Opening Reception: Friday, September 6th, 6-8pm

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!” - William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

Auxier Kline is pleased to present Horn of Plenty, a show of 17 new paintings by Jeremy Sorese. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

With this latest body of work, the artist is focused on depictions of fools, solitary figures who feel no reservations about how they choose to live their lives, self-sufficiently fulfilling whatever task they deem worthwhile. He’s interested in that kind of singular dedication, exploring how reckless it can feel to live in service of one’s particular obsessions with the acute knowledge you are unable to imagine your life any differently. For Sorese, this is what choosing to live as an artist feels like and one that, as he has gotten older, has felt increasingly audacious to continue pursuing. Fools, despite their connotations with delusions and bad decision making, are aspirational in that they know themselves more than many of us give ourselves the chance to discover. 

Paired with the solitary figures are a series of still lifes depicting mundane objects, inspired by the tradition of Dutch vanitas painting. Unlike the well-known examples of candles and skulls, these pieces aim to depict a more contemporary expression of futility. In much the same way a fool cannot help themselves, a bowl can only break, and flowers can only wilt. The connection between the two halves of the show lies in the inability of both the fools and the objects to escape some honest truth about themselves. The show’s title “Horn of Plenty” is in reference to the cornucopia, a symbol of abundance derived from Greek mythology. Although commonly depicted as a wicker basket full of produce, the Horn of Plenty is actually based on a horn ripped from the head of a goat by a young Zeus, granting it the ability to nourish endlessly. It’s a symbol of sacrifice as well as bounty. 

Although the move towards painting has been incredibly nourishing for the artist, he states;

“I feel acutely aware that a painting itself—stretched fabric over a frame, coated in primer, intended to last potentially for centuries—is a particularly brazen approach to making an image. It has felt liberating to allow myself the bravado necessary to work in this unapologetically excessive way, but I feel a lingering caution when the very act of putting something down for posterity can never match my initial artistic impulse.” 

A fool has the ability to embrace the notion that everything is both futile and sacred in equal measure. Similarly, an artist’s practice is spent taking an internal impulse and unavoidably ruining it through making it tangible. That process, sometimes, does afford someone the opportunity to discover something of themselves, either by intentional design or accidental byproduct. It’s an endless baffling cycle, one without concrete evidence it will ever feel more certain or less daunting than it does at this moment. Some simply cannot help themselves, and we’re all better off because of it.