True Lies

The Cincinnati Arts Association's Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts debuts its 2003-04 season with the premier of three new exhibitions: Prepositional, a site-specific installation by Cincinnati sculptor Voss Finn that dynamically engages the vertical expanse of the gallery's street-level exhibition space; Monumental/Miniature, a new series of exquisitely-executed oil paintings merging historical and contemporary painting approaches with extreme variations in scale by renowned Cincinnati painter Cole Carothers; and True Lies, a masterful display of illusion and technical virtuosity by Ron Isaacs of Richmond, Ky.

Ron Isaacs of Richmond, Ky. has amazed viewers since the early 1970s with his intricately constructed and meticulously painted trompe l'oeil birch plywood constructions. Fascinated with the power of ordinary objects that accumulate in our lifetime and the associations they conjure, Isaacs painstakingly and convincingly creates elaborate still life reconstructions that convey a sense of memory, loss and beauty.

In True Lies, Isaacs juxtaposes and combines objects within his trompe l'oeil constructions to create new meaning, and transforms extraordinary representations of ordinary objects into evocative and wordless poems with a sometimes surreal, sometimes nostalgic resonance. His mastery of materials enables him to push these seemingly innocent objects into a realm where the distinction between what is real and what is illusion is tantalizingly suspended.

Ron Isaacs was born in Cincinnati and attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1962. He earned a bachelor of arts from Berea College in Berea, Ky. in 1963 and a master of fine arts from Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. in 1965. In a career spanning more than thirty years, he has developed an extensive exhibition history regionally and nationally. His work is represented in numerous museum, corporate, and private collections. In 2001, he retired as professor of fine art from Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., where he taught for thirty-two years. He currently lives and produces his artwork in Richmond, Ky.