The Mark Moore Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition of paintings by Aaron Parazette. Originally a native of Southern California and alumni of the Claremont Graduate School, Parazette has been working and teaching in Houston since 1990. He is a Core Fellow of the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at the University of Houston. His solo and group shows have been in Toronto, Boston, New York, Dallas, and particularly last year’s exhibition with Ken Price at the Austin Museum of Art, entitled Material Morph.
Parazette’s new paintings are perhaps his most sophisticated works to date. They are a colorful feast of oppositions and geometry. Completed over the past year, the paintings are made up of eccentric shapes over reductive, flat planes of color. In the tradition of John McLaughlin, Parazette uses complex spatial relationships to conjure ideas of landscape, or more oddly, a synthetic stage. Broad horizontal planes describe the terrain where animated forms twist across the surface - as maneuvers or events in space. And the titles, Carver, Black Sea and Rodeo Clown reflect Parazette’s interest in the culture of surfing, skating and snow boarding.
This group of paintings reinvents the tradition of surface and finish and space that originated in Southern California.
