Manhattan Skyline II Photograph

Born in Carmel, CA. on May 30th, 1972. A native Northern Californian, Aaron M Thompson has been living and working in Fine Arts in New York since 1997. With the creation of art.les.nyc studios in 2005, Mr. Thompson focused his attention on building a non-profit collaborative artist studio out of his residence on Manhattans Lower East Side, determined to bring a full spectrum of color to the inhibiting urban wasteland. Aaron Thompson works with a variety of media paint, wood, plastic, metal, light to produce a fully immersive environmental experience. He constructs installations that submerge the viewer in his world of humor and beauty, re-imagining the visual tropes of 20th century American culture as a cutting-edge 21st century wonderland. From the detritus of our received past, he creates an illuminated playground.With the creation of art.les.nyc studios, Thompson has produced something wholly new. Processing an incendiary blend of religious/pop-cultural iconography through his whimsical sensibility, his works in murals, portable installations and especially, in his back-lot studio at 202 Rivington Street create an all-access world that melds fantasy with political dissidence. In short, he breaks down the wall between reality and imagination, or the end and the (new) beginning. Between despair and hope.A fusion of old-school New York artist sensibility with the contemporary realities of New Millennium-America, his work demands that the viewer face his or her own dreams. The Rivington Street studio is an "Alice in Wonderland" environment, with five distinct spaces carved from the grit of the inner city. It is a space where a hallway of reconfigured rock posters leads you to a foyer dominated by a glowing Peace Tree. Where a trip up a metal staircase leads you to an esplanade where a glowing sun smiles with red-lit eyes. Where a further trip through the catacombs of the building funnels the viewer through Candy-Cane Lane to a depiction of the horrors of the Iraq War. Individually, the pieces combine decorative and industrial materials with a lyrical line, turning the gray backyard grids of his surroundings into an oasis of color, texture and light. His message: to question the survival of artists, and art itself, in an environment of ceaseless gentrification, where the simple but essential human messages of expression and existence are often lost.