Exhibition: Thiang Uk 2025

Bureau is proud to announce Thiang Uk’s first solo exhibition in New York, Shadow’s Edge. Uk’s paintings are luminous and tumultuous, evoking mythical expanses of sea, sky, and land. Light glistens on his surfaces like prismatic raindrops over tempestuous waters. Flames leap across cresting mountains, and smolder amidst spiraling winds. His painterly technique approaches gestural abstraction with vibrant palettes and rhythmic mark-making, yet he retains illusionistic space in his otherworldly vistas. Many compositions feature pictorial elements – candles, hands, animals – floating at the edges and in the foreground, framing his compositions and introducing symbolic motifs. His paintings are deeply influenced by childhood memories of growing up in Myanmar, and the animist myths of his region. These oral traditions were passed down to him by his grandmother and formed the foundation for Uk to explore notions of shapeshifting and the interconnection of the land and its beings.

As a young person, Uk migrated from Myanmar to the U.S. with his family fleeing political violence and instability. Recent paintings reflect this fracture, featuring formal divisions and doubling of images, which stem from Uk’s direct experience of the trauma of migration and mutability of identity. Uk’s paintings bear the mark of grief but also invite contemplation of a boundless space where opposites conflict and merge. Creation and chaos mingle in his compositions, as raw, destructive energy meets with a sumptuous and sensory abundance. Thiang Uk (b. 1993, Hakha, Myanmar; lives and works in Baltimore, MD) received his AA from Daytona State College, Daytona, FL (2014); BFA from Hunter College, New York, NY (2017); MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (2021); and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (2023). Recent group exhibitions include New Voices: Julia Callis, Jen P. Harris, Claudia Pena Salinas, Thiang Uk, Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, OH (2025); Scorched Petals to Pages, The Nicholson Project, Washington, D.C. (2024); It Never Entered My Mind, curated by Michael Sherman, Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2024). Forthcoming solo exhibitions include Silber Art Gallery, Goucher College, Towson, MD (2025).