“Skin Deep: Then and Now” at The Loft at Liz’s offers a vital visual conversation about race in America. The powerful subject brings together the same eight artists who comprised an original exhibition ten years ago, with pieces still available from the initial exhibition, and new works inspired by current events. Featured artists include Ted Meyer, Miles Regis, Zeal Harris, Jackie Nach, Garth Trinidad, Richard Turner, Monique Birault, and Franceska Schifrin. Co-curated by Birault and gallerist Liz Gordon, the exhibition addresses imbalance and inequality between races in the U.S. The contrast between images from 2010 and 2020 adds to the exhibition’s resonance.

Miles Regis, Say My Name. Image courtesy of The Loft at Liz’s and LA Art Documents.

Regis created a simple but moving double image in 2010’s “I am so Jealous,” presenting two ghostly, somewhat abstract white and black silhouettes; for 2020, his “Say My Name” depicts protesters, signs illustrating the names of police brutality victims, a dual justice system, and the hope of making justice not something to be jealous of, but to have meaning for all people.

Similarly, the two works by Meyer move from simple to the complexities of protest. His 2010 “Adam and Eve,” with a mixed-race “first couple” and an adorable black and white kitty, has given way to “White Nuggets,” a series of white-on-white, pastel shadowed truths such as “I don’t have to worry about getting shot by a cop.”

Miles Regis, Say My Name. Image courtesy of The Loft at Liz’s and LA Art Documents.

Harris brings magic to the exhibition with her multi-panel 2010 “Ascension,” fueled by almost futuristic joy from the Obama administration era. Today’s image is filled with fairies and light, but with a significantly darker spiritual aspect to this feast, as two white-clad black men are carried in the arms of purple fairy-people. “Pantheon of Akatas” gives us tiny bunnies on a floating island, but there is an urgency and sadness to the painting whose title and images refer to a temple of all gods readied for African-Americans.

Franceska Schifrin, Finding Death. Image courtesy of The Loft at Liz’s and LA Art Documents.

Death is the subject of both 2010 and 2020’s haunting and lush images from the poetic, impressionistic Schifrin, images that are dazzlingly complex and layered. In a side room, the entrance flanked by two globes of light, Gordon and Schifrin have set a seated installation as dark and holy as the night it depicts. Turner’s two works, from 2009 and 2018, are so different in material and vision as to appear from a different artist: in 2009’s “Play Now,” he offered a realistic view of the inner city in four hard-hitting fragments that include a small boy hiding his eyes. In 2018, the mixed media assemblage is an oracle of veneration, reverently black and beautiful.

Birault presents dazzling black gemstone jewelry that moves from the global to the personal in symbolic meaning; Nach gives us deeply structured and felt mixed media collages that move from a touching mother and child to megaphone-carrying activism. Trinidad provides vibrant and complex work, with brilliant stark images that vary from 2010’s virulent circus poster to a sneaker-clad athlete twisted into a pretzel over a sea of names, in his current piece, “Ruse.”

“Skin Deep: Then and Now”
Loft at Liz’s
Through March 2, 2021
No appointment necessary