Royal Exotic

c/o Royal Exotic Car Rental, 1525 S La Cienega, CA 90035, Los Angeles

Reception: Tuesday, February 11, 2020, 6:00 – 9:00 pm

Works by Lindsay August-Salazar, John Finneran, Brennan Hill, Erica Mahinay, Emanuel Röhss, Daniel R. Small, and Leslie Shows.

Royal Exotic is a group exhibition conceived by Jenny Danielsson and Emanuel Röhss featuring seven L.A.-based artists. Presented at Royal Exotic Car Rental on La Cienega, where its Lamborghini Aventador takes center stage.

The show is on view at the beginning of Frieze Week and brings together work made in an array of mediums (sculpture, painting, and photography) and through a multitude of conceptual, sensual and pragmatic approaches.

Contrary to forging a singular thematic link between the works, the project achieves its coming-to-being through social and discursive interactions between the artists and curators and a reciprocal interest in each other’s practices.

Subjects, thoughts and methodologies range from examining painting’s form through typographic inventions translated from dance to painting (August-Salazar) to clarity and directness through mark making in oil on linen (Finneran) and elaborations on material combinations and formal riddles (Shows).

Mahinay’s work bridges painting and sculpture, laying bare expressions rooted in personal psychological processes, which are contrasted by the dark and humorous, yet likewise self-exploratory, qualities of Hill’s wall works and video.

Small’s thoroughly researched analysis of the intersections of truth and fantasy in the context of anthropology, history and technology offers the audience multilayered, thought-provoking material.

Confrontations between reality and fiction converge in Röhss’ interrogation of the confluence of Hollywood cinema and modernist architecture and the resulting psychological effects.