It’s a matter of complete coincidence that Ramsey Alderson’s show “d’Or” at Tiffany’s—an East Hollywood artist-run garage space programmed by Adam Verdugo—coincides with the 17th anniversary of the notorious Emos vs. Punks Fight held in Mexico City’s Glorieta de Los Insurgentes (2025) in early March of 2008. The famed altercation, which saw young Punks and even younger Emos collide in a pedestrian-only roundabout of downtown Mexico City, was the flashpoint after weeks of anti-emo violence across the Mexican republic fueled by newly emergent online avenues. Animosity built up towards the effeminately fashioned emosexuales (the unambiguously homophobic name the Punks came up with for the Emos, one phoneme away from the Spanish pronunciation of homosexual) until hundreds of youths from both sides clashed in the glorieta.

The figures in Aldseron’s paintings, while not too different in their fashion from the Emos in grainy archival flip phone videos of the fights, belong to a faction unknown. They are not the collective alternative, but the lone actors. Whatever terminology may apply, they are undeniably legitimate emosexuales, presented here in intimate moments immune from ridicule or categorization. Bath For Our Foredaddies (2025), the central painting of the show, depicts two spikey haired boys interlocked in a bath, gazing at the viewer, toasting dainty goblets. There is something totally inverted about the bathers. Their interests lie beyond being public agitators, their provocations exist only for each other. Their demonstration is leisurely, and it’s a private demonstration. A worthwhile question is raised: Are they really like that for the attention?

Ramsey Alderson,
“d’Or,” exhibition view, 2025. Photo: Lizzie Klein.
Courtesy of Tiffany’s.

In the three other works, Alderson’s nonchalant yet assertive style occasionally exceeds the modest sizes of the panels the figures find themselves in. The boys are also tightly cropped, unaware of the confines of their own frames. Substantial areas of the panels are covered in single tones of lusterless acrylic, and one figure is rendered only through thin overlays of ink and charcoal at varying opacities over a golden ground This is complemented by areas of special sensitivity, like the blue hair that is more robin’s egg than Manic Panic in Mmm (2024), or the white outlined pants and sleeves on a pensive train rider in d’Or (2024). The idler and the traveler both bask in their own limp wristed flamboyance, while still maintaining the same lack of concern for the viewer as the bathers.

Even so, their stage is set. The garage door at Tiffany’s is open when the show is. During evening viewing hours, each wall is paired with its own spotlight, which project three eerie focal triangles against the lacquer-red Anderson and Verdugo elected to paint the interior walls. On the opening night the floors still smelled of the dark brown stain used to turn the plywood viewing platform into something more seductive. These gestures read as carefully conceived abutted against the implied indifference of the femme boys in the paintings. The impression of the garage is not unlike a craftily and economically furnished dingbat apartment outfitted with odd color belonging to an aging dandy. Or maybe it’s just a weird mismatched midwestern finished basement. In any case, Tiffany’s seems to recognize these paintings’ place—somewhere within an indulgent tableau of desire and indifference.

Ramsey Alderson: d’Or
Tiffany’s
861 N. Alexandria Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90029
February 8 – March 22, 2025