Uman
Art work © Uman / Courtesy the artist / Nicola Vassell Gallery
The ecstatic new paintings by the self-schooled Uman have more colors than colors have names. Her star-making début at the Nicola Vassell gallery—"I Want Everything Now," on view through June 17—is similarly overflowing. The fifty works on canvas and paper shift in subject from mystical inner visions and illicit midnight trysts to a South African form of house music that inspired a TikTok craze ("Amapiano Dance," pictured above). The exhibition's flowing psychic terrain echoes that of the fiercely creative artist herself, who was born in Somalia, grew up in Kenya and Denmark, made her way to New York City, around 2000, and is now settled upstate. Uman's intuitive, relentless, joyful approach has something in common with that of Yayoi Kusama, whose latest "Infinity Room" has visitors waiting for hours—meanwhile, around the corner, with no line in sight, new limitless pleasures await.
May. 4-Jun. 17
138 Tenth Ave.
Chelsea
212-463-5160
Uman