Laguna Castle is a domestic show, focused tightly on the objects and spaces of everyday living. The solo exhibition at Night Gallery takes its name from the complex in Echo Park that hosted artist Hayley Barker’s residency in the apartment of the late community activist Isa-Mae Meksin. The strength of the show is in that domesticity, which evokes memory more strongly than any grandiose conceptual work: it’s in the everyday that we see how objects and places connect us across time and mortality.

Barker’s focus on the mementoes in Meskin’s apartment—a bulletin board of photos and pins (Isa’s Wall of Photographs), a hanger organizing Isa’s Necklaces (2022)—bring this sense of time and connection to the fore. A 1930’s crystal doorknob brought me back to my grandparents’ house and sparked the thought of the generations of hands that turned it. Even the thick trunks of the beautifully textured Sycamore Trees (2022) are a reminder of how many years they’ve grown in one place.

The neat framing of View from Isa’s Window (2022) captures impressionistic trees outside as well as a quotidian view that is frequently seen but rarely memorialized. The quietude of Barker’s paintings rewards this kind of close looking with the delight of spotting a toy soldier on the windowsill or a hidden spider in the greenery.

A Cezanne-like palette of soft greens, grays, and yellows connect the works in the show even when the subject changes from Laguna Castle to other personal spaces, like the painting of My Folks’ Place (2023). The house is viewed through the lens of a spiderweb, again hinting at time and the way it changes our way of seeing a place (or home) through the kaleidoscope of nostalgia.

Wander through the corridor at the end of Barker’s show and you’ll be rewarded with another meditation on time: Cynthia Daignault’s As I Lay Dying, a series of panels focused on ‘witness trees’ that stand on battlefields of the American Civil War. The black and white portraits lend dignity to each tree, with only the backgrounds hinting at their history. Each show grapples with the passage of time by focusing on our environment; a reminder that nature continues to grow long after humans, objects and architecture disappear.

Hayley Barker: Laguna Castle
Night Gallery
On view through March 18, 2023