Humans hold a categorical attitude about the world– a sensemaking creature with a conditioned nagging compulsion to codify the universe into coherent categories, aborting chances of being pulled into a state of confusion and bewilderment transpiring in seismic shifts in between states, stains and shapes.

In his inaugural solo show, Raffy Ugaddan images the distillation of objects and beings through a series of works which all began with low-viscosity marks and coats applied intuitively by the artist. And while it is our biological destiny to see the world with limited visual acuity, Ugaddan steers our capacity for imagination like a periscope to the metaphysical realm of abstraction rendered in a kaleidoscopic palette.

“I title my works based on what its general image appears to be,
And how it can maybe trigger a distant or shared memory.”

Ugaddan is an artist of multitudes. He dives into different worlds and microcosms that inspire his mark-making, distilling it all such that what is left is an experience amplified through large canvases towering viewers.

To move closer is to–
Find an atom, a caterpillar, folds, the shiny half of a red balloon,
To take a step back is to
Soak in an effervescent biome of transitory forms,
To embrace the unfurling movement is to
Dance with gaze and body.
What can you make out?

The series is the artist’s meticulous play and study of space and forms that quietly emerge to imbue the works, turning them into phantasmic shadows of whatever– the bowed contours of a specter’s wings, billows that wane and wax, suspenseful pockets of trapped air against the otherwise spacious expanse, an obscure system of sending signals–schemas are birthed wave upon wave into consciousness.

Words by J.Jose