At the heart of Aaron Gilbert's painted imaging are figures that seem to resign to the hellish landscapes of the life of decomposing life. Even when he turns his vision of the interiors, the figures rarely emotion and seem to try to mentally escape from the limits of their attributed space.
One of the main objectives of his art is time, whether it is to transcend it or free oneself from its grip. In particular, he is interested in the temporal organization of capitalism, with his perpetual obsession with growth. His recent paintings in Endless world at Gladstone Gallery Probe how we organize our social worlds, especially at home; Its images are dotted with consumer products that clutter both our existence and help define our relationships with the world, while often founding in the bottom.
The main figure of “The Dream Before” (2024) is projected from the spectator by a shower curtain; His reflection appears more clearly in the panels of the mirror pharmacy cabinet, which made us taking into account our status of foreigners who envisage a private scene. Painting has nuances of “A Bar at the Folies -Bergère” by Édouard (1882) – His love of reflections is both disorienting and deliciously modern. We, the spectator, find it difficult to situate ourselves here, while feeling simultaneously taken in space between these figures which do not recognize themselves. Unlike the composition of Manet, Gilbert's wife is not offered to the spectator, but rather refracted in pictorial marks that hang out in space. The male figure, which squats towards the sink, is also obscured – we are left to our own devices to analyze relationships and connections. Eyes, as in so many paintings, are avoided to avoid our gaze. When they meet ours, they offer little comfort, seeming cold, as if they were examining us with clinical air or look at us through us.
Gilbert speaks openly about being fascinated by Byzantine icons and their visions of the metaphysical world. You can see how he transforms the lessons he has learned from these sacred objects to transmit another type of temporal space, the one who floats in timelessness, not moored of consumerism even if he is always attached, consumed instead by the brilliant promise of enlightenment. It creates composite images of urban life in domestic familiarity spaces, and the scenes themselves act as doors or portals which concentrate cosmic or divine energy in the object before us.
Although he was previously an engineer, Gilbert's faith in industrial production collapsed. However, he keeps his love to build things. Here, he has built cryptic and brilliant stories of people who seem to float through urbanwoman in decomposition almost without emotion, apparently loaded with something that we never see completely and haunted by corporatism which tracks their lives. These are nuanced and conflicting figures, familiar but extraterrestrial. In “• g • o • p • u • f • f •” (2025), we seem to look through a wall of particle panel struck on the other side of a glass window fixing a smartphone. A range of extraterrestrial human forms inscribed in the barrier in the foreground suggests that something mysterious is smashed or penetrated.
Byzantine masters, he learned to tell the arcs of human stories without the drama that we expect from many forms of spirituality. He replaced the expected miracles of saints and symbols of faith in the European tradition by the logos of cell phone suppliers and delivery applications that hinder the streets. If you think about Gilbert's paintings long enough, you could invite the fact that it breaks each scene in a type of artistic chrysalis, perhaps so that each of the figures can emerge from their perceived purgatory.
In The order of time (2017), a favorite book by the artist, the physicist Carlo Rovelli explains how time is a construction, and not a fundamental characteristic of the universe. Gilbert seems to play with our perceptions with the same purpose of questioning the fictions that constitute our community foundations. This reminds me of the now famous saying jointly attributed to Fredric Jameson and Mark Fisher: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Here, if you look close enough, you can almost feel the silent characters dreaming of a new version of society after the inevitable disaster on the horizon, but they do not seem also sure if the world or capitalism will be the first to fall.
Aaron Gilbert: endless world Continue to Gladstone Gallery (515 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) until April 19. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
