Uman, "i'm staying inside" (2025) (©Uman; photo by Olympia Shannon, courtesy the artist, Nicola Vassell Gallery, and Hauser & Wirth)
Walking into Uman: After all the things… at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the first thing I noticed was that all the works appeared to be floating and unfixed, ready to occupy other literal or metaphorical positions. In the side gallery, black and white dots drift across the walls, orbiting “and it’s the thing again” (2025) and “ayeeyo’s warmness” (2025) like dust motes or scattering seeds. The former, a painting of a creature with a black snakelike body, a white circular head, and a bright orange eye against frantic red and yellow marks, formally echoes the nearby “the thing #1” (2023), a sculpture of a streetlight springing out of a mound of black fringe fabric that recalls soil, its body marked with a knotted silk scarf that seems to suggest anthropomorphism. In the latter, red dots dance on geometrically divided zones of densely colored, largely monochrome blocks, evoking patterns of East African tapestry. A line of black tassels hangs from the painted linen, recalling the artist’s earlier years in the fashion world.
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