Amos Eno Gallery, a non-profit, artist-run gallery, is pleased to present Contact Traces, a solo exhibition by artist Aaron Wilder.

The exhibition will be on view from March 20 to April 27, 2025, with an Opening Reception on Friday, March 21, from 6 to 8 p.m. and a Panel Discussion & Closing Reception on Friday, April 25, 2025, from 6 to 8 p.m. Both events will be held at the gallery at 191 Henry St. on the Lower East Side. Works are also available to view on Artsy.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Aaron Wilder had cobbled together an art career in San Francisco from multiple, part-time jobs, all of which were lost by March 2020. In a twist of fate, Wilder was offered underemployment in Chicago. With no other viable options, he accepted the offer and moved across the country to a place where he had an absence of close contacts. Naïve optimism for a short pandemic quickly gave way to multiple layers of isolation. Wilder’s relocation to Chicago was rendered moot by the outcome of working remotely. As they say, hindsight is 2020.

The exhibition title is derived from “contact tracing,” which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define as “the process of identifying people who have recently been in contact with someone diagnosed with an infectious disease.” Contact Traces represents Wilder’s delayed processing of the pandemic’s impact on himself as a method of coping with profound isolation. In this show, the artist follows the threads of ruptures in contact among people, place, and time through the exploration of literal and symbolic barriers. The exhibition centers on bodies of work from experiences before, during, and after the shelter-in-place.

Begun in 2016, Wilder’s ongoing Social Boundaries photography project focuses on physical barriers along neighborhood perimeters. While traversing these borders, Wilder reflects on the stimuli of these obstructions. They block movement directly, exemplify fortifications, and enforce physical separation. In the pandemic, the term “social distancing” became one of the most commonly repeated phrases. Like other cities, San Francisco was plagued by social distance in areas such as gentrification and homelessness long before the pandemic.

Invisible Self-Portrait / Expletive Chapel: Lavender Heights is a video Wilder made in 2019 in which he imagines what his self-portrait would look like if it were as invisible as he felt living in San Francisco. The film’s audio is the layered pronouncing of individual letters of derogatory slurs to transform them into rhythmic, meditative sounds.

Wilder was forced to leave San Francisco due to a lack of viable economic opportunities at the onset of the pandemic, which robbed him of the opportunity to leave on his own terms. Wilder felt incapable of coming to terms with what felt like defeat. Before Exile is a series of mixed media drawings on darkroom photography test prints. As he made them Wilder reflected on his experiences living in San Francisco and the circumstances that forced him to leave.

Abundance of Caution is a series of digital collages tracing notions of contact and exploring the literal and symbolic meanings of the phrase, which touch on anxiety and debilitating fear stemming from rapid change and uncertainty. A range of types of warnings from contamination to chemical exposure to violence are visually investigated through aesthetic strategies of chaos, clarity, dissection, juxtaposition, layering, and multiplicity.

At the closing reception and panel discussion on Friday, April 25, 6 to 8 p.m., moderated by gallery director Ellen Sturm Niz, fellow gallery member artists James Horner and Julianne Nash will join Wilder to discuss the pandemic’s impact on them and their creative practices.

About the Artist:
Aaron Wilder is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Phoenix, Arizona. He currently resides in Roswell, New Mexico.

With the history of being a self-taught artist since 2002, Wilder received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2017. He has exhibited his work extensively across the United States as well as in Italy. Contact Traces is Wilder’s second solo exhibition at Amos Eno Gallery after joining as an artist member in 2020. For more information, visit aaronwilder.com.