Aaron Fowler's Assemblage Paintings Explore Personal and Collective Trauma

Aaron Fowler crafts large-scale assemblage-paintings that fuse three-dimensional objects and furniture from his environment, expressing profound emotional stories tied to his personal experiences. His art reflects traumatic incidents involving his family and friends in St. Louis, Missouri, such as gun violence and incarceration, using specific materials to process these narratives. Frequently, Fowler depicts himself as a pirate or renegade, incorporating figures that allude to religious symbolism, notably in BFF (2015), where he and his mother are illustrated in her kitchen. His mother, dressed in a leopard-print frontier gown and seated at a spinning wheel, is accompanied by modern snacks, while Fowler appears as a weary warrior with supplies. His work vividly captures his ties to family and community, countering the often abstract nature of contemporary painting. Engaging with his identity as a Black man in America, Fowler poignantly portrays those affected by violence, framed by lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s notion of 'the second era of the collapse of Reconstruction.' He earned his degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and an MFA from Yale University, currently residing and creating in Harlem, New York. This profile was curated by Amanda Hunt and first appeared in the January & February 2016 edition of ArtReview.