These two artists explore the way that abstract form and pattern can create worlds that are both apart from ours and a part of it.
Mary Laube’s paintings occupy the place where memory and imagination meet. She’s mindful of the way that our individual histories are embodied by our belongings and preserved as idealized remembrances. She seeks to express this with depictions of personal objects that are pictorially flattened and reduced, suggesting the way that we all create remembered worlds that exist somewhere between the real and the fictive.
Kevin Umaña’s work evokes the way abstraction intersects with the everyday, found everywhere from the design of parks and playgrounds to clothing and textiles. His jazzy use of this visual language has an affable kinship with design and decoration. Umaña’s painting speak to the collective desire to find and share joy in the ways that the parts of our world can be arranged.
curated by Jacob Cartwright
Mary Laube (born in Seoul, South Korea) received her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 2012. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Kevin Umaña (born 1989 in Los Angeles, CA) received a B.F.A. from San Francisco State University with dual degrees in Studio Art and Surface Design He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.