“Life Still,” the title of Kirsten Everberg‘s show at 1301PE, underscores her paintings’ implied precariousness. Bringing to mind the line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “All that lives must die,” Everberg’s animal subjects appear quite animate; yet as in Dutch vanitas still lifes, tokens of life’s fullness symbolize the brink of demise. Notions of environmental imbalance and potential decline loom among vibrant integuments and lush blooms painted in shiny enamel. In the main gallery are easel-sized paintings clearly adverting to mortality. Most memorable among these is Hairstreak and Glass (all works 2019), portraying a butterfly resting on the jagged edge of a broken martini glass. Everberg’s stark composition and expressive brushwork incarnates the fragile insect’s peril in clinging to a manmade vessel having already shattered. Displayed inside adjacent Unit 5, her largest scenes recall 17th to 18th century menagerie paintings by artists such as Melchior d’Hondecoeter and Jan Weenix, with a modern emphasis on imperiled and non-native species.   These impressive tableaux, suffused with unease for their disproportion, feature factitious spaces populated by incompatible creatures whose relative sizes are off. For instance, in Western Lilies, a San Francisco garter snake curls up on a counter under an Eastern U.S. black-throated green warbler perched on the titular endangered plant blossoms seeming to originate from outside a window. High-gloss enamel sheen completes the knowing artifice of Everberg’s scenes as seductive as snakeskin handbags.

1301PE
6150 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Show runs through Jun. 29