“Unreachable Spring” at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

At Luis De Jesus in Culver City, a group show gathers a loose array of artworks that were made in response to recent events. With so many crises affecting our country, the work diverges in focus, addressing a range of issues: pandemic’s loneliness, the toppling of monuments, and the lives lost to police brutality.

Unusually, the gallery has included artist statements next to each artwork, allowing the viewer into the thinking behind each work, and providing a connective personal tone across the exhibition. Laura Krifka’s eponymous painting is voyeuristic and sensual: a woman in a sheer top collects ripe oranges in a basket, and a leering shadow can be seen in the background as if coming from the viewer’s vantage point — we become the onlooker to this scene. In her statement, Krifka talks about the early weeks of lockdown and the ways many watched the outside world from the safety of their homes, “sometimes with longing, at other times rage and indignation.” June Edmonds’ painting, “Silence,”  features thickly slathered globs of pastel pink and blue paints applied in neat rows forming an “X” form of a Confederate flag. In her statement, Edmonds speaks about silence, describing it as “another dirty and ugly side to white privilege.” Though the work on view casts a wide net across social, political, and personal responses to the moment, a palpable longing is felt across the show — a longing for newness, connectivity, and unity where it has been otherwise vacant.