ISAAC ADEN THE NUMINOUS SUBLIME PART I - II
DAVID RICHARD GALLERY
SBN: 978-1-7331016-8-4
Printed on the occasion of the exhibition ISAAC ADEN: THE NUMINOUS SUBLIME PART I - II at David Richard Gallery July 25 - October 4, 2023
Published by:
David Richard Gallery, LLC, 508 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001 www.DavidRichardGallery.com 212-882-1705
Gallery Owners: David Eichholtz and Richard Barger
All rights reserved by David Richard Gallery, LLC. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in whole or part in digital or printed form of any kind whatsoever without the express written permission of David Richard Gallery, LLC.
Curator: Isaac Aden
Artwork: © 2023 Isaac Aden
Catalogue: © 2020 David Richard Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
Catalogue Design: Camille Sacha Salvador Images: © 2023 Isaac Aden and David Richard Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
Photography: © Yao Zu Lu
DAVID RICHARD GALLERYJULY 25 – OCT. 4, 2023
ISAAC ADEN
THE NUMINOUS SUBLIME
PART I - II
DAVID RICHARD GALLERYDavid Richard Gallery is please to present Isaac Aden: The Numinous Sublime, a two-part solo exhibition of his most recent monumental paintings. The exhibitions feature seventeen oil paintings, measuring 12 x 27 ft., 12 x 9 ft., 14 x 6 ft. and 5 x 4 ft. These seminal paintings are part of Aden’s series of Tonal Paintings a body of work developed over the past eight years. Presented in two parts, the presentations demonstrate the ineffable breadth of Aden’s painting practice with the first section presenting paintings that glow and are decidedly warmer in chroma. Aden’s paintings trace their genealogy from Claude, European Romantic Painting, and Corfield, to the Contemporary Art of today. The second part, opening September 5th, contends with the somber realties frequently faced by the human condition and specifically recalls Rothko’s final masterpiece the Rothko Chapel.
It is the aim of Isaac Aden’s work to address the primordial concerns of the human condition while leaving space for the profoundly personal experiences of each viewer. The following body of Tonal Paintings were made between 2020 and 2023, culminating in monumental scale oil on canvases.
At first glance the paintings evoke minimalism because they read as monolithic monochromes. Upon closer inspection they seem to be more akin to Color field canvases with a vast array of subtle colors revealed. According to Aden the “paintings seem elusively simple, delicate, and subtle.” Yet, they are quite complex in their methodical production that includes many layers of underpainting
and color mixing on the surface using spray and wind from outdoors to bring an element of chance and serendipity. The Tonal Paintings are made from formless layers of gently diffused horizontal gradients of aerosolized oil paint. Applied on a flat surface with multiple layers of color forming the final result, are ethereal canvases which evoke transitional atmospheric periods. Aden also stated that “the relationships between colors have an implicit relationship with time: fleeting, ending, beginning, and always passing. This elicits a more subjective response in the viewers, as each (painting) will have their own relationship to time and the memory of its passage.” Upon a protracted period of viewing in person the paintings are revealed to be more of a type of Post Minimal Pointillism comprised of billions of miniscule dots of pure color floating together to create nebulous expanses
The larger works call to mind gothic proportions as they engage the like architecture of the space. Particularly because of their scale these paintings evoke the sublime. The Sublime has long been a part of the aesthetic discourse which follows the evolution of landscape painting into pure abstraction. Early proponents of the commonly held viewpoints including Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant were followed by twentieth century thinkers like Robert Rosenblum who applied the term to the aesthetic gains made by some of the Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko. The dominant discourse on the sublime since the 18th century has centered around the topics of awe and terror. However there have been moments in which new ways of considering this phenomenon have developed.
For example, the American painter Worthington Whittredge described a uniquely American sublime realized in the paintings of Asher B. Durand. This sublime was one of a raw primordial untouched forest in contrast to industrial deforestation occurring in Europe.
The concept Numinous Sublime was introduced by the metaphysical theologian Rudolf Otto and focused less on a sublime of terror and more on an uplifting one that was spiritual in nature. Rothko’s last body of work The Rothko Chapel, consists of fourteen “Black” paintings permanently displayed in an interfaith sanctuary. Rothko’s paintings seem to key into the Numinous Sublime, not necessarily in a religious sense, but in a wholly personal and meditative spiritual experience. My paintings address the same phenomenological and emotional experience
in relation to the viewer and the sublime. The canvases consume the periphery of the viewer, and the effect of the gradual gradient creates a boundless field. This lack of observable form doesn’t allow the viewer to latch on to a specific signifier or object in the painting. The result of this is to reflect the viewing back on to the audience creating a highly subjective and profoundly personal experience.
This exhibition was made possible in part by the generous contributions of The New York Foundation for the Arts
Kant, Immanuel, Observations on Feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime, 1764, University of California Press, 1960, pp. 16
Sunset on the Sea 1872
Oil on Canvas 28 x 41 1/8 in.
Collection: The Metroplolitain Museum of Art
ISAAC ADEN
The Lumnious Sublime (For John Frederick Kensett) 2023
Oil on Canvas
144 x 324 in.
ISAAC ADEN
The Numinous Sublime (Installation View) 2023
Oil on Canvas
144 x 324 in.
144 x 108 in.
Verso: ISAAC ADEN
The Numinous Sublime (Installation View) 2022
Oil on Canvas
144 x 108 in. each
ADEN
The Numinous Sublime (Installation View) 2023
Oil on Canvas
144 x 108 in.
60 x 48 in.
ISAAC ADEN
60
Tonal Painting XLVI
ISAAC ADEN
Previous ISAAC ADEN
The Numinous Sublime (installation View)
2021 Oil on Canvas 144 x 108 in.
Previous ISAAC ADEN
The Numinous Sublime 2021 Oil on Canvas
144 x 108 in.
ISAAC ADEN
Tonal Painting XX
2020 Oil on Canvas
60 x 48 in.
2020
80
ISAAC ADEN Tonal Painting XXVII Oil on Canvas 60 x 48 in. Veros: ISAAC ADEN Ghent Altar 2021 Oil on Canvas x 120 in.
ISAAC ADEN
Previous:
ISAAC ADEN
Aurora I
2020
Oil on Canvas
60 x 94 in.
ISAAC ADEN
Untittled Tonal Painting (Pink)
Installation View
2021
Oil on Canvas
108 x 144 in.
Verso:
ISAAC ADEN
Untittled Tonal Painting (Pink)
2021
Oil on Canvas
108 x 144 in.
ISAAC ADEN
ISAAC ADEN
Previous:
x 94 in.
Previous: ISAAC ADEN Aurora II\ Installation View
Oil on Canvas 60 x 94 in.
Isaac Aden is an American artist, curator and critic. Aden’s work has always engaged painting from the periphery and approached content as a conceptualist. Deeply informed by Art history, Aden implements a structuralist theory developed Rosalind Krauss in her seminal text Sculpture in the Expanded Field to painting. One aspect of Aden’s work remains true to the tradition of painting while the other veers into new territory.
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. Formerly the Senior Curator at the Jerome A Cohen and Joan Lebold Cohen Center for Visual Arts. He was named the Chief Curator of nine 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 Google, TIME Magazine, Tik Tok, 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 in the Americas.
Since its inception in 2010, David Richard Gallery has produced museum quality exhibitions that feature Post War abstraction in the US. The presentations have addressed specific decades and geographies as well as certain movements and tendencies. While the gallery has long been recognized as an important proponent of post-1960s abstraction—including both the influential pioneers as well as a younger generation of practitioners in this field— in keeping with this spirit of nurture and development the gallery also presents established artists who embrace more gestural and representational approaches to the making of art as well as young emerging artists.
In 2015 David Richard Gallery launched DR Art Projects to provide a platform for artists of all stripes—international, national, local, emerging and established—to present special solo projects or to participate in unique collaborations or thematic exhibitions. The goal is to offer a fresh look at contemporary art practice from a broad spectrum of artists and presentations. The Gallery opened its current location in New York in 2017.