Jane Margarette’s otherworldly sculptures and installations mine the tensions between the rough and the sensual, the realistic and the fantastical, the mechanical and the organic. In her exhibition at Anat Ebgi, A Honey of a Tangle, Margarette has created a suite of wall-mounted ceramic sculptures that are spirited in color and form yet retain an undeniable hardness and foreboding. Seeing distinctive forms of locks, pocket watches, insects and birds rendered in huge, 3-D scale, I was instinctually compelled to see these artworks as playful, even cutesy. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Margarette’s fantastical flora and fauna are imbued with more sinister elements, resulting in a paradox of allure and aversion for viewers. Miserable with Carefulness, a large sculpture of a butterfly, is adorned with childish charms of fruits and smaller butterflies on chains. But the butterfly also dons a basket full of loose ceramic teeth, and something has taken a bite out of its right wing. Sing Me a Spell / Drowsy Dreamer takes the form of a bat with a locking apparatus held together by a knife in its chest. In other works, pastel colors and delicate forms belie more threatening components like spiked collars, bear traps and locks. Although there are certainly signals of outside threats and the sculptures largely feature symbols of self-defense, Margarette still manages to make them feel harmless in their absurdity.

The latches and hinges accenting each piece give the implication of movement, like each sculpture is meant to be interacted with. It was easy to imagine playing with each piece like a blown-up sensory board for toddlers to tinker with locks, switches and gadgets. Softness and hardness, weightlessness versus bulkiness were also at odds, as if each butterfly and bird could fly away in the blink of an eye, if only they weren’t weighed down by chains and hardware.

Throughout, I felt like I was walking through an Alice in Wonderland-esque realm, where the natural world exists, surreal and dream-like, without regard for constraints physics or logic. And where the most innocent concepts and creatures may reveal their ominous intentions at any moment, but there is the luxury of waking up and realizing how silly you were to have ever thought there was any real danger in the first place.

Anat Ebgi
2660 S La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Thru Feb. 12th, 2022