As 356 Mission prepares to shutter, two unorthodox shows whet regulars’ regret for the singular gallery’s imminent finis. Closing April 22, Charlemagne Palestine‘s plush extravaganza is apposite to new artist Alake Shilling‘s outlandish show that will remain through April 29. Shilling’s installation, “Monsoon Lagoon,” transports viewers into a delirious Lisa Frank-enstein dystopia where glitter, vibrancy, and creativity fail to counteract disquiet. A narrow, worn staircase descends to a basement lair of kitschy, brooding ceramic animals whose cavelike domain is vaguely reminiscent of a thrift store or a girl’s bedroom. Here, Lisa Frank’s rainbow world is reinterpreted as a discombobulating scenario where, instead of being cheered by vibrant, friendly creature accessories, you have been lured into the animals’ midst, perhaps to solace their existential angst. Insects loll and amphibians perch upon mossy boulders. Ceramic sculptures are decked from front to back with unwieldy clay curlicues and unsettling flowers. Walls are painted in mauve that should be appealing but isn’t. Foam-overlaid paintings, with wavy boundaries matching their painted-on messiness, melt and splotch in defiance of their rectangular forms. In these grotesquely bedizened pictures, anthropomorphic bears, frogs, cats and ladybugs helplessly bulge and liquefy. Several paintings, such as Little Rocky Bubble Bath (2018) appear in the snakelike process of shedding peeling skin. Shilling’s protagonists, bearing scars of creation in the form of clay dents and paint scabs, appear frozen in awkward states of effacement or transformation. Creepy, demented, yet sympathetic, her fauna seem trapped in ungainly inanimate shells, paralyzed but inwardly trembling in dread. 356 Mission closes as Shilling emerges.

356 Mission
356 S. Mission Rd.
Los Angeles, CA 90033
Show runs through Apr. 29