Now on View

Conescapes: Paintings by Mark Aronson

On view through September 15, 2026

Curated by Maria De Los Angeles

A longtime member of the Yale community, Mark Aronson serves as Chief Conservator at the Yale Center for British Art and has taught at the Yale School of Art.

Through playful repetition, bold color, and carefully composed forms, his Conescapes series transforms familiar traffic cones into striking sculptural landscapes, inviting viewers to reconsider ordinary objects as vehicles for curiosity, movement, and discovery.

Artist Statement

"My work is a serious engagement with whimsey.

It engages with form, color, line and value manipulated on a flat surface with the colored muds we call paint. My repeated motifs include conescapes, conefalls, coneflagrations, and flesh cones. The cast of characters can include cones, scoops, spoons, bowls and sometimes landscape, which all stem from a whimsical engagement with the notional Royal Order of the Cone that in 1671 established Garter Brand Ice Cream, in service of the English monarchy. In reality the characters are simply excuses to juxtapose form, color, line and value."

-Mark Aronson