Though she comes from a small Finnish village, Soile Yli-Mäyry has conquered the world with her dazzling and soulful paintings, winning collectors and fans throughout Asia, South America, the Middle East, Europe and the United States. She brings together Symbolism, Expressionism and Surrealism in a heady and entrancing mix, her works bursting with color, emotion and invention. It’s possible to see similarities to Paul Klee as her works pulsate with signs, floating shapes and primitive, child-like figures, but her paintings are more tumultuous, her figures more vulnerable. Joan Miró too comes to mind. But her figures are broken and at sea, their images like indecipherable messages scrawled on cave walls thousands of years ago, calling out across the ages to be interpreted.
In these 12 new paintings, she conjures up fantastical scenes, like the bright blue “Asphalt Dream,” where strange geometric shapes appear to struggle against one another, one green, the other made up of spindly yellow and orange lines, green and yellow tendrils sticking out from what resembles a head with ruby-red lips. Her paintings depict a chaotic universe where unseen but powerful forces seem to be in control. Drawing on memory, fantasy and dreams, she creates her own mythology, reusing titles when she revisits a subject or emotional state. Orange, purple and pink, “Captured Letter” includes two tall figures, male and female, the female in the light, the man in the dark, an “X” in the middle of his body. She looks accepting. A letter floats beyond them, perhaps containing the message that has pulled them apart.
“Captured Letter,” by Soile Yli-Mäyry.
Yli-Mäyry’s works inspire you to guess at narratives, though she is far from explicit. Take the shimmering, golden “Dream Ash.” Are two people in a passionate embrace or fighting to the death? Are the curving lines in the distance mountains? And why is the green triangle adrift? But finally, whether there is a story or not, she has caught you up in her rich, tumultuous imaginings, and you don’t want to escape.
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Through April 6, Walter Wickiser Gallery, 210 11th Ave., 212- 941-1817.
