A Cook’s Table — Paintings by Nneka Uzoigwe

This series by Nneka Uzoigwe brings a voluntary simplicity to six paintings, each centered on pared-back table settings. The works recall a cook's table prepped before cooking begins: butter made by hand to soften leeks and to brown and baste wild trout, oysters freshly shucked, tulips harvested for the table, persimmons washed and ready to be sliced as a palate cleanser.

Each ingredient is given its own space — isolated as an individual study that reveals its material qualities up close. A motif of stripes runs throughout: along the linen table arrangements, in the soft ridges of a weathered butter paddle, in the flash of Indian red across a trout, and most vividly in the tulips, where the early-blooming Mentons have naturally hybridized with their striped neighbor, Rembrandt, from the garden. Color carries its own echoes; the blush of the trout meets the vermilion of the tulip, the ocean green of the oysters meets Prussian-blue leeks, and the warm glow of churned butter meets amber persimmons.