Sanguine and Spiraling

Yancey Richardson is proud to present Sanguine and Spiraling, an exhibition of work by Kevin Umaña, the artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery. The exhibition brings together new and recent ‘hybrid paintings,’ Umaña’s combinations of glazed ceramics with painted canvas that explore psychology, nature and memory through the ever-changing lens of abstraction. Looking with equal attention at the collision of form in urban space and the inherent structure in organic matter, Umaña’s works oscillate between order and disorder, logic and impression, to express the constant state of flux and change found in nature. Kevin Umaña (b. 1989, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Spending his early years between Los Angeles and El Salvador, Umaña’s personal history has profoundly shaped his visual language. In El Salvador, he was immersed in a rural environment rich with natural textures, vibrant flora and traditional crafts. While in Los Angeles, he confronted the intensity of city life and the pressures of assimilation. This duality seeded the fragmented forms and layered symbolism that define his art today. His practice continues to carry echoes of Latin American patterns, nature’s geometry and American architectural influences, all reimagined through abstraction. Umaña’s recent works, ‘hybrid paintings,’ combine glazed ceramics on painted canvas and fuse together conflicting styles—mess and order, biomorphic and geometric, thin and thick, matte and sheen. Taking inspiration from his study of nature and its geometry of form, Umaña’s newest ‘hybrid paintings’ are built around dense, overlapping areas that, in their brilliance of color and intricacy of relationship, seem like worlds unto themselves. More specifically, Umaña’s work evokes patterns used by ancient civilizations the world over, and for the artist, references spiritual evolution and the cyclical nature of life. By fracturing the composition of each work and then reconstituting it into a stable yet evolving structure, Umaña captures the way our relationship to what surrounds us is constantly remade anew. Umaña received his BFA from San Francisco State University in 2014. In 2025, Umaña was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. He has completed residencies at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (2024); Anderson Ranch (2024); Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2023-24); Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Helena, MT (2023); The Center for Book Arts, New York (2019); Plop Residency, London, England (2018); and SIM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland (2018). In 2017, Umaña created a permanent installation at The United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Institutions owning his work include The United Nations Art Collection, New York; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Munson, Utica, NY; Fidelity Mutual Funds Collection; Center for Book Arts Library, New York; and The Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, CA. In 2026, Umaña will be participating in the MacDowell Fellowship in New Hampshire.

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