Our city’s beauty is often overlooked. This is a subject I’ve touched on in the past, and it’s an unfair generalization that Los Angeles is an “ugly” city. Maybe it’s because our city is difficult to walk through, and so you don’t notice the beauty. Maybe it’s only ugly in comparison to the beauty of the nature surrounding it. No matter the reasoning, one thing is clear: LA has an image problem. Unlike New York or San Francisco, the neighborhoods in which the vast majority of Angelinos live are not glorified in media, if they are ever shown in the first place. This is why Ana Serrano’s show, “a sense of place,” will bring the beauty of Los Angeles to the fore and change how you see our city.

Serrano’s show is composed of cardboard, diorama sculptures of single-story, LA houses, along with a pair of cardboard trucks. The space is also adorned with LA-inspired installation pieces, like paintings of ravens and hummingbirds and paper wisteria flowers, which work to ground an atmosphere for the sculptures. It really feels as though the neighborhood surrounding the gallery has seeped within its walls.

The cardboard houses, emblematic of much of Serrano’s career, are simple at first glance, but their pastel colors entice you in like a bakery display case. And once you’ve been drawn in, the exquisite detail in the sculptures shines through. The wrought iron gates, the door ornaments, even the basement vents are expertly placed and crafted, demonstrating a real care not only for the objects themselves but for their real world analogues.

And this push for close inspection defines the show. Serrano, more than many artists, wants you to take lessons learned in her show out into the world. The real houses – often the homes of LA’s working, immigrant population, whom Serrano identifies her work with – are frequently ignored, and even maligned. So after you visit, take a few moments to walk around Los Angeles, look at the houses, and the birds, and the wisteria trees, and take in what Serrano is really trying to show us: the beauty all around.

Bermudez Projects
1225 Cypress Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90065
Thru May 15th, 2021; Tues-Sat. noon-6 pm