Each painting currently displayed at Zevitas Marcus evokes the satisfyingly voyeuristic sensation of Sarah McEneaney or Ann Toebbe allowing you to peer through a window or skylight into her studio or home. This show’s compendious title, “Home Work,” bespeaks intermingled domestic and industrial spheres while dryly connoting tutelage and housewifery. The title’s apparent understatement underscores the paintings’ emphasis that an artist’s work and life are inevitably interwoven. Underlying the folksy facades of each artist’s minutely detailed, dollhouse-like pictures is an exploration of how public and personal spaces seep into one another, shaping psyche and signifying identity. McEneaney diaristically depicts herself from fly-on-the-wall perspective inside her studio, office, home and yard. In Studio Spring Summer 2017 (2017), tokens of external sociopolitical turmoil in the form of newspaper cutouts and protest signs infiltrate the creative chaos of paint-splattered floor. Spring Rain (2017) presents a simpler facet of life, with wispy raindrops palpable as McEneaney returns home to expectant pets. With flattened, topsy-turvy spatiality reminiscent of Polly Pocket, Ann Toebbe’s bird’s-eye-views inside family members’ domiciles appear as stages dressed for absent actors. In works such as Family Room (sister) (2017, pictured above), tables are set; grinning portraits adorn walls; televisions screen football games—but no one is around. Instead, stylized cityscapes insinuate themselves into living rooms; planted outdoor gardens appear as mosaic-like throw rugs. McEneaney and Toebbe’s pictures expose how interior and exterior accoutrements reveal and obscure occupants’ personalities. As within acquaintances’ abodes, you want to keep gazing in order to apprehend every peculiarity.

Zevitas Marcus
2754 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Show runs through Dec. 23