In Robert Russell’s solo show “Stateless Objects,” lush paintings of solitary vessels and kitchenware float like apparitions on the walls of Anat Ebgi. A mix of Judaica—challah platters, kiddush cups, and the like—alongside porcelain teacups produced in pre-Holocaust Germany, these “stateless objects” belonged to people of the North African, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian Jewish diaspora.

Russell’s paintings are cold; the monotone backgrounds against which the objects sit range from cool grays and blues to blacks. Save for the occasional floral-printed teacup, the objects themselves are sapped of any warmth. Though the work appears highly glossy and dimensional from afar, up close, we are denied the pleasure of sheen or dramatic painterly flourishes. What was thought to be tactile is flattened and mattified.

The work, particularly those pieces with black backgrounds, gestures toward the Dutch masters’ tulip paintings. Notably, in both black-backgrounded paintings, the frigidly white porcelain ware, adorned with decorative flowers or foliage, comes from Germany and thus contains a looming implication of Holocaust displacement. Russell gives the memento mori of Dutch tulip paintings a new tone. They serve as a reminder of the losses of the Holocaust, but also present an optimism. Unlike the flowers in a floral still life, these decorative flowers do not wilt and die, but are preserved on static porcelain, sustaining an eternal life.

“Stateless Objects” provides limited conclusions, opting to avoid context, historical or religious. The one instance of shepherding appears in the press release’s claims that the mere act of depiction is “a form of restoration” and “repatriation.” The care taken to paint these objects faithfully is in and of itself a devotional and religious act, a form of honoring ancestral lineage and histories. I don’t quite buy the “restoration” or “repatriation” claims, but I think Russell engages in remembering. And like memory, history is presented through fog (much like the hazy blank backgrounds of these paintings), which can’t offer precision but can offer a freer associative space.

Robert Russell: Stateless Objects
Anat Ebgi
6150 Wilshire Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90048
On view through May 10, 2025