Between the minutia and the mirage of our fragmented contemporary existence, artists Darius Airo and Jon Plypchuk both create work imbued with a humorous and ironic darkness masked by playfulness. An inside joke, a half forgotten dream, a song lyric, abstracted figures caught between the waveforms of television static or the rain-drenched glass of a car windshieldโour brains continually try to make sense of the world like an undecoded cypher. In Airoโs recent paintings and pastels, presented in the exhibition Mickeyโs Mirror (opening May 25 at Abigail Ogilvy gallery in Los Angeles, curated by Josh Whiteโwhitebox.la), making sense of the world requires clever conceptual conceit of internal mirrors and the abstracted visages of iconic cartoon characters. In the following conversation, Airo and Plypchuk discuss how the world around them is absorbed into their work. Read more.