Aaron Philip

In his quasi-autobiographical artworks, Aaron Philip employs text and a humorous, performative approach to self-portraiture, photographing himself within absurdist juxtapositions, such as with a bag of goldfish attached to his face with tightly wound plastic wrap. These compositionally simple images contrast with his erratic and gestural paintings and drawings, which employ broad swaths of color with fields of hand-scrawled text. His works’ titles—such as I Must Learn to Love My Hell., I Existed to Make Noises, or The Sign of a True Artist—offer confessional or expository statements about the objects pictured, infusing the works with an existential, if ironic, sensibility.