With his keen eye and artistic investment in ideas of process, Los Angeles artist Gary Simmons has curated a provocative exhibition that showcases six fellow Angeleno artists. In “Altered States” at Rebecca Camacho Presents, Simmons positions change as a layered enterprise, where artists transform materials as a vehicle in addressing gesture, the body, language, taxonomies, and society as states in flux. Featuring many poignant works, Simmons creates an especially nuanced relationship between Yuval Pudik’s and Kandis Williams’ works, where appropriated imagery is transformed as material and conceptual intervention.
In Pudik’s installation “You Love Blow & I Love Puff” (2021), the artist presents four graphite text drawings and six spray painted collages that obscure language and image. In the text-based components, the artist has removed the spacing between words to produce a largely unbroken string of letters. As viewers attempt to decipher the almost illegible text, Pudik adds a layer of word play. For example, Pudik writes “ANDROLLS HIMSELF,” followed with “AHARRYFAG.” Here, Pudik uses homophone, homonym and double entendre, such that “HARRY” is both an adjective and proper noun and “FAG” refers to homosexuality and a cigarette in British slang. Pudik cunningly positions drawing against writing as two forms of visual language, both in which slippages in meaning occur...
Genevieve Quick
