Ron Agam

Revelation, 2023 Acrylic paint on wood panel in relief

Born in Paris, painter Ron Agam only took up the paintbrush later in life, following a long and successful career as a fine art photographer. Yet, the robustness and sheer prolificacy of his output since belies the charge that this newfound passion is anything but a calling: Since first embracing his new medium, Mr. Agam’s creative energy has burst forth, embracing a dizzying array of techniques and a brilliant spectrum of forms, in an ever-expanding constellation of individual works. From lenticular, optical experiments to distilled, saturated color-fields, Mr. Agam’s work has, canvas by canvas, explored the process of seeing, all the while keeping an eye on the prize of metaphysical meaning. “I began this work as a leap, without knowing where it will go,” Mr. Agam explains. “And I don’t think about it now; I just paint.” This wellspring of intuition seems to have tapped a deep reservoir of inspiration. As his body of work has compounded, growing to thousands of individual pieces, it has cast into relief a central theme of Mr. Agam’s life itself: That the questions one conceives as a child, considering the very abundance of stars in the sky, may yet animate an enduring curiosity in the mature soul. Indeed, Mr. Agam’s meditative, transcendent canvasses bear witness to this pure fact: That to contemplate the world deeply is to refresh it’s mystery. Looking at his canvasses liberates one from what is known, restoring the essential spirit of inquiry that characterizes true freedom.