Group shows are like parties: overarching themes can help ensure memorable experiences; but sometimes the most engaging are those where unexpected connections form fortuitously among diverse invitees, rather than being engineered. “Hot Time, Summer in the City” scarcely claims a theme—all 21 artists have shown or will soon exhibit at CB1—but unlike many summer shows of this type, its divergent pieces sonorously assemble. The mostly 2D work ranges widely in subject, manner, and media. On the threshold of a small side gallery, Osvaldo Trujillo’s monochromatic motherboard abstraction contrasts with organic subject matter inside, where Annelie McKenzie’s paintings on purses, Elliott Green’s abstracted landscapes and Lisa Adams’ intriguing desert scenes surround Merion Estes’ salon-style configuration of circular canvases featuring painterly gestures atop fabric patterned like antique wallpaper. Ripe with suggestions of tiny nature, the arrangement of Estes’ canvases echoes their depicted berries and bug eggs. In the main gallery, Eric Beltz’ graphite rendering hangs near nonobjective abstractions; while Soo Kim’s double-sided cut-out print fractures the sight-line of Laura Krifka’s small but incisive Scar (2015) adjoining other female figure paintings by Phung Huynh, Junghwa Hong (painting pictured above) and Georganne Deen. Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia’s paper weaving offers a fitting metaphor for intermingled visions. Others number too many to mention, but each piece in this show exudes a worthy presence; and somehow they all work together. You’ll likely linger longer than you intend.
1923 S. Santa Fe Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90021
Show runs through September 2
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