Promise of the past rudely collides with dread of the future in Alexa Gilweit‘s nostalgic Americana scenes viewed through dystopic lenses. Satirically titled “Big Winners,” Gilweit’s show at AM Gallery consists of paintings inspired by mid-century ads depicting genteel folk frolicking in idyllic settings. With painterly verve, Gilweit cynically corrodes the idealism of pretty pictures found in vintage issues of Farm Journal and Better Homes and Gardens, eliciting from them latent clouds of trepidation. Evoking varying degrees of forebodingness, each sunny landscape or fine interior has a mystical or baleful twist that sharply contrasts with its old-time Fairfield-Porter-esque pastoral positivity. Explosive bursts of fluorescent paint mar the peacefulness of verdant meadows, while smeared faces appear ghastly, dehumanized. The bathing boys in Leap (2018) appear as though belonging in a Thomas Eakins painting—except that their countenances, inhumanly, have all but disappeared; and the sanguine body into which they jump looks more like a pool of blood than a pond. The bathers seem to be leaping towards a firework, chasing a sparkling elusive mirage never to be reached. Instead of roasting s’mores or hot dogs, the haloed family in The Boon (2017) prefers more wholesome fare: radioactively neon green goo. Nondescript Victorian-dressed telephone operators deftly manipulate disjunctively modern vibrant cords in Lines that Bind (2017, pictured above). Gilweit’s paintings urge us to look back to the past and remember: This is how we arrived at where we are now. Maybe the good old days weren’t so great after all. Or were they?

AM Gallery
2047 S. Santa Fe Ave.
(enter through 2049 and ask to see Alexa Gilweit’s show)
Los Angeles, CA 90021
Show runs through Jul. 1