
In this most recent body of work, Aaron Maier-Carretero turns his gaze outward toward nature to explore the formal aspects of painting. Working from intuition, he captures the basic shapes and forms of familiar objects and uses them as a point of departure to develop his abstractions. Natural elements such as waves and flowers, and man-made items like fountains, feature prominently in this new work. His interpretation of nature stems from a subconscious source and is driven by the materiality of the medium and color.
While his previous body of work was a more direct interrogation of his upbringing and personal memories, Maier-Carretero’s new body of work is intentionally made open to the viewer’s interpretation. Work that was once was grounded in figuration and boxed in by personal identity has now become lyrical, metaphorical, and wholly open to one’s own understanding.
Aaron Maier-Carretero (b. 1987) is a Latinx visual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He obtained his BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has exhibited at the Queens Museum, NY; Sculpture Center, NY; The National Arts Club, New York City; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; Phillips Collection, DC; The University of Maryland Art Gallery; the Washington Project for the Arts; and others. His work is held in the collections of the Phillips Collection; the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in Washington, DC; The University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, MD; the Art Bank Collection, DC; The Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; as well as numerous private collections.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
breakfast, 2020
Oil on canvas
55 x 72 x 1.5 in.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
down, 2021
Oil on canvas
55 x 72 x 1.5 in.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
la mordida, 2018
Oil on canvas
55 x 72 in.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
the moon in june, 2021
Oil on canvas
55 x 72 x 1.5 in.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
mark cutting limes for his mom, 2021
Oil on canvas
55 x 72 in.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
branch dr, 2018
Oil on canvas
55 x 72 in.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
waltzing with bears, 2020
Oil on canvas
55 x 72 in.
Aaron Maier-Carretero
12-17-87, 2021
Oil on canvas
47 x 72 in.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce Aaron Maier-Carretero as a recipient of The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to helping artist and students pursue the mastery of the traditional techniques and workmanship in painting and sculpture.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles cordially invites you to attend Alma Ruiz and Aaron Maier-Carretero in Conversation, to be held on Saturday, April 2nd, at 2:00 PM. This talk is presented in conjunction with the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, currently on view through April 9, 2022. This is an in-person event. Seating is limited and reservations are required.
Maier-Carretero’s series was intimate in a different manner. It took a look into the mind of an artist in a creative rut. He spent two months painting peonies every day. His struggle to get out of his head and delve into the nitty-gritty of the art form reflects a frantic desire for inspiration. No peony painting is the same as the next. As he moved from canvas to canvas, he made the flowers with new textures and tones. The result is best represented in the last paintings he made for the series. In them, he used fewer layers of acrylic and instead portrayed the outline of a peony, using only the necessary strokes.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce AARON MAIER-CARRETERO: a hundred peonies, the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Flowers are wonderful forms. Their petals of bright color resemble strokes of smeared paint. Their stems, leaves, and overall composition feels organic and abstract like paint. Flowers are reminders of Aaron Maier- Carretero’s connection to nature, to painting’s connection to nature, and to the alchemy of painting—turning raw materials into forms and emotions that take on a life of their own.
There are a lot of paintings of beds, bedrooms, and kitchen tables, perhaps the result of some pandemic hangover. One example is Aaron Maier-Carretero. His painting series “A Lobster Named Dinner”—so named because, well, he had a pet lobster in childhood and it was called Dinner—captures his home and reworks family interiors from photos.
Celebrating a shared cultural history of unstoppable resilience, collective action, and rising up against oppressive, anti-progress systems, Creative Resilience is a curated space of safe expression, joy and uplift, systemic overhauls and reimagined futures — things which would perennially benefit everyone, but all the more so in this prolonged period of darkness, threats, struggles, and isolation.
His work serves as a gateway into understanding and questioning the common human condition. Painting has become a means of processing for Maier-Carretero that ultimately results in a greater sense of self-acceptance for the artist. “I’m able to accept my own experience as part of a human experience whether it’s fortunate or unfortunate,” said Maier-Carretero. “I want to tell the story of what I don’t . . . of what I guess I don’t know what to do with. Like I don’t know what to do with these feelings of seeing people suffer, seeing myself suffer, seeing my family suffer.”
I also like Aaron Maier-Carretero’s somewhat disturbing enormous painting titled not in front of the kids. The palpable, hidden violence is terrifying in the work.