Kenny Schachter/ROVE @ 132 Perry St., NYC

Kenny Schachter ROVE is pleased to present "Private Collection," the first solo exhibition for Elif Uras.

Uras received her MFA from Columbia in 2003 and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2001. With a fervid embrace of color, a slightly morbid sense of humor, and whimsical tinges of narrative, she paints scenes of a bodacious bourgeois paradise: A black-tied couple arrive in town with a parachute; fireworks explode above a ski resort; nude yachters take a swim in a beautiful enclave; a long-legged lady awaits her lover on a couch surrounded by rococo paintings.  

Uras' paintings depict idealized moments propelled by our current visual culture that trades heavily in desire, spectacle, grandiose gestures, and loud color.   They also display the diverse physicality of paint, from weightless veils of diluted varnish to dabs of relief paint in throbbing colors. The landscapes and interiors are scaled beyond regular boundaries of perception and populated with symbols of our cultural surplus.   The paintings offer the viewer an omnipresent eye in the act of looking into a space that echoes the sublimity of romantic painting in its expanse, splendor and extravagance.

But on second glance, one finds the specters of human frailty, mortality, and impotence haunting the works: The hot air balloon may not make it through two buildings; it looks like someone's swan diving into shallow water; and the lucky lover can't seem to reach the bolt. Caught right at the moment when reality displaces the pleasure principle, the scenes are full of characters doomed, but it sure looks like they're having fun.