Ulrika Minami Wärmling

Friend and lovers, subcultures and fringes of society are familiar artistic subject matter. In her large-scale paintings, Stockholm-based Ulrika Minami Wärmling depicts her friends dressed in Goth attire. Whereas the photos of Nan Goldin, Larry Clarke and Ryan McGinley manage to make us uncomfortable and often genuinely afraid for the people they capture living on the edge, Wärmling's stiff, formal portraits give her subjects the air of interlopers rather than active participants in fringe activities. In a gallery statement, Wärmling mentions her involvement in 1980s Goth culture and her interest in Gothic literature and in Japanese "Lolita Goth" (or Gothloli) as opportunities to contradict what she perceives as a homogeneous culture in Sweden.

The nine paintings on display (all but one 2007) in her first New York solo exhibition seem, at first glance, benign: youthful, full-length figures in Victorian-inspired costumes stand in front of dark, leafy backdrops, bringing to mind certain styles of 19th-century portraiture, though with surreal patches of fuschia or purple sky occasionally poking though the foliage. The figures often contradict our expectations of feminine and masculine, adult and child. There is also a suggestion of escapism from adult life.

For example, in the lusciously painted Last night under the parasol, two frock-clad young women pose demurely, disturbingly suggestive of Victorian porcelain dolls. In Precious Darling Hideyoshi, a young Asian man wearing a white and pink suit carries a handbag and a doll, blurring boundaries of sexuality and age-appropriate behavior. In The Last picnic with the family, a triptych, five costumed figures pose as a traditional family, though there is some ambiguity as to the age of the "children" and "adults."

Despite her subjects' contrived naiveté, Wärmling's paintings are not as innocent as they appear. Like adult women buying masses of Hello Kitty paraphernalia, her subjects seem intent on remaining eternally youthful, in a world of drama and playacting. Not simply living on the fringes of society, they seem to desire an alternative reality altogether.

~ Melissa Kuntz