Simchowitz DTLA presents three exhibitions. The shows include: Coy Khoi by Lady Skollie, Pap Er Popper Sound by MSR FCJ, as well as Alic Brock’s Cadillac Jack. The exhibitions run through September 23, 2023.
Coy Khoi by Lady Skolli
The titles of Lady Skollie’s paintings A Self Portrait of the Artist Wrestling with Her Daddy Issues Reaching Misguidedly for the Validation of Men (2016) or Allowed My Pussy To Be Colonized (2016) are humorous. However the self-deprecation serves as a form of activism.
Even her moniker, Lady Skollie, is a deliberate oxymoron that nevertheless, says so much about her practice. Skollie, whose real name is Laura Windvogel, chose ‘Lady’ as a reference to European traditions. ‘Skollie’ is a slang word referring to masculine figures of mixed race who might be thieves or thugs. Thus her own alias captures some of the tensions that make her art so vital: the tension between male and female, the tension between high and low, the tension between occupier and the oppressed.
Artist Lady Skollie – Burial Wreaths in Plastic Domes, Bubbling out Their Foamy Green Centres, 2017. Crayon and ink on Fabriano. 59.06h x 55.12w in / 150h x 140w cm
The artist created the works in COY KHOI between 2017-2018. If they bare the look and feel of Khoisan drawings (aka rock art from 6000 BC), Skollie claims that it’s deliberate. “I consider myself to be like a bushman or some of the first people, indigenous people, of South Africa” she says. “Cave drawings are the only thing that we really have left that symbolizes us. So I sometimes see my work as an evolved version of that.”
Pap Er Popper Sound by MSR FCJ
Owing their appearance to classic, intuitive abstraction, but immersed in the graphic urgency of zines and comic books, Mike S. Redmond (b. 1987) and Faye Coral Johnson (b.1988), create drawings and painting that often come off as strange, erratic transmissions from another time and place. The title of the exhibition, ‘Pap Er Popper Sound’ is a reference to those folded paper sheets, or handmade poppers, used by school kids to scare unsuspecting friends. But for the UK-based duo who go by the moniker MSR FCJ, it’s also a reference to those hazy, early morning moments when you’re half asleep and cartoons are playing on the tv. “When in-between worlds merge together” they say, anything can happen.
The artist team MSR FCJ has been published worldwide since 2006. It has exhibited throughout the UK, France, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. They have been awarded residences in the UK, France, Switzerland, Sweden, and South Africa.
Cadillac Jack by Alic Brock
Alic Brock’s practice is an irreverent but loving interrogation of painting as it stands at the crossroads of technological innovation. Through his medium-to-large scale, photorealist paintings, the Atlanta-based artist transmutes the sensibilities of today’s digital life—it’s over-stimulation, its obsession with celebrity—while underscoring its inherent superficiality and strangeness.
That same idea courses through the works in Cadillac Jack, albeit with even more emotional punch. Cadillac Jack was the name of well-known sports bar and grill in Dayton that he and his family used to frequent, and the nine paintings in the exhibition are dedicated to his mother, Pamela, who passed away last year at the youthful age of 64. Cadillac Jack is Brock’s second exhibition at the gallery. Previously, he showed at the Cabin in Los Angeles.
On view: August 19, 2023 – September 23, 2023
Remember Simchowitz has 3 locations this is at the DTLA one.
What: New Exhibitions
Where: Simchowitz Gallery DTLA, 727 East Washington Blvd. LA, 90021
When: Running thru September 23, 2023
Website: https://simchowitz.com
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