Liquid Love
at Gas

Rollin Leonard, Kissing Underwater (2016-2017) (detail). Image courtesy of the artist and Gas. Photo: Flynn Casey.

In the classic country song “Lookin’ for Love,” singer Johnny Lee bemoans his inability to find the connection he desires, caught, as he is, in a pattern of searching “in all the wrong places.” Liquid Love, a group exhibition currently on view at Gas, explores what the modern-day catalogue of the all the wrong places might be, using digital technology, pornography, and social media as starting points for critique.

Ann Hirsch’s Dancers in the Dark (2017) splices together pornographic found footage of women dancing seductively, producing a fetish-style video that might pop up on an internet search for “amateur striptease.” While one could expect such salacious content to be distracting, enticing or even embarrassing, the proliferation and redundancy of these types of images on the internet renders the piece strikingly easy to ignore. In contrast, the audio spoken from Kathy Cho’s optically sparse yet content-rich Yuna (2017) fills the gallery. The piece’s visual element consists solely of a black background with white text and relays fragmented observations from Cho’s Twitter feed, a combination of diaristic musings on everyday life and her often cringe-worthy experiences in the art world.

Compounding the emotional immediacy and potential awkwardness of an exhibition with such visceral content, Gas measures in at a minuscule eight by ten feet of gallery space located in the back of a 1993 Chevrolet P30 step van. Working within these constraints, owner Ceci Moss utilizes every inch available for this exhibition, going so far as to wear one of the artworks—a commissioned piece from the jewelry line Small Things—as an earring throughout the run of the show. A long string of grotesquely colorful hands and mouths dangle from Moss’ ear and cling desperately to each other; the handcrafted polymer clay piece forms a fitting emblem for the collective desires and fears that fuel the show. More missed connections than matches, more cruelty than forgiveness, Liquid Love presents modern day romance as a tenuous combination of technological manipulation and narcissistic mirage.

Liquid Love runs January 7–April 14, 2018 at Gas (on view Saturdays, 11 am–6 pm at The Pit, 918 Ruberta Ave., Glendale, CA 91201).

Liquid Love at Gas (installation view). Image courtesy of Gas. Photo: Flynn Casey.

Small Things, Earring (2017). Image courtesy of the artist and Gas. Photo: Flynn Casey.

Angela Washko, @pua_vernacular (2017-2018). Image courtesy of the artist and Gas. Photo: Flynn Casey.

Ann Hirsch, Dancers in the Dark (2017). Image courtesy of the artist and Gas. Photo: Flynn Casey.

Cara Benedetto, Women as Lovers (2018). Image courtesy of the artist and Gas. Photo: Flynn Casey.

Liquid Love at Gas (installation view). Image courtesy of Gas. Photo: Flynn Casey.

Ceci Moss is a curator, writer, educator, and founding director of Gas. Her writing has appeared in Rhizome, Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific, Artforum, The Wire, CURA, and various art catalogs. Her first book, Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu, was published by Bloomsbury. She is a lecturer in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts.

More by Ceci Moss

Jennifer Remenchik is an artist and writer in Los Angeles.

More by Jennifer Remenchik