Henrik Uldalen 'Rapture' @ Last Rites Gallery

Henrik Uldalen's brushstrokes are both expressionistic and invisible to the eye. His palette of cold ice blues and beiges, ochres and light pinks, is a study in the aesthetics of extreme solitude and suffering. The psychological states Uldalen chases feature subjects who appear to be drifitng away from consciousness.  

'Rapture' is the artist's painful, but liberating metamorphosis from a set of classical influences he's grown up with. These newest works, Uldalen says, prevail over the sensation of what he terms a nihilistic void that has always ac-companied his intensely detailed and emotionally disorienting figurative oil paintings. This series works out of handful of seemingly personal but universal conflicts - from the navel gazing of Narcissus, hypnotized by his own reflection, to the struggles of mythological creatures such as the Minotaur - each indicative of a peculiar state of mind.

Henrik Uldalen Rapture opens May 14th at Last Rites Gallery, 325 West 28th Street, New York, NY 10018, www.lastritesgallery.com