Two shows at The Pit delineate visionary worlds of wacky flourish and dazzling variegation. “Venusian Weather,” the title of Laurie Nye‘s show, suggests the second planet from the Sun as well as the Greco-Roman ideal of female beauty. The paintings therein reflect Nye’s personal ecofeminist cosmological mythos inspired by classical mythology and popular science fiction. Nye, an eccentric colorist with a flair for scumbling and layering transparencies, contrives her pictures as though she were an alien well versed in earthly painting. Her fanciful scenes impressionistically suggest glowing, flowing-haired humanoids floating before hallucinogenic trellises overgrown with otherworldly vegetation. Paintings such as Cloud Migration 3001 (2018) exude airy ethereality and feverish luminosity. By way of a shaped canvas that frames viewers between its prongs, Venusian Weather (2018) symbolically brings extraplanetary weather into the gallery. Next door in The Pit II, Mindy Shapero‘s psychedelic installation (pictured above) vivifies the alienness of Nye’s painted world. As you step inside, it seems discourteous to tread upon the meticulously hand-embellished floorcloth of reflective foil within Shapero’s dystopic funhouse that queasily unravels your sense of orientation. Three sculptures are the only entities appearing solid. The carnivalesque claustrophobia induced by Shapero’s kaleidoscopically striated walls redoubles sculptures such as Broken Head from the Other Side (2018), which is as intriguing inside as out; and Lover with Two Ear Socks (2018), a cartoonishly doglike creature catatonically gazing into a rainbow target in the corner. While this totemic creature appears endlessly suspended in mesmeric awe of its surroundings, you have to leave before you get seasick.

The Pit
918 Ruberta Ave.
Glendale, CA 91201
Shows run through Jun. 10