Aubrey Levinthal Explores the Absurdity of Existence in Tourist @ M+B Gallery in Los Angeles

Aubrey Levinthal, Airport, 2022. Courtesy of the Artist and M+B, Los Angeles.

M+B presents Aubrey Levinthal’s Tourist, an escapade into the accumulated mundane which breeds an entire life. Levinthal’s paintings take the strangeness of every-day encounters as their muse, cataloging the soft melancholy of a life in transit with a diaristic sense of levity.

At once both insider and outsider, Levinthal’s figures arrest the slippery interplay between the lonely voyeurism of the tourist and the studied absurdity of feeling like a stranger in one’s own home, collapsing any strict distinction between the two and exposing the mutable oddity of being at once both perceived and perceptive of others in public space.

In an almost paradoxical fashion, Levinthal employs restraint as a tool for arresting rich complexity. She deliberately whittles away at charged dynamism and linear storytelling until only the formal structure of the scene itself remains, forcing the space of each painting to turn in on itself with a sense of contemplative surprise. In the absence of heavy-handed action or emotion, the viewer is left to sit with the charming discomfort of a pure exchange of outward gazes, passing back and forth between both Levinthal’s figures and the viewer themself in a quietly kaleidoscopic ricochet of glances.

Tourist is on view through October 7 @ M+B, 612 N Almont Drive, Los Angeles

Aubrey Levinthal, Dim Sum Go Go, 2023. Courtesy of the Artist and M+B, Los Angeles.

Aubrey Levinthal, Hotel Mirror I, 2023. Courtesy of the Artist and M+B, Los Angeles.

Aubrey Levinthal, Reanimator on Wharton St., 2023. Courtesy of the Artist and M+B, Los Angeles.

"New Paintings of Ordinary Incidents" Captures the Curious in the Quotidian @ Timothy Hawkinson Gallery in Los Angeles

Paul Pretzer, The Downfall, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist and Timothy Hawkinson Gallery.

New Paintings of Ordinary Incidents is a group exhibition presented by Timothy Hawkinson Gallery. The six artists in this exhibition make paintings that closely scrutinize the ordinary, a process that can be unnerving. We take for granted the way things are as they are; the patterns our days fall into being organized, the manner in which household products were designed, the shapes and features fruits and vegetables evolved into. Disturbing oddities and unexpected beauty can be found lurking.

One by one, days go by. Turning into weeks, then months, eventually years and decades. In this inevitable march of time it is nearly impossible to not fall into routines, to get accustomed to surroundings without giving them a second thought. Despite being mundane, these spans are often still busy, yet things become expected. That is the starting point for this exhibition: the overlooked, interstitial passages, where the bulk of life takes place.

Laura Krifka, Everything But, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. 

Kristin Calabrese, Saving My Eggs, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist and Timothy Hawkinson Gallery.

Cait Porter, Wine Bottle, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Marinaro, New York.

Paul Pretzer, Keep it up, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Timothy Hawkinson Gallery.

New Paintings of Ordinary Incidents is on view through September 16 @ Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, 7424 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036