Fisher Parrish is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of works by Los Angeles-based painter Aaron Elvis Jupin. Piper, Pipe that Song Again!, a title borrowed from a book of children’s rhymes, fables, and sing-alongs by Nancy Larrick, refers to the uncanny familiarity of Jupin’s abstracted paintings. With his new series, Jupin evokes the feeling of a childhood rhyme or fable told through the warped filter of time and repetition. Memory obscures the characters, and the protagonist shifts from the animate to inanimate. A doorknob, a window, or a carseat drawn from his exploration of the domestic landscape, shift forward and become the focal point – exaggerated and reanimated to the point of haunting absurdity.
As Jupin recants scenes from childhood, narrative is reduced to a thick patina, a warped visual limerick, that while personal and particular to Jupin, remains recognizable and relatable, as if you might hold that memory as your own. A childish familiarity and intimacy achieved through the tools of animation and rules of cartoon logic draws us in, but once in, we are left in an “anti-real” and uncanny world that is far more complex than a cartoon.
An ode to the distance between reality and memory, Piper Pipe that Song Again! will run September 13th to October 27th with an opening reception on Friday, September 13th from 6 to 9pm.