To striking effect, Finish Fetish painting binds erotic fetish photography in Alex Couwenberg and Steve Diet Goedde‘s exhibition at Coagula Curatorial. Titled simply “Collaboration,” this show tenders surprisingly fecund explorations into how brightly hued abstract painting can harmonize with black-and-white figure photography. It doesn’t seem like this coalescence would work; but it does, partly for educing the artists’ latently overlapping interests. In each intimately scaled piece, Couwenberg’s curvaceous motifs influenced by California painting movements originating in the 1960’s (Light & Space and Finish Fetish) alternately embellish, encircle and expunge Goedde’s noirishly glamorous women assuming retro poses and vintage-inspired attire. The largely male-geared aesthetics of pin-up photography such as Goedde’s goes hand in hand with that of the surf, skate and hot rod subcultures bespoken by Couwenberg’s catchy abstractions. The mannerism of the painted and collaged abstract forms echoes that of the photographed female models. Couwenberg’s linear designs frequently appear as architecture stylized and misshapen—similar to the contorted bodies of Goedde’s women with feet caged in sky-high stilettos, torsos distorted by wasp-waisted corsets. Both artists revel in surface: Couwenberg’s vibrant textures palpably protrude as bas-reliefs from Goedde’s monochromatic portrayals of shiny catsuits and gleaming bathroom sinks. In Tuula (2018), gold vectors impinging the model’s back could represent stylized decorative wings, or more sinisterly, masochistic arrows puncturing her skin. These tableaus’ intriguing imagery and surface amply reward close examination.

Coagula Curatorial
974 Chung King Road
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Show runs through Feb. 11