Harper’s is pleased to announce Things Behind the Sun, Los Angeles-based artist Ish Lipman’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new oil paintings by Lipman and opens Saturday, August 10, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
Lipman, who grew up in California, has always maintained a complex regard for the environment: be it through the ocean’s perilous tides or the climate’s fickle ways, he knows the infinite power it holds over human life. Lipman’s hypnotic compositions embody this existential plight. The artist’s spindly figures writhe amidst haunting landscapes, from enigmatic seas where threatening waves greet tender night skies, to electric green pastures made treacherous with looming sinkholes. Together, the works that comprise Things Behind the Sun ask the viewer to consider human encounters within the natural world, unraveling anthropocenic command over the uncertainties of the environment.
Often, Lipman’s works feel cinematic, like stills from a supernatural film. In the titular triptych, an illuminated figure saunters around a verdant field at night. The glowing subject wears a billowing dress that reflects the deep indigo sky. Casting an otherworldly aurora of green and blue light, the sky appears to shape the landscape like a celestial current—its hues orbit along the horizon and pulse into the earth, brightening a pond that dips into the middle of the meadow. With this effulgent palette of cool tones, the scene verges on the uncanny, channeling the eclectic spirit of dreamscapes and the material reality of evening’s mysteries.
This threshold between the real and surreal is rendered again in The House Opening to the Sea. In this enigmatic scene, a figure peers out of a brick house overlooking cerulean waters. With expansive open windows, the structure does not stand a chance against the impending flood that could override the stability of the residence. Like in many of the featured works, Lipman expertly toys with scale and fragility: the protagonist’s lithe form is no match to the prowess of the indefatigable landscape. The ocean, in fact, already seems to have crept into the home: along the bottom corners of the painting spheres of turquoise brim along the steps of the domestic space.
Throughout these scenes of climactic trepidation, Lipman ultimately bestows a necessary tenet: as much as humankind attempts to interrupt the organic ebb and flow of life, nature will always run its course, sometimes at the expense of its inhabitants. Things Behind the Sun reveals the unsettling force of this persistent truth. The artist’s paintings—esoteric yet bound by the realities of existence on the planet—illustrate the cautionary tension between humans and the land, prompting viewers to linger amidst the unease.
Ish Lipman (b. 1995, San Francisco, CA) received a BA from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2018, and an MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. In 2019, Lipman attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been the subject of solo and two-person presentations at Andrew Rafacz, Chicago (2024); Long Story Short, Paris (2023); Harper’s, New York (2023); Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles (2022); Sulk Gallery, Chicago (2022); and Cypress College, Cypress, CA (2018). Reviews of his work have appeared in New City Art and Ocula. Lipman lives and works in Los Angeles.