Darkness Surrounds Us at Jail

“Darkness Surrounds Us”
Jail Gallery


“Darkness Surrounds Us” at Jail curated by Michael Dee deals with the spiritual loss and alienation characterized by both philosophy and pop psychology. The premise of the show challenges the participants to make meaning out of the void and comment on the proximity of the gallery to the Los Angeles County Correctional facility located across the street. The role of existentialist artist as a solitary tormented figure has perhaps become a cultural cliche. However, there is a power to this show that brings new attention to the contemporary recontextualist fascination with modernist philosophy and the very real anxieties of artists living in the face of Los Angeles’ hollow urban core.

The curator Michael Dee’s sculptures are an odd mix of savant charm and Occidentalism. Dee’s work seems to literally embody the need for a personalized grounding within the darker context of meaninglessness and depression. His piece, “the blue light was my blues the red light was my mind,” fuses plastic 99 cent store glasses creating a piece that resembles a Murano chandelier. Lit from underneath in a darkened corner the piece casts phallic shadows forms on the wall creating sexy red and blue lights out of the otherwise mundane material. Much like the crafty experiments of the Swiss team of Fischli and Weiss, Dee’s piece has an ability to capture the beauty encompassed by the banality of everyday life and magnify this presence.

The rest of the show similiarly riffs on the theme with mixed results. Martin Durazo’s assemblage, “The Ballad of Jim Jones” seems like a derivative Jessica Stockholder without the nostalgia and handiness of Stockholder’s craft. The ancillary photocollage depicts bodies surrounding a Kool Aid tub along with a letter from Harvey Melk vouching for Jones’ character, attempt to push this piece into the territory of a sprawling Jason Rhodes installation. However Durazo falls short in both concept and execution. On the other hand his neon pink drawing “Motorhead Distress Logo” cleverly points to a, “white power” prisoner aesthetic perhaps illustrating the tension between the gallery space and its neighboring “Bailbonds” storefront. Pentti Monkkonen’s giant beer sculpture, “Native America” misses the point, its art historical references to Jasper Johns and political subtext makes it seem out of place in the context of the show’s very personal nature. His much more poetic, “beer cans” sculpture of mice trapped in resin plastic seems to illustrate the creepy tension between alcoholism and hallucination characterized by the lonely addict. Ricky Becerril’s piece, “ Elk” creates a graphic architecture of personal and cultural references bringing the surroundings of downtown Los Angeles into focus. While Jamie Scholnick’s series, “Enemy Combatants” brings to mind the spiritual simplicity of isolation. Her careful renderings of caged pittbulls highlight both to the urban sport of dogfighting and the meditative cloistering of imprisoned souls in direct relation to the gallery. Another stand out is a group of fine small oil paintings by Jamie Adams. “Almost” and “Upstairs” depict the moments just before waking when dim light begins to paint the walls of a plastic thrift store alarm clock and sculpture with imaginative light, and transcience.

Artists attempt to expose the real texture of human experience, in an unreal simulacra. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of “The Darkness Surrounds Us” is its attempt to approach such a grandiose conundrum, successful or not.
-Mary Anna Pomonis