Following Nature – Una Ursprung

Una Ursprung was born in Taiwan and now lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. Following Nature, will be Una’s first ever solo show in the UK, following her inclusion in our #LockdownEditions initiative during the first lockdown in 2020.

Her work features a combination of oil painted serene and calm natural imagery with contrasting and sometimes chaotic abstract shapes rendered in spray paint directly over the top. The interplay between these two approaches to mark-making gives her work an ethereal feeling of separation: the canvas is both a portal to another world and a plane on which the abstract gestures are captured. It is as if the window through which we gaze upon these scenes of nature has been vandalised, and we are viewing outwards from within. Perhaps trapped.

The landscapes are earthy and subtle, and the gestures on top playfully vibrant. The interaction created is one of disquiet, as if the idyllic environment harbours something else. We are not viewing a utopian landscape but one that is perhaps more real and more honest.

This suggestion of the boundary places us very much behind the glass, as if we are the exhibits looking outward, gazing upon nature from inside our disordered and vandalised world. Humanity’s position as the blight upon the environment is especially noticeable in 2021 – the year of pandemics, flash floods, and wildfires. In creating these timeless yet immediately relevant works Una is forcing the viewer to look beyond the beauty we see around us, and to question what effect we are having upon it.