Marble Figurative Paintings

A figure reclines in a red and yellow-strapped lawn chair. The figure sitting in the chair is activated by Aldrich’s transformation of paint and resin into oozing swaths of skin between the lawn chair straps. The chair, recalling the grid, works as a pattern trying to hold and contain the body resting inside it. -- Building on her previous show, Main Squeeze, which featured bodies pressing through the grid of lawn chairs, in “That Feeling When,” Aldrich expands the excess of materials to large figure paintings and small, overfilled sculptures. Aldrich uses thick materials that protrude from the surface, reminding the viewer that the paintings are not only physical objects in themselves, but also create the illusion of the picture. The work employs a risky excess of material that borders on uncontrollable; becoming metaphoric for barely controlled femininity, the attraction and repulsion of materialism, and the body pressing against constraints. The figures in the paintings are seen from behind or have turned away. The viewer is put in a place of questioning whether they are a voyeur or a co-viewer with the figure of something deeper in the picture plane. The full body paintings...