Nihura Montiel’s current solo show, “New Paintings,” now on view at @leiminspace in Chinatown delights in mimicking the various plush terrycloths and fabrics that function as fetish objects in her critique of misunderstood femininity. Her paintings of Cinderella, rendered in primrose, lacy yellow and hot pink, were brought suggestively to tumescence with bite-sized complimentary cupcakes embellished with edible pearls, Hershey’s Kisses ®, and wine. For the self-consciously feminine, the paintings and sculpture on view are a myth: they reveal the facile slippery slope women face between their girlishness and what they actually are.

Nihura Montiel, Terry Towel Cinderella (She Needs to Chill Out), 2016, photograph by Janna Avner.

Braid Pillow (2016) is likewise contradictorily upheld (invisible to the viewer) with a double-braced metal clip, offsetting the plait of hair extensions carefully sewn onto the heart shaped piece. Framed by lace and a lacquered, black heart-outline, the pillow, which is painted canvas, is both saccharine and chimerical—as in Frankenstein’s monster.

Nihura Montiel, Braid Pillow (2016), photograph by Janna Avner.

The well tailored wall piece Mood Leaf (2016) is a glossy, green tromp l’oeil of a plastic house plant. It complements the subtle impasto in Montiel’s portrait of Athena (Athena Bust with Cherries, 2016), placed next to a sanded depiction of Ovid’s Narcissus (Distressed Doodle, 2010), which is a variation of Echo and Narcissus (1903) by John William Waterhouse. Montiel’s is a clever craft: embedded in these pieces is vulnerable circumstance, a subjective self-portraitizing that is both comforting and self-effacing.

Nihura Montiel, Mood Leaf (2016), photograph by Janna Avner.

The works accede to notions of ripening girlhood as a peachy and synthetic identification: they display the composite parts and descriptors of feminine identity (all fluff, no core) as the unbearable lightness of being female that is both maddening and unraveling. Montiel leaves some of that concern at the door though—as a playful and rosy expression of shrinking, neurotic, and fetishized femininity that one loves to hate, hates to love.

Nihura Montiel, “New Paintings,” February 20 – March 19, 2016, @leiminspace, 443 Lei Min Way, Los Angeles, CA 90012, www.leiminspace.com.