Uman at Eleni Koroneou Gallery
The fourteen work on show in Uman’s solo exhibition “Goodnight Sweetdreams” recommend an act of temperance on the a part of the artist, of balancing inside forces, whereas additionally celebrating the explosive sensorial expertise of the skin world. Exorcism meets Impressionism, as imagery from African folks tales or memory-shrouded landscapes merges with extra up to date references (as an illustration, Black solar/son, 2022, seems to cite Jeff Koons’s Apollo Wind Spinner, 2020–22, a motorized steel-and-bronze sculpture put in on the Greek island of Hydra). The artist gravitates towards rounded types; scattered eyes peer out on the viewer in Umanu, 2022, and spirals coalesce to make up the stomach and breasts of a mom determine in Mama, 2022. Elsewhere, circles regularly function a easy compositional component, reservoirs of colour.
A self-taught Somalia-born artist now primarily based in upstate New York, Uman employs a various vary of stylistic vocabularies throughout her compositions. The Universe IV, 2018–19, coats the canvas with a soothing assortment of orbs in an earth-tone-heavy palette, whereas related looping gestures foment into dense figuration in To Gerasimos, 2022, a portray devoted to fellow painter (and someday collaborator) Gerasimos Floratos. The lighthearted Flowers in my Area, 2019–21, may very well be an homage to Monet in the way in which it carries its pure motifs to abstraction. The flowers it depicts would possibly simply as properly be learn as bugs and even little suns. Right here, Uman strikes a effective steadiness between expressive mark-making and a restrained use of colour; the ensuing portray is among the stronger moments within the present.
