Funhouse at RDFA

RDFA, a new gallery space in West Adams,  has a few guiding principles. The gallerist, Rory Devine, is committed to showing work on canvas, and work by local mid-career artists. Devine pulls through a vast network of artists to accomplish these goals, and his new show, Funhouse, features a barrage of 43 painters that gives viewers a taste of the gallery’s aesthetic and culture. 

The salon-style show is varied in its output, but there is a certain sensibility of playfulness that carries across the work. Color abounds, from Liz Markus’ Cotton Candy T Rex (more or less what it sounds like), to Alexa Gilweit’s Walkabout, in which a bright pink figure looms before a striated abstract Landscape. Some works delve into the surreal, like Brian Cooper’s Swagger, which depicts two flesh-colored, anthropomorphized bookends compressing a ream of paper, subtle drops of sweat-like water emanating from their lifeless forms. Other works, like Samantha Fields’ Exposure and the nearby Untitled (New Smryrna/Titusville) by Michael Coughlan, feel more dedicated to the representation of nature, though they explore the phenomenology of landscape through transportive and blurred out landscapes. 

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Photo: Funhouse (installation view) (2021). Image courtesy of the artists and RDFA gallery.