OCHI is pleased to present To Drag the Earth with a Sleepy Rhythm, a solo presentation of new paintings by Aaron Michael Skolnick. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The works will be on view at OCHI, Sun Valley, from May 28 to July 16, 2022.

To Drag the Earth with a Sleepy Rhythm features an array of paintings that portray intimate and poetic scenes from everyday life conjured through quiet observation, reading, walking, and reflection. Framed by elements of desire, intimacy, and mortality, Skolnick navigates easily between landscapes, domestic scenes, and intimate portraits full of novelistic details.

Skolnick’s representations of nature are peaceful, sublime, and at times melancholic, as he captures the ever-changing light flickering through leaves or reflecting off the sea. Channeling the slowness of an afternoon or the speed of a sunset into wet-on-wet strokes of color, Skolnick seeks and finds self-reflection in his surroundings and in their re-creations. Painting en plein air with focus, patience, and a reliance on memory—each of Skolnick’s works becomes a remnant of a fleeting interaction between the earth, a flower, a deer, a field, the sun, and the artist. Scale-shifting with aplomb, Skolnick glances towards an expansive universe as he pushes up against the confines of the canvas, creating hazy meditations on the presence of being.

Familiar markers of domestic bliss such as stacked books, armchairs, flowers from the garden, and a beloved pup at rest are warm and welcoming. Humid breezes, candlelight, cold breaths, and weary sighs—all ephemeral sensations that Skolnick translates into visual subject matter—create containers for marking the temporality of each day and often for the processing of grief and trauma. Elements of autobiography appear throughout the exhibition as Skolnick translates his experiences of loss into tender, soft-spoken non-linear narratives. Distilling potent vulnerabilities into delicate paintings of animals exposed on their backs, lifeless in dirt, or alone in the grass are contemporary memento mori—gentle reminders of the fragility of consciousness and flesh.

In To Drag the Earth with a Sleepy Rhythm, Skolnick strikes moments of connection through universal relevance, making space for the viewer to reflect on each visceral instances in time. Skolnick’s paintings are vessels to capture moments, feelings, and gestures, successfully subverting the enormity of the present.

Aaron Michael Skolnick (b. 1989, Erlanger, KY) received a BFA from the University of Kentucky in 2012 and currently lives and works in upstate New York. Skolnick’s work has recently been exhibited at Institute 193 in Lexington, KY; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, GA; Fierman Gallery and MARCH in New York, NY; Incident Report and September Gallery in Hudson, NY; Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami, FL; and United Artists Space and OCHI in Los Angeles, CA. Skolnick’s work is held in the permanent collections of The University of Kentucky Art Museum and The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and his first monograph, Cruisin’, was published by Instituted 193 in 2021.

Pauli Ochi