Who has not asked oneself at some time or another: Should I disappear into the abyss or should I emerge and be seen? It’s a concern that is, at times, about recognizability and addressability, and if we are ready to situate our bodies which contain the raw materials of our psyche, in a mode that’s accessible and inseparable from others. Straddling between these choices, the shine and hum of the works featured at Sea View by Charlotte Edey (b. 1992, Manchester, UK) and Azadeh Elmizadeh (b. 1987, Tehran, IR) turn our attention to the mysteries of what is made visible, the value of hideaway places, and restoring states of disappearance as a play of inwardness and cosmic attendance. Materially, Elmizadeh offers delicately and ever-deepening layered paintings on the brink of becoming fog, regenerating relationships between form and color as fluid figures, while Edey creates possessed interiors by combining jacquard weaving and fine beading alongside firmly intimate paintings of incalculable daze. In their emergent states of plurality, both artists offer methods for understanding their respective dilemmas. Stirred by hydrofeminism and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Edey’s self-contained illuminating scenes press viewers to almost weep from its exquisite execution as it exits a world of rational thought and feeling, paths of necessary transformation. Elmizadeh’s inquiries are sprung by inspiration from allegorical Islamic manuscripts and illustrations, paintings that make aqueous forms of flora, fauna, and objects on an earth a source of diffused becoming.

Sea View
4166 Sea View Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
On view through October 21, 2023