Matthew Brown Gallery’s second opening was eagerly anticipated; especially after an impressive and overwhelmingly well-attended debut last month premiering Yale MFA graduate Kenturah Davis. We arrive on the early side so it is a little quieter though with the same bones; an aesthetically proud gallery space, bold in its structural beams and build-outs, yet familiar and welcoming. The crowd is made up heavily of the gallerists’ and artists’ respective families. There are seven artists presented in this group exhibition and, despite only one being located in Los Angeles (Luis Flores), all artists are present. As I stay a while, chatting with the gallerists’ mother Jacquelyn Klein-Brown (president of MCA Santa Barbara Board of Trustees) and Laura Macker Johnston (MCA Santa Barbara Board of Trustees), the atmosphere envelopes nearing the scale of the gallery’s debut.

Matthew Brown and his dog, Simon, with Luis Flores ‘Heartbreaker’

Matthew Brown Gallery, 23 March 2019

The crowd seems energetic with discussions on how interesting it is to watch new galleries crop up as the scene and community grow with its influx of people and artists. The show is both neat and respectful; the artists are given much breathing room and their own space in which to be digested. Flores’ standout piece, the crocheted self-portrait Heartbreaker, engages with tropes of gender inverting this medium, so often demoted to the status of “craft,” injecting it with a humorous approach to hyper-masculinity. In life-size scale, each person that turns the corner is startled by its inanimacy. Van Hanos upends expectations with a painting performing as a marble slab, expertly rendered. This play of material and content echoes Flores’ own work, as links begin to form between the artists, which are gently present as opposed to smashed eagerly together.

A modest group exhibition, “That Land That I Live In” considers wholeness, using a micro-macro lens from which to explore.

That Land That I Live In is on view March 23 – May 4 2019 at Matthew Brown Gallery

Van Hanos, V, 2019, Oil on canvas