On October 2, 2022, LAST Projects hosts an art talk show (4pm) in conjunction with its current exhibition “Meshed Realism.” The group exhibition featuring paintings and sculptures is curated by Rachid Bouhamidi. Artists include: Raul Baltazar, Aaron Norfolk, Nilay Lawson and Rachid Bouhamidi. The below text is provided  by the curator. Remember to check with the gallery for up-to-date covid protocols and guidelines – (proof of vaccination and masks MAY be required once again).

Aaron Norfolk, The Blue Gem – oil on panel, 20”x 24” 2017

“The German art critic Franz Roh identified a tendency away from free form expressionism in the works of artists who had lived through the mass slaughter of the first world war, notably of artists Otto Dix and Max Beckmann of the 1920s Weimar Republic. The sense that some powerful, poetic quality emanated from a probing investigation of mundane reality was a driving force that motivated the creative output of a large, disparate group of artists in the years before the Nazi dictatorship abruptly ended it. For the Verists of the Neue Sachlickheit (New Objectivity as it was called), the turmoil and incalculable suffering in the years following the conclusion of the war and a shifting ontological disposition necessitated a more deeply penetrating and heightened rendering of objective forms which meant for artists such as Dix and Georg Grosz an often satirical and caricatural hyperrealism.

This “Magischer Realismus” (magical realism) resonated in works of literature and the plastic arts for generations and is now finding new breath in the works of contemporary artists.

As with those artists from one hundred years before, the works of these four artists propose a kind of magical realism, obsessive in character, steeped in mythical symbols and rooted in but departing from the verisimilitude of ordinary physical reality.” – Rachid Bouhamidi

On view: August 26, 2022 – October 7, 2022; Gallery hours: Sat +Sun 2 to 6 pm and by appt;

What: “Meshed Realism,” group exhibition
Where: Last Projects, 206 S Ave 20, LA, 90031
When: October 2, 2022, 4:00pm
Website: http://lastprojects.org/