The Space In Between – Alexander Yulish at AP Space

Step into The Space In Between, Alexander Yulish’s largest solo show to date—an abstract journey of intimacy, chaos, and emotional resonance. On view Feb 15–Mar 15, 2024, at Gallery AP Space in New York.

What happens in the pause between movement and stillness, between presence and absence, between what’s said and what’s held back? In The Space In Between, his largest solo exhibition to date, Alexander Yulish confronts this quiet, charged territory—the emotional landscapes that exist in liminal moments and psychological depths. Presented by Gallery AP Space in Chelsea, New York, and on view from February 15 to March 15, 2024, this exhibition marks a milestone in Yulish’s evolving career.

Spanning years of development and introspection, this body of work reveals an artist driven by immediacy, vulnerability, and a search for spiritual and emotional truth.

Born in New York and currently living between New York and Los Angeles, Alexander Yulish studied Fine Art at Connecticut College. His work has previously been shown in prominent solo exhibitions at ACE Gallery (Los Angeles) and Trinity London, with works included in the collection of Museo Jumex in Mexico City. With The Space In Between, he brings a culmination of emotional and visual tension to the forefront, merging his interest in figuration, abstraction, and metaphysical reflection.

Yulish’s large-scale canvases are immersive and improvisational, emerging from a process that is as performative as it is painterly. Using sweeping, gestural brushstrokes—sometimes building thick textures, sometimes losing forms into negative space—he explores the fluid boundaries between abstraction and figuration. The results are expressive, dissonant, harmonious, chaotic, and tender—all at once.

At the heart of this exhibition lies a fascination with duality: safety and escape, intimacy and isolation, chaos and stillness. Recurring symbols like chairs and windows function as metaphors—places of grounding and departure. The chair offers a place to rest, to confront oneself; the window a portal through which one might dream or flee.

Yulish introduces small, often elusive figures—tiny moments of connection or confrontation that animate the otherwise abstract landscapes. These instances serve as emotional punctuation marks, reflecting fleeting glimpses of humanity against sweeping visual currents.

The tension he explores mirrors modern life’s fragility: the brutality of societal systems, the tenderness of connection, the disorientation of modern emotion. His process—layering, scraping, rebuilding—is a metaphor in itself, embodying the cyclical nature of breakdown and renewal.

Visually and philosophically, Yulish draws from a lineage of modernist exploration. There are echoes of Modigliani in his long-limbed figures and hints of Delaunay in his rhythmic, energetic color use. Yet, his palette shifts between contradiction—sugary pastels and deep indigos, airy transparencies and opaque bursts—holding space for emotional complexity.

Yulish’s paintings are not decorative—they are confrontational in their honesty. The layered abstraction becomes a landscape of thought, dream, and internal dialogue, each canvas operating like a journal page painted on an operatic scale.

The Space In Between is more than a show—it’s a reckoning. A record of conflict, desire, and hope filtered through an intuitive process that prioritizes feeling over finish. Yulish paints not to resolve questions but to live inside them.

The works examine not only his own experience, but also the broader psychological trauma and uncertainty permeating our time. They reflect a consciousness grappling with the state of the world—its imbalance, its disconnection, and its aching need for healing.

But even in their tension, Yulish’s paintings are never hopeless. There’s always a line that suggests reconnection, a brushstroke that moves toward light. It’s this continual push-pull—between collapse and cohesion—that gives the show its heartbeat.