New Paintings by Renowned Colorist Ron Ehrlich at Stephen Haller Gallery

NEW YORK, NY.- Stephen Haller Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by the renowned colorist Ron Ehrlich. With a rare level of skill and a complex methodology Ehrlich tackles his paintings with a contrasting muscularity and intellectual vigor. Ehrlich’s provocative and intense personality is evident in the vitality of his painting.

Art Critic Dominique Nahas describes this aspect of the work in the catalogue essay to Ehrlich’s recent exhibition at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art: At the heart of Ehrlich’s work is its ferocious daemonic energy which pulsates throughout the work… The artist’s works are startling in their boldness and directness and surprising in their infinite subtleties, nuances and modulations of mark making and texture and color revealed slowly both from afar and up close.

Ron Ehrlich, Carousel, 2010, oil, mixed media on panel 72 x 72 inches. Photo: Courtesy Stephen Haller Gallery

The rigor of Ehrlich’s five year study in Japan of the art of Bizen pottery-making lead to the development of his singular and very effective technique. Later studying at Kansas City Art Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design he began to apply three dimensional techniques to two dimensional painting resulting in surfaces of extraordinary depth and complexity.

As Nahas writes: “You literally can get swept away as a viewer in exploring each square millimeter of an Ehrlich surface (or rather surfaces, as he is a master of layering upon layering). So one apprehends the artist’s works phenomenologically speaking, deeply, in breadth and in depth…Ron Ehrlich calls into existence visual experiences suffused with startling communicative power.”

In a review of Ehrlich’s Daum Museum exhibition, art historian Nancy K. Weant described the work simply as “spectacular paintings.”