James Ulmer

The Pit is pleased to present Outside, Inside New York-based artist James Ulmer's first solo exhibition with the gallery.

The spirited pigments in Ulmer’s signature material of flashe paint adorn large canvases with a matte, velvety finish that mutes the initial fanciful inclinations into something more pragmatic and unexpected. There’s a push and pull to these works. Ulmer draws from traditional themes of nature, domesticity, and human connection, but turns them on their heads. He plays in the grooves between positive and negative space, tap dancing at the intersection of “straightforward” and surreal. There’s no shying away from dimensionality in these paintings—the flat, reductive figures transform into something of a diorama when set against natural landscapes that often contain charming surprises. In one piece, a couple embraces alone in the foreground of a modest seaside setting, alone save for a sailboat passing through and the shadow of a bird flying overhead. Until, that is, you spot the erupting volcano in the background. Ulmer makes note of “picturesque postcard moments” with their minimalism and uncomplicated depictions of idyllic scenes, but the subtle sparks of ambiguity that permeate his work—when it’s not a volcano, it’s a shadowy figure in a doorway or a nude person censored by a checkered towel-like rectangle—mark a departure from the ordinary.

It’s easy to take for granted the circle of a sun—usually in a restrained pink, orange or red—that’s a constant in the majority of Ulmer’s paintings. But it grounds them. In fact, each shadow, bird, and figure has a compositional purpose and, together, they prove the artist to be something of an alchemist, with a knack for spinning the quotidian effects of the every day into a particular magic.