The exhibition presents a group of recent works on paper and wood panel and silk by New York- based artist Stewart Uoo. The works, most of which were made in the two months prior to the exhibition, deploy multiple strategies of mark-making—from marker and pen to experimental print processes, engraving and scratching on sumi ink, to watercolor and acrylic—set alongside three larger acrylic, watercolor and oil works dating from 2024. Together the works stage drawing as an open and provisional field, oscillating between precision and instability, technical fluency and improvisation.
Material and method are foregrounded: several pieces use layered, non-traditional applications of paint and media (acrylic, PVA, UV varnish, silk and adhesive transfers appear in recent work), while other works rely on direct draughtsmanship and process-based improvisation. These approaches echo techniques Uoo has employed in recent exhibitions—where mark, found imagery and bricolage work together to produce hybrid pictorial forms. Recurring characters inhabit the works: profile studies derived from Donatello’s David, portraits of manga-inspired warriors, figures drawn from television and popular culture, and other hybrid or invented creatures. These are sometimes subjected to mutation and exaggeration, developing into grotesque or “gloomy” forms: bodies merge with teeth, grinning smiles multiply and dissolve into one another, and domestic or utilitarian objects are reimagined as animate, monstrous presences. These distortions reflect Uoo’s ongoing engagement with philosophy and mysticism as well as
queer rereading of iconicity.

Photo credits Maurizio Esposito