“The Diamond Hunters,” Cristian Răduță‘s installation at Nicodim Gallery, places you in the midst of an army of animals cobbled from oddments. The Romanian artist’s menagerie of untitled 2019 sculptures encompasses myriad species fashioned from spray-painted wood, cardboard, mirrored garden balls, foam, duct tape, mops, toilet plungers, and various other less-recognizable substances. Just about any stripe of creature one might imagine is present, animatedly posed yet immobile like a taxidermy. A purple gorilla of rough old wood lumbers toward an avian with an absurdly large shiny yellow beak and long ski-like feet; a striped snake with strange wing-like protuberances sticks playfully out of the wall; a silvery chameleon hangs from a rafter, dripping its rope tongue over the floor in a knot entangling a ballpoint pen. Despite their playful affectation, Răduță’s bestial bricolages are more humanly bizarre than garden-variety toys, often bearing blatantly anthropomorphic or monstrous features. A sinking feeling develops as you realize that your surrounding rascals are not innocuous creatures, but chimerical freaks. Moreover, their tactical configuration seems confrontational, overwhelming as in a nightmare. Yet upon closer examination, individuals appear melancholy. Many are pained or impaled by bodily infringements such as plastic water bottles, pipes, or tools; while others are personified as though engaged in activities such as painting or drinking from straws. Răduță’s recycled mutants poignantly express the hidden horrors of our throwaway society’s perpetual undermining of other species. Are they the problem, or are we?

Nicodim Gallery
571 S. Anderson St., Ste. 2
Los Angeles, CA  90033
Show runs through Apr. 13