Color is the dope, Aron Barath
Galleri Urbane welcomes Hungarian painter Aron Barath for his first solo exhibition in the United States. Color is the dope is a chromatic experience featuring canvases of bold, gossamer strokes of paint. Following his inclusion in the gallery's 2021 group summer show, RIPE, and a list of presentations across Europe, Barath introduces a broader array of hues in his ongoing investigation of color for this exhibition.
"Gesture painting is the way through which I can make my thoughts and feelings visible the most freely, spontaneously, without any compromises. It is a very inner energy that bursts out of me at the given moment," Barath says of his generative, abstract style.
Developing from a more limited color palette, in this show, Barath utilizes both muted and vibrant colors that splash and streak across canvases. Black, white, and opaque colors filter to the paintings' foreground to materialize colors of light. He combines contrasting hues upon the canvases: some radiate strongly while others cast colors more quietly. The pigments simultaneously display as transparent and impasto — a sublimity crafted by the Budapest-based painter.
Laying his canvases on the floor, Barath uses colors freely, painting with various materials and tools. Tested and mixed himself are water-based paints which allow his multiple layers to all easily be perceived at once. He uses a variety of brushes, brooms, sponges, and sprayers of different shapes and sizes alongside his handmade tools.
Barath chooses to explore the essence of traces of light, substance, and color in his work, absent from contemporary trends of communication. The selected paintings in the exhibition are studies of light and color through a series of intuitively completed steps. A euphoric kind of action takes place in Barath's studio as he paints interpretively and sometimes dances around his canvases.
Viewers of Color is the dope are transported into Barath's tranquil, psychedelic scene. "A good abstract painting primarily gives an experience," he says.