Ripe at HARPER’S Los Angeles
Stephanie Shih, Big Peach, 2022
Photo by Reviewer
Ripe at HARPER’S Los Angeles
Review by Timothy LeBlanc
Group shows are difficult things for people to get right and near impossible to get perfect. The parameters that bring the artists together can be too loose or too tight. The works can clash. The space must work well for a variety of artist’s concerns. Ripe the new show at HARPER’S Los Angeles, up until April 1st, 2023, gets it right while not quite perfect.
Ripe pulls together 35 artists around work that deals with fruit. 33 of the artists present paintings while 2 show sculpture. This theme of fruit is of course incredibly loose, but this allows the gallery to shine in its selection of artists and works. Many of the artists approach the topic in different ways. This is not a show of still lives or any specific genre but a show of ands.
Salomón Huerta, Untitled, 2022
Photo from HARPER’s
At the title wall and the start of this review, you are presented with Stephanie Shih’s Big Peach, 2022, the viewer is given works that are sure to draw them in, with a smile in many cases. Shih’s Big Peach itself is a highlight. She is a ceramicist whose works always draw one in for their skill, accessibility, and depth that is present. What appears simple will reward those who spend a bit of time with it looking at its construction and thinking of the role food has played in cultures. Shih’s work centers the fruit much more than many of the other works but all of them have it there.
Michelle Blade, Backyard Cermaics Studio, 2023
Photo by Reviewer
There are works like Backyard Cermaics Studio, 2023 by Michelle Blade, a talented painter and ceramist, that bring in the natural, while certainly domesticated nature of most fruit. The title tales us it is the studio we should focus on while the fruit is in outside in the background. There is a wonderful duality in the tree being weighed down by its literal fruit, beautiful and delicious, in comparison to the fruits of the artist’s labor the while beautiful certainly bear some weight upon their creator. This is even more layered when one acknowledges the service nature of the ceramics in the studio presented. Many of those cups will serve orange juice and the platters a spread of grapes at some party.
Chloe West, Seam, 2023
Photo from HARPER’s
Chloe West brings in the body, and a bit of witchcraft, with her work Seam, 2023. The subject is stringing rowan berries along a red thread, a necklace of which is long thought to protect against magic. While the fruit here is protective, this ritual, performed by a naked subject is double edged, drawing in the viewer.
Other works too look with this much darker view. Anisa Rakaj’s Poison Apple 1, 2022, has her subject reaching for the oft fairytailed titular fruit though the painting has a decidedly different feeling than Snow White. Salomón Huerta has a pair of peaches/nectarines sit on the table which a revolver in his untitled work from 2022. That fruit will be eaten or rot and thrown away, but the gun will forever be ripe and ready for its purpose.
Anisa Rakaj, Poison Apple 1, 2022
Photo by Reviewer
While I doubt there are many people that will walk in and love ever work, myself included, there certainly are paintings for everyone. Some of them are saccharine but the vast majority are delicious. I do recommend everyone go see it to enjoy that which sits well on our pallet and spit out those which leave a bad taste in the mouth. Ripe will be up at HARPER’S Los Angeles until April 1st, 2023.