arcs of human tales with out the drama we’ve come to anticipate from many types of spirituality. He’s changed the anticipated miracles of saints and symbols of religion with the logos of mobile phone suppliers and supply apps that crowd the streets. When you ponder Gilbert’s work lengthy sufficient, you would possibly clock the truth that he’s encasing every scene in a kind of inventive chrysalis, maybe so that every of the figures can emerge remodeled from their perceived purgatory.
In The Order of Time (2017), a favourite e-book of the artist, physicist Carlo Rovelli discusses how time is a assemble, and never a basic function of the universe. Gilbert seems to be taking part in with our perceptions for that very same goal of questioning the fictions that represent our communal foundations. It jogs my memory of the now-famous saying collectively attributed to Fredric Jameson and Mark Fisher, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Right here, for those who look shut sufficient, you’ll be able to nearly sense the silent figures dreaming up a brand new model of society after the inevitable disaster on the horizon, however in addition they look uncertain if the world or capitalism would be the first to fall.
Aaron Gilbert, “Deana Bathing” (2024)
Aaron Gilbert, “• g • o • p • u • f • f •” (2025) (photograph courtesy Gladstone Gallery)
A view of Gladstone Gallery exhibition with the artist within the background, and “The Fourth Way” (2024) on the proper
Aaron Gilbert: World With out Finish continues at Gladstone Gallery (515 West twenty fourth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan) via April 19. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
