A romantic realist, Louis Ulman’s exhibition “Then and Now” includes a survey of the artist's past and present paintings and drawings.
 
The exhibition features: “Nightfall” displays a tightrope performer, a heroic female presence, to maintain the balance of hope and perseverance with time.  Always the Romantic Realist, Ulman plays the life-death struggle against hope and renewal in “Annunciation”.  Here the hanger for the florid robe forms a veritable question mark for today’s art world:  Can visual beauty still have a role in painting?
 
“Sepulcher” and “Wind that Blew in from the Sea” combine iconic nudes with watery abstractions.  Ulman relates that ever since his earliest painting was exhibited at age eight (in a touring show of children’s art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City), his work has been about water.
 
The drama of his own life plays out against the lush light and horizon of south Florida in such paintings as “Blue Lake”, “Moonrise”, “Midnight Jackie”, “Threads I, II”.
 
Painting titles “Threads” refer both to the actual presence of threads in paintings “Threads I, II” and in “Threads II” to the joining of elements that define his art: water, the nude, horses, and curtains.
 
In his newest work, “Threads II” involves the model’s own search for the right path; she leads the horse in the right scene.  Layered by contrasting spaces, her projection is non-narrative and sub-conscious, her impact visceral. Yellow-purple color contrasts vibrate, a voluptuous reclining figure projects out in space, and receding-projected planes create layers that mark Ulman‚s artistic evolution as cinematographer magnifying the single frame to achieve a strong retinal image frozen in time. Such images are meant to be arresting in what he claims is a rushed and tumultuous world.

For a special appointment or for further information, please contact the gallery at 305.576-4278 or via email art@abbafineart.com