Robert Yarber‘s spellbinding nocturnal realms feel at once familiar and otherworldly. Each of his paintings is far weirder than the sum of its parts, with generic characters and unplaceable urban locales coalescing into bizarre, morbid scenarios. Yarber’s mysterious nightscapes appear as though they could belong to any city, bringing to mind anthropologist Marc Augé’s conception of “non-places” —impersonal locations like motels and shopping malls—engulfing entire urban municipalities. In his paintings, embracing couples hover high above neoned cityscapes, clinging to each other in the thin night air, emblematizing a universal, desperate desire to overcome isolation in a supermodern world. Suspended midair, these ambiguous figures could be levitators, acrobats or suicides. From across the room to a few feet away, Yarber’s large-scale paintings appear as fantastic dreamlike visions, but the more you stare, the more his eerie febrile scenes seem like nightmares, with you, the voyeuristic viewer, plummeting into glowing streets alongside his protagonists. Disintegrating upon closer observation, his loose brushwork somehow still feels real. So intriguing and locally relevant is Yarber’s work that it seems a major oversight that he should only now be having his first solo show in L.A. since 1995—a long gap rendering “Return of the Repressed” at Nicodim Gallery all the more exciting. Evincing his progression, this show features examples from the 80’s and 90’s alongside paintings so new they haven’t quite dried. Inside the office are several that aren’t counted as part of the show, but are just as much must-sees. All manifest Yarber’s talent for suffusing fluorescent hues, stylized chiaroscuro and expressionistic brushstrokes with uncanny palpability.

Nicodim Gallery
571 S. Anderson St., ste. 2
Los Angeles, CA 90033
Show runs through Oct. 20