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Narrative Painting In Los Angeles
at Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica (through August 31)
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner
The streets were dark with something more than night.
–Raymond Chandler
We tell stories in order to live.
–Joan Didion
The City of Stars, sometimes known as “LaLaLand,” our often, misunderstood Los Angeles, has always had a dark side. Too often it’s a place where dreams come to die. On the bright side, it is a place of endless sunlight and personal reinvention. Here reality and fiction, truth and lies intertwine as everyone waits for the big one to rearrange the furniture. Home to the literary work of Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, and Nathaniel West, it is a tantalizing contradiction of place. Narrative Painting In Los Angeles brings together thirteen figurative painters who interrogate the history of art, the nature of identity, sexual politics and social justice through the lens of Southern California with enormous skill and elan.
Carl Dobsky’s Birds of Paradise, 2016, oil on linen, 60 x 84”, of all the outstanding works in this engaging show, most clearly has the dark side of life in LA as its theme. Here a wild pool party is filled with white, privileged, partygoers who carouse, drink (there is literally a Dionysian male figure seen head thrown…
