Skin Ego
at Skibum MacArthur

Skin Ego (installation view) (2016). Image courtesy of the artists and Skibum MacArthur. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Skin Ego at Skibum MacArthur is smartly arranged. Pops of color and artwork bound to both floor and air wrestle for your eye. A mirrored text piece by Andrew Emard (To You: But Not A Specific You, A General You: Part 1, 2015) on the floor glints in the afternoon sunlight, daring you to attempt to read the vapid poem etched on its surface. Bodily-colored silicone pieces by Maxfield Miles slink around the periphery, slithering along electrical tracks or looping around the rafters.

In this nine-person show, Graham Landin anchors the exhibition with five (of the 15) works presented. While his sculptural assemblages are towered by a nearby Dywer Killcollin column, they hold their own with unassuming nonchalance. The Punky Hairdo My Father Advised Against (2016) is a grafted cactus—it’s base, strong and stable, is soon interrupted by a flowering prickly pear. Punky indeed. Landin’s Venus of the Isle (Mimi) (2016) is a pit-fired clay vessel à la Amy Bessone. A subtle torso can be made out as one walks around and notices the unmistakable backside; the pot’s handles become its knowing arms, resting on the hips.

With the upswing of breezy summer group shows, Skin Ego does stand out in its coherency. Like so many grafted plants, the works in the exhibition wiggle into their newly-found shared context, accepting it well. The tentative, emotive quality that many of the works exude is momentarily lost in Jefferey Cortland Jones’ dry geometric wall works—though, perhaps it is only in this active context that his works become the wallflowers at the disco. The double edged sword of such an active group show is that someone is bound to be left out.

Skin Ego runs from June 26–August 7, 2016 at Skibum MacArthur (712 S. Grand View St., #204, Los Angeles, CA 90057).

Graham Landin, The Self in a State of Ever Becoming (2016) and Our Little House (2016), and Maxfield Miles, Soft Adaptive (2016). Image courtesy of the artists and Skibum MacArthur. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Chelsea McCarthy, Bivalve (Wall Relief) (2016), and Andrew Emard, To You: But Not A Specific You, A General You: Part 1 (2015). Image courtesy of the artists and Skibum MacArthur. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Skin Ego (installation view) (2016). Image courtesy of the artists and Skibum MacArthur. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Jeffery Cortland Jones, Murk (To Step Aside) (2016) and Some speculation (2016); Wyatt Miles, The Circle Is Not Round (2016); Dwyer Killcolin, Capital (column I) (2016). Image courtesy of the artists and Skibum MacArthur. Photo: Brica Wilcox.

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and the founder of Carla. She is an arts correspondent for KCRW. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), OCHI (Los Angeles), and City Limits (Oakland).

More by Lindsay Preston Zappas