James Ulmer: How’s Your Spirit

How’s your spirit? A deceptively simple question open to infinite interpretation and a fitting analogy for Brooklyn-based painter James Ulmer’s first solo exhibition with V1 Gallery / Eighteen. Presenting 10 works on canvas created during times of social and emotional uncertainty, How’s Your Spirit? provides a subtle, psychological, and at times tongue-in-cheek chamber play, in which the prosaic and the metaphysical find remarkable balance.

Ulmer draws inspiration from contrasting sources, from graphic novels, children’s toys, and commercial illustration, to Western art history, he joins a continuum of artists, for whom painting is an exercise mediated through visualities reaching far beyond its legacy.

James Ulmer, b. 1989, holds a BFA in Illustration and Design from Arts, Philadelphia, PA, US. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, US. Recent major exhibitions include Painting Pictures,The Hole, New York, US; Laid Back, Marvins Gardens, Ridgewood, New York, US; Good Pictures, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York, US; 12, PM/AM, London, UK, and JJ, Amala Gallery, Tokyo, Japan. How’s Your Spirit? is his first solo exhibition with V1 Gallery / Eighteen. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, available in-gallery and online.