Cannibal Valley brings together the sculptural objects of Loup Sarion and Daniel Boccato, united by the artists’ collaborative friendship and interest in abstract figurative forms.

On view in the first room are Sarion’s oversized wall-mounted tongues, made of fiberglass and coated with a mixture of resin and pigment. The tongues protrude from a fence of plywood boards that line the walls, which give a skin, an epidermis to the space. Sarion gives careful consideration to material surface and color for each tongue, offering a painterly topography of abstract patches and spots. Each one exclaims its ties to the visceral body as well as to the intimacy of language; a tongue is the thing that determines fundamental differences in taste and is the organ with which we speak, love, kiss and experience sensuality.

Also on view are new works from Daniel Boccato’s faceworks series—wall-mounted, monochromatic sculptures of caricatured expressions. The resulting shapes are made from molds using commonplace materials such as cardboard, sticky tape and tarp, and then cast in epoxy, fiberglass and resin. Their contours and lines suggest cartoon-like faces, with the surfaces bearing wrinkles and protrusions. These works appeal and call attention to one’s tendency to anthropomorphize objects and patterns, and to the dissonance that occurs when trying to register fragmented facial parts. Exploring the relationship between abstraction and figuration, they challenge the spectator's impulses to label, declare, categorize and differentiate.Cannibal Valley is on view through November 9 at M+B 612 North Almont Drive Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of M+B