Read Our Interview of Wynnie Mynerva On the Occasion of Their Inaugural US Solo Exhibition @ The New Museum →

Wynnie Mynerva looks into the camera wearing Heaven by Marc Jacobs

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs

The question of original sin has no relevance in Lima-based artist Wynnie Mynerva’s Book of Genesis. For their inaugural American solo exhibition curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, the artist will be presenting The Original Riot, opening tomorrow (June 29) at the New Museum with a site-specific installation that constitutes the largest painting ever to be presented by the institution, as well as a sculptural element that was surgically removed from the artist’s own body. The readaptation of both mythology and anatomy is central to Mynerva’s quintessentially plastic life and practice; one that finds itself in a constant state of radical change. Painting and performance are a fluent oscillation of being as demonstrated in their 2021 exhibition Closing to Open at Ginsberg Gallery in Madrid when the artist had their vagina sutured three quarters of the way shut, allowing only for the flow of their bodily fluids to function as necessary. The corporeal roles of masculine and feminine are constantly being subverted and abstracted in works that bleed, scratch, beguile, and thrust their way through the patriarchal canon with an air of wanton ecstasy. The binary creation myth was recently addressed in Mynerva’s first UK solo exhibition Bone of My Bones Flesh of My Flesh at Gathering London earlier this year, introducing many for the first time to the role of Lilith in Judaic and Mesopotamian folklore as Adam’s first wife who was created from the same clay (equal in nature) as her husband. Her pitiable fate varies from one myth to the next, but the creation of a second wife (Eve) from his rib remains consistent. The artist’s decision to remove Adam’s body from their own for The Original Riot demonstrates the power to readapt our personal realities at will. It is a reflection of the agency that we unwittingly deny ourselves when we allow allegory to shape our internalized perspectives. The following interview was conducted in Spanish and is presented here in its original form, followed by its English translation. Read more.

Theophanies Explores The Late Steven Arnold's Personal Mythologies @ Fahey/Klein In Los Angeles

Realized between 1981 and 1993, Steven Arnold’s tableau photography represents a confluence of his myriad other disciplines. This modality allowed him the freedom to fully realize his cinematic visions without outside influence or compromise. After sketching storyboards inspired by his dreams, a habit from his filmmaking days, Arnold would craft his tableaus using cardboard, seamless paper, metallic and patterned fabrics, cut paper, paint, and selections from his obsessive collection of antiques, costumes, makeup, and dime store finds. Finally, he would dress, paint, and pose his models within his tableau, bringing his vision to life, then captured with his Hasselblad, often utilizing multiple exposures. 

Theophanies is an exhibition of works curated as a limited retrospective of the late artist’s surrealist tableau photographs, supported by a small selection of drawings, paintings, sculpture, and films. A proud, prominent member of the LGBTQ community years before this moniker became part of our common vernacular, Arnold sadly died of AIDS in 1994. Most recently, he is the subject of a documentary, Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies, co-narrated by Anjelica Huston and Ellen Burstyn, which will be screened on September 21 at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with filmmaker Vishnu Dass, writer/editor Steffie Nelson, writer/filmmaker Jessica Hundley (The Library of Esoterica) and Nicholas Fahey of Fahey/Klein Gallery.

Theophanies is on view through September 24 @ Fahey/Klein Gallery 148 North La Brea Avenue

Lydia Maria Pfeffer Takes Us to Queer, Jungian Worlds In Lily of the Valley @ Ochi Projects In Los Angeles

 
 

Lydia Maria Pfeffer presents new paintings that depict a queer cast of characters as well as their seductive and strange worlds. Drawing inspiration from mythology, shamanism, and anthropomorphism, Pfeffer playfully revels in art historical motifs and religious iconography. Set against earthly and other-worldly backdrops, the occult-like figures in this series dwell in both familiar and celestial landscapes. Pfeffer’s fantastical worlds are inhabited by bold figures who embody queer sensuality, femme kinship, and gender fluidity, through the expressive language of painterly symbolism.

With a cheeky nod to the sexualized female figures of Austrian Expressionism, like those of Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, Pfeffer similarly charges her subjects with a raw femme sexuality that verges on the grotesque. However, unlike these historical representations of the sexed femme body—so often fraught with the confines of modernity and the male gaze—Pfeffer’s specters are fully self-realized. They refuse the bounds of their own frames. Connecting familiarity with fantasy, and femininity with ferocity, Pfeffer’s works hover above the axis of desire itself. Lily of the Valley rejects painting’s inherited traditions of the patriarchal gaze and boldly asserts the power of a self-actualized queer eroticism.

Lydia Maria Pfeffer is in conversation with Trulee Hall in our forthcoming Body Issue. The following is an excerpt from the full interview:

LYDIA MARIA PFEFFER: I do believe there's a spirit world out there, and I do believe that everything is alive, and I mean that down to the soil. When I make these paintings, they are almost a weird channeling. Of course, it’s my subconscious that creates these images. But, I start painting with some washes or lines, then the figure develops, who then invites the other figure, and they're all grabbing each other and taking each other to the party. It's almost like I’m asking, “Alright, who else do you want? What else do you want? Oh, you want a little thing there? Okay, cool. Who else is coming to the party? Okay. There she is.” I'm almost being told what to do. It takes an openness, and a willingness to trust yourself, and trust the process. You go in and give yourself entirely over to the painting. Often, I paint the entire thing, and I have no idea what's happening. There's a lot of Jung’s idea of collective unconscious in there, which says that your fears and your desires are predetermined. These archetypes that we all embody determine what we fear, or revere, or need, or want in order to develop.   

TRULEE HALL: I totally relate. I also use the channeling. I get the mood right. I have a canvas, I got my music going, and the rest just unfolds. I don't think it through ahead of time. Sometimes I'll start with one idea or an inspiration, but it's a relationship with the work. In your case, you're very brave, and you're also unapologetic. Your work comes from a very authentic place and it really jumps off the canvas. I don't even think of them as paintings because they just seem to exist. It feels like it flew out of you; like it's supposed to exist.   

Lily of The Valley is on view through April 30 at Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles

Simone Fattal: Works and Days @ the New York MOMA

Simone Fattal: Works and Days brings together over 200 works created over the last 50 years, featuring abstract and figurative ceramic sculptures, paintings, watercolors, and collages that draw from a range of sources including ancient history, mythology, Sufi poetry, geopolitical conflicts, and landscape painting. Fattal’s work explores the impact of displacement, as well as the politics of archaeology and excavation, constructing a world that has emerged from history and memory. Both timeless and specific, Fattal’s work straddles the contemporary, the archaic, and the mythic.

Simone Fattal: Works and Days is on view through September 2 at MOMA 11 West 53 Street. photographs courtesy of MOMA