"Elif Uras: The Ladder"
2002-05-09 until 2002-05-25
Moon and Stars Project, Caelum Gallery
New York, NY, USA United States of America

Elif Uras makes paintings of emotional and intellectual ambiguity using iconic and slightly clichéd imagery. They juxtapose the romantic notion of the sublime with either flimsily utopian or stiflingly hierarchical structures. The spaces depicted have a panoramic quality, like a world-unto-itself. At the same time, they sustain a tension between two-dimensionality of the surface and the illusion of depth.

The hallucinatory and saturated colors and the smooth surface suggest a seductiveness and invitation for entry, yet the opaqueness and the precarious balance between surface and depth create a distancing effect. The paintings call attention to their illusory quality by subverting prefigured methods of language and representation. Hokey, whimsical imagery can act as a critique of the conscious enjoyment of the unmistakably fake or underline the need for escape to maintain a stable notion of reality.

IMAGE
Elif Uras
Untitled
(Describe the nature of reality and
do not be seduced into creating
escapist dream worlds), 2001
Enamel on wood panel,
32" diameter

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