EVANESCENCE: We Are All Still Fading.
Definition of ‘EVANESCENCE’: the quality or state of lasting for only a short time before quickly fading, disappearing, or being forgotten.
Former NBA basketball player turned award-winning fine art painting phenomenon Neil Anthony Edwards returns to Philadelphia for his second solo exhibition at Morton Contemporary Gallery with a new body of work: EVANESCENCE: WE ARE ALL STILL FADING. His sold-out 2025 exhibition, WE ARE ALL FADING, centered on a single era. This year, Edwards widens the lens across generations. He moves from the 1910s and the roaring 1920s to the 1960s, and closes with two larger-than-life icons: Philadelphia’s own Rocky Balboa and LeBron James.
From the Artist: “EVANESCENCE: WE ARE ALL STILL FADING continues my exploration of, and perhaps obsession with, the fleeting nature of time, the importance of legacy, and a key philosophy for happiness – Take the trip! Drink the good wine! Fall in love! Dance too long! Buy the art! Forgive someone! Create something new! Take the risk! Stop saving your best life for another day because time is undefeated, time does not discriminate. As our bodies fade, as we grow to become a memory, our legacy passes from one generation to the next. This collection of paintings embodies this generational passage through a focus on fashion, style, and luxury worn by a universal, but generational identity who is everyone, all of us. My FADING series is fundamentally about unity – the shared human experience of what it is to live and be aware that right now will eventually become a memory. The people we love will change. Our bodies will change. The things we own will belong to someone else. Even our names will eventually become stories told by the people who remember us. So what do we do with the time in between? WE LIVE! ‘We Are All STILL Fading’ asks us to embrace the temporary nature of life rather than fear it, and to understand that perhaps life's impermanence is exactly what makes it precious. The figures may have no faces because they aren't one person. They are all of us. We are here. We are beautifully, wonderfully alive. And yes…we are all fading.” – Neil Anthony Edwards
In this magnificent new series, each decade depicted in Edward’s refined, incredibly detailed paintings speaks to an era. The tailored elegance of the 1910s, the daring glamour of the 1920s, and the bold cool confidence of the 1960s appear side by side. Seen together, they show how every generation borrows from the one before it, reinvents it, and leaves its own mark behind. Fashion remains Edwards’ language. Here it reads less like a snapshot and more like a family album for an entire culture, a record of how people have dressed for the lives they dreamed of living.
The series then steps into living memory. Rocky, the underdog who made the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art famous, brings the exhibition home. LeBron James serves as the present-day bookend, painted by an artist who knows firsthand what it takes to compete at the highest level. Together, these two figures make the case that legacy isn’t only handed down. It is earned, round by round and season by season.
Edwards’ signature style carries through: luminous, larger-than-life figures built from layers of translucent color and unorthodox mark-making, with edges that soften as if caught in the moment of becoming memory. The scale of this year’s show is different than last year, with larger paintings and more diversified palettes.