Aleya Hoerlein
Taos, NM
The Realm of Possibilities, Number 13
Oil on muslin on wood panel
36" x 48" x 2"
2023
$2500
About
Aleya Hoerlein is a Taos, NM-based contemporary artist. She was raised in Fairfield, Iowa, by a creative family in a spiritual community that practiced transcendence. She went on to study art at The School of Visual Arts, in New York City, where she painted the figure and landscape but her attention was rapt by the shadows behind the figure or the sky beyond the landscape. She shifted her focus to abstract painting that is grounded by both reference to nature and transcendence.
Hoerlein’s solo exhibition, The Realm of Possibilities, was on view at The Encore Gallery at Taos Center for the Arts in 2023, and celebrated Northern New Mexico’s relationship with transcendental and abstract painting by showcasing her contemporary, lucid rendering of the genres. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at G2 Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, and Site:Brooklyn Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and appeared in publications such as Southwest Contemporary, New American Paintings, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her paintings are held in private collections throughout the US.
Artist Statement
My paintings are abstract and also grounded by reference to the observable world as well as nonphysical realms. I live in the Southwest on an expansive mesa with few trees and wide-ranging views. The surrounding mountains, storms, and open skies are theatrical and majestic. Figures and natural landmarks appear as flattened silhouettes against burning sunsets. A sunset is an end of today, but also a promise of tomorrow, it holds within it a realm of possibilities.
These elements deeply influence my compositions, which convey alternating negative and positive spaces: at times either a dark or light flat shape recedes into a void, a nothingness; at other times, it emerges to become the subject and gradients of colors become the background. Some shapes come close to touching; tension and longing are in the sliver of in-between space. The colorful gradients are a gradual dawning or dimming light source, an expansion, and a fleeting moment of time.
Art from Aleya Hoerlein in other TAAC exhibitions