Art News

Exhibition at DC Moore Gallery of new paintings by Eric Aho explore the idea of the covert

NEW YORK, NY.- Eric Aho’s new paintings explore the idea of the covert, a shelter or place of escape within the woods. More broadly, these paintings are also about getting lost and taking refuge in experiences such as the enjoyment of the wilderness, the act of painting, or the contemplation of art. Aho maintains a constant dialogue with the history of art in his paintings. The Goya drawing Two Figures Pointing towards a Bright Opening (Prado Museum) served as a catalyst for the series of Covert paintings in this exhibition. The nineteenth-century ink drawing depicts two people amidst a loosely executed, indistinct nocturnal setting. Surprising and otherworldly, a white, slanting, rectilinear shape—perhaps a portal or passage—occupies the center of the composition. Resonating with Aho’s idea of the covert, this unnamable void appears in his paintings as a slab of intense white paint, a blinding, obliterating ray of light that becomes more solid and real than