Ayé Aton: Duality, Emory University, October 20 – January 15, 2023
Ayé A. Aton's art is neither about the past nor the future, neither real nor unreal. In a world that can no longer imagine other universes, Aton offers a true utopia, a divine space. He connects us to an alternative perspective, the opportunity to dive into the cosmos. His abstractions bring the possibility of returning to the self. When the world opens up, when stretched to infinity, we embrace pleasure and power. Aton's amorphous shapes become roads, wings, clouds, and dreams. They conjure sensations in the body and mind. They serve as maps crucial to constructing our identities, sexualities, aesthetics, emotions and memories, and representations of self. They remind us that we are not all destined to the same fate. Now we are in flight. That when we hit the farthest reaches of dreams and desires, to bang on the walls of space and time until the lid pops off. This is not escapism; this is not a drill.
The paintings on canvas, board, and paper can be categorized in three ways: the depiction of heads emerging from a transcendent world, imagining an alternate cosmos for Black existence, and a myriad of examples for positioning your inner self inside the spiritual world, often by reinterpreting Egyptian mythology. The celestial heads blossom from a garden of consciousness and growth. These otherworldly landscapes are lush and layered, their warm, bright palleted foliage taking root, melting, and melding, becoming a part of the beings. They speak of joy and freedom. They speak of growth. Aton's version of space has a different kind of buzz. The stars are small and speckled. Exploding comets shoot around bright planets and float comfortably like they've been there for lifetimes and lifetimes. In By Any Means Necessary, 2004, five portraits of Malcolm X at various points of his life fill the sky. All of the answers are up there, suspended in eternity. With Ra - The Embodiment Of the Sun, 2004 Aton depicts "arguably Egypt's most important deity" as it was Ra, and Ra alone, who was there at the birth of creation. As the god of the life-giving sun, Ra reigned over the created world: the sky, the earth, and the underworld. Here we see the young deity with arms outstretched, praying, bathing in the rays of a gold-leaf sun. Above all floats the 'eye of Ra' an amulet associated with fire and flames, holding the potential to restore harmony and turn violent with the power of the destructive side of the sun.
Along with the more discreet paintings, this exhibition offers the unique occasion to view a recreation of Aton's mural work. In 1971 he moved to the terrestrial headquarters of the Sun Ra Arkestra, the "Arkestral Institute" in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. The modest three-story rowhouse was where the ensemble lived, rehearsed, and pushed the limits of avant-garde jazz for the rest of time. While a percussionist for the Arkestra from 1972-1976, Aton painted murals for an audience of one in the rooms of Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, and Sun Ra. Previously, he had painted his intergalactic murals inside various homes across Chicago's South Side Black Belt through the 1960s. Photos of these walls were often taken; titles, dates, and exact addresses were not documented. These works were lost to time.
Ayé A. Aton (Born: Robert Underwood, January 1940, Versailles, Kentucky, died: October 2017, Lexington, Kentucky) was a muralist, painter, educator, and musician. His solo exhibitions include The Lexington Living Arts and Science Center, Lexington, KY, and Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, Midway, KY, both in 2021, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, in 2013. In 2016 he was in the group exhibition The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965–Now, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, and University of Pennsylvania Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA. He performed extensively with many musicians over numerous decades and recorded on the 1980 album Infinite Spirit Music, Live Without Fear, Sun Ra And His Astro Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra, Discipline 27-II in 1972, and the seminal Sun Ra, Space is the Place, in 1973.