Jewel-like translucency and vibrant hues set off the disturbing nature of sculptures by Rona Pondick at Zevitas Marcus, where luminous human heads are frozen in resin blocks or attached to freakish creatural bodies. Several pieces, such as Encased Yellow Green (2017-2018) and Magenta Swimming in Yellow (2015-2017), evoke cryonic corpses’ disembodied pates. Marked by anguished stillness, the somber miens are Pondick’s own. She acutely renders facial features, yet the cloudy rectangular solids that base or encase them recall Minimalist sculptures. Perhaps this tension between figuration and abstraction encapsulates a keen mind’s consternation inside an ailing body. Pondick once had worked primarily in stainless steel, but chronic pain necessitated a less taxing medium; she now employs resin, acrylic and modeling compound to striking effect. The artist was diagnosed with cervical spondylotic myelopathy in 2006, a debilitating disease that has affected not only her materials, but also the spirit of her work, whose fantasticality has been honed to a bleak essence. Self-portraits become commentaries on the human condition with all its maladies and existential dread. In Standing Blue (2015-2017, pictured above), a tiny headless anuran body rears on its hind legs as though struggling in vain to find Frankensteinan completeness with a human head, lying across a cobalt pool, that it can’t quite reach. With desolate beauty, such sculptures testify to Pondick’s resoluteness in overcoming obstacles to continue pursuing her artistic vision—a pursuit at which she continues to excel.

Zevitas Marcus Gallery
2754 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Show runs through Mar. 30