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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Los Angeles based artist Jesse Mockrin (featured here) will debut a new body of work at her upcoming show opening on Saturday at Night Gallery. “The Progress of Love” is her second solo show, following “Midnight Sun” in 2014 with a series of oil paintings that revisit the French Rococo era. Mockrin reimagines source material such as Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s “Portrait of Madame du Barry” to construct an ethereal world of transgression, luminescence and beauty. The fluid curvature of limbs and fingers, softness of facial features, and emphasis on portions of each scene by isolating them into standalone pieces themselves, are all characteristic of her work.
A master of contrast, Filippo Minelli sets off vibrant, billowing clouds of colored smoke in empty, enigmatic spaces. Initially inspired by the silencing effect of smokebombs on urban protests, Minelli “got the impression that the smoke itself was the silence arriving to the scene.” To convey the impression of silence, he re-contextualized them in landscapes—in a sense, Minelli solidifies silence in smoke.
Dynamic and skillfully executed, there is more than meets the eye in the figurative work of Chinese artist Mohan (默涵). His subjects are usually women, cast as little girls, brides and patriots, placed in idealized settings. We find them at home, cheering their comrades, or quietly contemplating their futures in moody landscapes of China. In recent works, they also venture to foreign cities like Paris. They are lit with the softness of Romanticism, with an attention to detail that borders hyperrealism.