Various Small Fires is pleased to present Lumin Wakoa’s first Asia solo presentation, The Unnaming. This the artist’s second collaborative project with the gallery after her solo exhibition at VSF Los Angeles.
As a child in northern Florida, Wakoa often sat with her father on their front porch. "Let’s see," he would say, initiating a meditative exercise aimed at the world. In this pre-reflexive state, before identifying what we see, everything seems to blend together into a vibrating mass of color and contour. This method of deconstructive observation might have been Wakoa’s first artistic training, influencing her current work's delicate connection to observed nature.
The artist works with linen on panel, applying multiple layers of gesso to the surface before beginning to paint. She prefers to paint intuitively and rapidly on several panels simultaneously, then sands down the surfaces and paints over them. Wakoa responds to the shapes and marks as they emerge, editing over time rather than planning each step in advance.
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Lumin Wakoa (b. 1981, Ashland City, Tennessee) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She recently has had solo exhibitions at Harpers Gallery, New York; Taymour Grahne Projects, New York; and Deanna Evans Projects, New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Hesse Flatow, New York; Harpers Gallery, New York; James Fuentes, New York; Gaa Gallery, Provincetown; Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, and Abattoir Gallery, among other venues. Wakoa was a recipient of the Dedalus Foundation MFA Grant in 2010 and a Fountainhead Fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010/11. In 2018 she was a fellow in the Sharpe Walentas Foundation year-long Studio Program Fellowship. Her work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtMaze, Maake Magazine, Hyperallergic and Artnet News.