Reception: Friday, March 19, 2010, 5:30 - 7:30pm
Santa Fe, NM—LewAllen Galleries is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, Ron Ehrlich: New Work. On view March 19 – April 25, 2010, the artist’s upcoming exhibition at LewAllen Galleries’s Railyard venue will showcase his latest compositions, which merge the crackling intensity of American action painting with the meditative calm of traditional Japanese wood-fired ceramics.
In addition to exemplifying the generative potential of cultural interchange and media hybridity within the sphere of contemporary artistic practice, Ron Ehrlich’s latest works witness the evolution of his highly individualized aesthetics.
Deriving increased expressivity from both a sophisticated harmonization of what would first appear to be incongruous, acerbic hues as well as their startlingly energized fields of pigment, the paintings on exhibit in Ron Ehrlich: New Work epitomize the artist’s mastery of brutally eloquent coloration and the visual language of rapture. Saturated with forceful and elegantly counterpoised gestures, richly modulated surfaces, and painstakingly balanced coloration, his works result from a complex process in which he mixes oil, wax, lacquer, shellac, porcelain dust and marble dust; applies his media by throwing, pouring, brushing, scumbling and encouraging drips and runs; then turns a blowtorch on some areas and layers to excite fusing and merging of the materials into a lustrous glaze.
Ehrlich received his BFA from Connecticut College in 1976. He later traveled to Japan where he practiced classical pottery making for five years. On his return to the U.S., he studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and then the Rhode Island School of Design. Selected for Outward Bound: American Art on the Brink of the 21st Century, Ehrlich's work has been featured in museums in Beijing, Shanghai, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Singapore and Manila. In 2008, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art presented In Other Words, a solo exhibition dedicated to the artist's recent works. His paintings are actively collected by a growing number of esteemed public and private collections internationally.