Forty years older than Skolnick, Bickett was known for “The Archive,” a voracious, conceptual-art magnum opus that became his all-encompassing life’s work. “I moved here in 2018, seven months after Louis passed away,” he recalled, referring to the artist Louis Zoellar Bickett II (1950-2017), a fellow Kentucky native. The artist Aaron Skolnick in his studio in Hudson, New York, October 2019 (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) There, Skolnick lives frugally in an old, wood-framed apartment building just off the town’s main street he works night shifts at a restaurant and sticks to a disciplined schedule that allows for plenty of studio time, as well as for walks, exercise, and hanging out with friends. “I guess I’m having something of a moment,” Skolnick said modestly during a recent interview at his studio in Hudson, the riverside town north of Manhattan that in recent years has enjoyed an economic recovery and established some hipster bona fides after decades of boom-and-bust convulsions. At the same time, Skolnick’s work is being featured in several group shows, including Young Hudson Biennial, at September Gallery, in Hudson, New York (through November 10) We Go Fast, at Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, California (through November 24) and If I Could Turn Back Time, at the Morlan Gallery at Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky (through December 3). Now, a selection of Skolnick’s small-format works is on view in Your Voice Lying Gently in My Ear, a just-opened solo exhibition at Institute 193 (1B) in the East Village, which will run through December 15. His images of naked men, including self-portraits, do not emphasize or fetishize the erotic but they do not shy away from it either instead, Skolnick offers a frisson of the sexual (if a viewer really wants it) naturally embedded in the young artist’s dutiful draftsmanship, which has found its groove in recent years, even as he has sharpened his thematic focus. Works by Aaron Skolnick, including: top, an untitled, colored-pencil-on-paper drawing (2019) bottom: “Watching You Get Into Bed” (diptych, 2019), oil on linen, 12 x 18 inches (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)įor Aaron Skolnick, a 30-year-old artist from Kentucky who is gay and easily fluid about his sexuality, drawing or painting the male nude is a routine, essential part of his art-making.
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