Category: Publisher’s Eye

Pairing Lempert’s tender black-and-white photographs with Saeed’s large, carved and painted slabs of styrofoam, this two-person exhibition is a poem about nature, scale and texture. A few of the unframed photos show a spider balancing on a human’s knuckle, its extended legs echoing the shape of the fist; the tiny black hand of a Brazilian porcupine grasping a lucky someone’s pinky; and a human hand clenching an insect the size of its thumbnail, the fingertips and nails ridged like the insect’s wing. The styrofoam reliefs, which depict scenes of animals within nature and its geometric patterns, provide a new understanding of the material, its granular pores mimicking the skin of both the animals and plants in the photographs. Whether comparing the differences or commonalities of the two artist’s works, seeing them together in the same space inspires emotional awe of nature’s smallest details.

Chris Sharp
4650 W. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
On view through May 6, 2023

This three-channel video installation will leave you entranced, smiling at its ridiculousness, and maybe with a New Order song stuck in your head. A beige inflatable couch in the gallery, which appears in the videos, invites you to sit and watch three different characters—a bear, an autumn tree, and a skull-faced woman in a blue spandex suit and purple headscarf—pursue various artistic endeavors, in particular drumming. They also tap dance, build wooden models in front of a computer, bicker with each other, and have meltdowns on the couch. These comical characters, which have appeared in Mole’s previous work, are now left to their own devices in their own spaces, as if they’re navigating becoming adults—or artists—but still dancing in their bedrooms by themselves.

Gattopardo
2626 N. Figueroa St., Unit C
Los Angeles, CA 90065
On view through April 16, 2023

Walking through Edie Beaucage’s show of sculptures and larger-than-life portraits is like wading through clouds of brushstrokes made of vivid greens, blues, and pops of orange, the subjects of the paintings staring coolly at you. In the following gallery, Jean Lowe’s paintings of opulent Baroque interiors are coupled with everyday items constructed of papier-mâche, creating a conversation (or debate) between the history of painting and modern objects. In both of these shows, you can feel the artists smirking.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
1110 Mateo St.
Los Angeles, CA 90021
On view through April 22, 2023