Review: Lumin Wakoa: In Time @ Deanna Evans Projects
If the Brooklyn Rail’s Elizabeth Buhe is right about this show—that it’s a feminist sendup of the mostly male Impressionists—then it’s a failure. But, if she’s wrong—as I suspect—then it is a success.
Lumin Wakoa’s landscapes, which the artist painted en plain air in cemeteries and in her front yard then re-worked in the studio, have an affinity with van Gogh, specifically Mid Day at the Night Barn (all 2021), though they lean more into abstraction. Wakoa isn’t attempting to joust with Manet, Monet, et al, but, instead, their shadows loom large in her rearview mirror; she has taken a lesson or two from the crew but has moved on. Why, in the 21st century, would anyone need/want to open a dispute with a clique of arguable masters?
But, alas, I won’t devote any more of this review to correcting what I view as a misreading. Instead, I will use Wakoa’s own words to describe what I see as her raison d’etre: She has an “amazing ability to give you everything, the time of day, the weight, the light, and at the same time [she] give[s] you nothing, no back story, no logic.” She said this in reference to “certain writers” who inspire her, though it feels perfectly apt to describe this series of 17 paintings hanging in Deanna Evans Projects under the unpretentious title, In Time.
If I were to overanalyze some aspect of the exhibition, it would be its name. What does time have to do with these earthy canvases? Everything. Three feature skeletons, memento mori, a reminder of life’s ephemeral nature. In Trance, swirling fall-like colors background a skeleton dancing, which recalls Jasper Johns’ own playful reckoning with death.
In one painting, the roses, as the title suggests, are late while in another, as per its title, the orchid is in the process of blooming. Things come and go. In Time can be read two ways: as a koan (“I am in time”) and as a warning (“in time, I will pass”).
Others in the oil on linen series mark time (Front Garden at Night; Mid Day at the Night Barn) while most are named for the place where they were initially composed. Deanna Evans, and I’m assuming it was she at the front desk, told me that Wakoa moved more into figurative painting while sheltering in place. Without regular access to her studio, she began looking to the great outdoors for inspiration, and while these paintings capture the general spirit of nature, they often incorporate the abstraction Wakoa employed in past works. The art improves as a result.
I am less fond of the skeletons, however. I believe Wakoa’s best pieces are liminal: between forms. For my money, the most successful of the lot are Blooming Tree at Trinity Cemetery and Walking Near Water at the Night Barn. The former bends like a Soutine and balances a palette full of pastel colors. The brushwork, as is Wakoa’s m.o., is loose and fluid. The latter, one of the show’s two large canvases (43 x 31 inches) looks like an aerial view of a lake. A smattering of too many colors to list buttress a blue flowing curve, which surely is the lake Wakoa was observing.
Wakoa gives us nothing: no back story, no logic, just paintings that should be taken on their own terms.
Verdict: **** / *****