Aaron Spangler

Who is Aaron Spangler?

Aaron Spangler is a sculptor who lives and works in Park Rapids, MN. He was born in 1971, in Minneapolis, MN. He attended College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN, from which he received his BFA. He is represented by the Horton Gallery, in New York City, where he has been featured in a solo show, an art fair, and a group show.

Spangler's medium is solid blocks of Basswood, which are covered in black gesso and graphite and only uses mallets, chisels, and a Dremel-style rotary tool. Ken Johnson commented that, ""You don't see much wood carving in elite Chelsea galleries. An antiquated craft with little relevance to modern technologies of communication or to a competitive, fast-paced contemporary art market...so it is exciting to come upon the large, intricate reliefs". Spangler works three-dimensionally and in bas-relief, a challenging and intricate medium. His work is often concerned with "war's devastation and its potential as a metaphor for psychological conflict" as well as "as anarchy in rural America". His sculptures seek to envision a "fascinating and frightening revolution against passive consumerism ‘of the people, by the people’" Multi-faceted, his work reveals more upon second and third glances; shifting scale and perspective propelling the viewer deeper into the psyche of the piece, leading one critic to claim that Spangler piled "images and motifs, just like ancient Romans heaped up captured armor and weapons as trophies". Spangler has transformed "a marginalized craft typically associated with bearded, plaid-shirted gentlemen of a certain age into a conduit for the mythology of the Midwest without diminishing its tactility or symbolic richness".