Rachel Uffner Gallery presents new works by Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Shara Hughes and Curtis Talwst Santiago at Frieze New York, May 2nd-6th 2018.

Strauss Bourque-LaFrance continues to explore hybrid forms of making art – including painting, drawing and other medium coalesce into graphic, collaged abstractions. These constructions praise American craft heritage, cartoon forms and analogue approaches to graphic design. There is a strong narrative contained in the titles of the works that brings cultural references, personal psychologies, comedy and poetry into the purely formal compositions. A lush mélanges of color, pattern and texture come together to form fictional yet evocative sceneries in the paintings of Shara Hughes. Her free usage of acrylic, oil and vinyl-based paints in combination with manual and airbrush techniques, visible in her most recent body of work, suggests Fauvist color palettes and surrealistic articulations of the unconscious. Curtis Talwst Santiago touches upon the issues of transculturalism, memory and ancestry in the contemporary Diasporic proficiency. Growing up in a Trinidadian household has heavily influenced his artistic approach, and in his most recent works he reimagines the story of the Black Knight that figured in several literary accounts and Renaissance paintings, such as the artwork of Chafariz d’el Rey dating back to 1570-80. The artist practice involves a wide array of media, like spray paint, oil, charcoal, and pastel on canvas along with miniature dioramas in reclaimed jewelry boxes and an assemblage of colorful handmade armor.