Craig Krull Gallery seems larger than usual for the quantity of intriguing work in its current trio of tandem solo shows. Pierre Picot, Stan Edmondson and Lou Beach each work in different mediums but overlap in their surrealistic sensibilities rooted in prior eras. With somber palettes and playful compositions, Picot’s paintings seem indebted to olden European painters including El Greco, de Chirico, Savinio and Dali. He jumbles landscapes and mundane items in strange, whimsical ways, educing from them a subtle bleak creepiness. Beyond a dismal smokestack in the right-hand corner of Untitled (4-16-17) (2017, pictured above), a meandering river transgresses tempestuous gray sky, overturning spatial reason. The black vase pouring into a mysterious hole portrayed in Picot’s Untitled (9-15-18) (2018) appears nearly identical to an actual vessel in Stan Edmondson’s nearby ceramic installation featuring an eclectic assortment of sculptures and paintings. Edmondson’s untitled clay pieces appear as painterly free-form reinterpretations of classical motifs, animals, and ceramic history. The influence of his father, abstract surrealist Leonard Edmondson, is palpable in his primal shapes. Lou Beach also portrays chimera and employs totemic forms in works such as Vortex (2019) and Lucky Bird in Magic Town (2018); but in contrast with Edmondson’s relatively roughhewn aesthetic, his ephemera collages appear so seamless that at first glance, one is liable to mistake them for drawings. Cartoonish faces and vagarious details spring from Beach’s intricate scenes with grotesque, sardonic humor recalling that of Dada and Art Brut.

Craig Krull Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave., Building B-3
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Shows run through Apr. 6