Review: ‘The Punishment of Lust and Luxury’ at Mihai Nicodim Gallery

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An elegant pencil drawing by Romanian artist Ciprian Muresan shows a tall fellow with an unusually long torso. His face is scrunched, as if exhaling in sorrow. Way down at the drawing’s bottom, his hands are carefully slicing an onion.

An art of manufactured tears is the curious undercurrent of the group show “The Punishment of Lust and Luxury,” which presents seven drawings and three videos (one unavailable for viewing when I visited) at Mihai Nicodim Gallery. Some works are witty, like Adrian Ghenie’s bleary pencil rendering of a smeared face. “Pie Fight Study” pays tribute to a futile yet heartfelt retort.

Others are coy, like Martin Skauen’s “Scent of a Woman (Theresa).” Crowning her sweet and apprehensive head, the fearsome snakes of Medusa have been replaced with rodents — the reptiles’ lunch.

The most compelling work is a short video, “The Lake Arches,” by French artist Cyprien Gaillard. At 1 1/2 minutes, the action happens fast.
A young man in swimming trunks stands at lake’s edge. A second young man runs by, and the two dive headlong into the water. Instantly they pop up, wounded from having hit bottom.

In the background of what is now clearly not a lake but a shallow reflecting pool, an ostentatious apartment building — presumably, the titular Lake Arches — looms into view. The boy with the scraped, bloody, perhaps broken nose buries his face in a bright blue towel.

When the loop repeats, you want to avert your eyes too. As an image of playful abandon yielding sudden, painful awareness, all beneath a looming architectural atrocity, the video assumes potent metaphorical punch.

-- Christopher Knight

Mihai Nicodim Gallery, 944 Chung King Road, Chinatown, L.A. (213) 621-2786, through Feb. 28. Closed Sunday through Tuesday.

Above: Ciprian Muresan’s ‘I’m Too Sad to Tell You’ (after Bass Jan Ader) (2009), pencil on paper. Credit: Mihai Nicodim Gallery