Juan Martin Del Campo, “Clouds (for Dolly)” (nd) Mixed media (all photographs by the author for Hyperallergic)
LOS ANGELES — The self-titled exhibition and zine release Bitches Rule, Cycle 3 is nestled in the back of & Pens Press, an art bookstore in Culver City set to become a roving/pop-up shop and online gallery come June 2. The show marks the third effort of the “casual” collective of the same name, a group of by 14 queer artists in working in Los Angeles. The two- and three-dimensional works on display here — including photographs by Zackary Drucker and John Arsenault, collage works by artist unknown and Darin Klein, drawings by Jesse Bermea, and minimalistic, sardonically toned paintings by Brian Gainey — are pieced together through the common threads of bodies, queer histories, the memory of memory, and the LA landscape.
Lacking any video art works, however, this exhibition comes off stilted, and at times like a placid, surface-level look at queer culture — past and present — that’s oddly detached from real-time or possible global queer futurities, save for Juan Martin Del Campo’s “Mothership Connection,” a palm-tree-laden spaceship crafted from stained glass. What if LA is already a sort of futuristic queer outer space, and hence one doesn’t need to look any further? The majority of work in this show focuses on other, more visceral questions.
Read the full story on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/129491/its-a-bitchy-world/
