Taymour Grahne Projects is pleased to present Head, Heart, a solo exhibition by NYC-based artist Lumin Wakoa, opening on February 25 between 5-7pm at the Holland Park space (10 Portland Road) as part of a joint opening across our 3 spaces.

At her first solo show with Taymour Grahne Projects, Wakoa presents a selection of works ranging from dynamic and ambitiously scaled canvases to more intimate framed works on paper. Originally conceived when observing the natural world and then continued in the studio, Wakoa’s compositions are grounded in the tradition of plein air painting and explore the possibilities of art when shifting between abstraction and representation. Drawing inspiration from the trees and plants outside her home in Queens NY, the artist uses observation and imagination in equal measure to produce her lush landscapes. Semi-specific shapes like blossoms one could imagine when looking at the works dissolve into indistinct imagery upon close viewing. Using a diverse vocabulary of mark-making tools she creates particularly rich and textural painterly surfaces where bursts of color and swathing impasto brushstrokes blur the boundaries of the image, creating an optical enigma for the viewer.

The paintings were made during the change in seasons with some completed in late summer and others during autumn and winter. This impression of changing seasons and time of day are reflected in the rhythm and temperature of the color palette Wakoa chooses each time. One can also sense the changeable impermanence of the weather embedded in the painted surfaces with heavily built-up areas of paint juxtaposed with thinner washes, wiped-away sections and accumulations of delicate feather-like strokes. Wakoa’s paintings are typically completed over many sessions, allowing the layers of paint to dictate the final form. This durational approach serves as a record of time passing and an investigation of place and the act of painting. The works also draw influence from early American modernist painters, such as Charles Burchfield, Marsden Hartley, John Marin and Georgia O’Keefe.

Amongst the more abstract and hallucinatory depictions of the natural world, figurative elements such as skeletal figures stand out. Stripped bare of trappings of time, the skeletons perform their role as humans at a primitive level, while formally their bodies share affinities with those of plants. They curl and twist in similar ways, announcing change even as they symbolize stasis. Like the plants around them, they are caught in the continual state of becoming and dissolving.

The title of the show Head, Heart is taken from a Lydia Davis short story of the same title:

Head, Heart

Heart weeps.

Head tries to help heart.

Head tells heart how it is, again:

You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday.

Heart feels better, then.

But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this.

I want them back, says heart.

Head is all heart has.

Help, head. Help heart.

Lumin Wakoa has had solo and group exhibitions at several NY venues such as Harper’s Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, Hesse Flatow, and James Fuentes Gallery, among others. She received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, ArtMaze, Maake Magazine, Hyperalergic and Artnet news and others. Lumin Wakoa currently lives and works in New York City.

Lumin Wakoa and Taymour Grahne Projects thank the Dedalus Foundation for the support it has kindly provided.