May 1, 20184 min read

Three Exciting Shows at Corey Helford Gallery

Camilla D’Errico: Sky at Corey Helford Gallery. Photo credit: Kristine Schomaker.

Camilla D’Errico: Sky, Tarntara Sudadung: Behind the Mythic Veil, Erika Sanada: Meet Me Halfway, Alessia Iannetti: Aurora Consurgens and Dosshaus: Paper-thin Hotel

Corey Helford Gallery

Through May 5th

By Sara Fortson

Since the move to the Downtown location from their previous Culver City home, Corey Helford has been able to redefine what it means to exhibit art in Los Angeles, and they have made their mark on the landscape of Los Angeles art. The entire gallery is 12,000 square feet and with three distinct spaces within the gallery, exhibiting not only multiple artists simultaneously, but also three distinctively curated shows with their own personalities and voices.

On view now until May 5th at Corey Helford are three exhibitions featuring a total of six artists (if you count each of the two members of Dosshaus separately). On opening night, one was met with an expansive line snaking its way out the front door for entry into the Paper-thin Hotel created by Zoey Taylor and David Connelly of Dosshaus. Created entirely of cardboard covered with their signature comic sketchiness, Dosshaus explores a duality that Los Angeles residents are all too familiar with. Within their immersive hotel, the viewer is given a glimpse into the lives of residents in the low-rent dwellings. Dosshaus cleverly and whimsically confronts those who enter with current American issues like the opiate crisis, skyrocketing rent prices, and the modern “swipe right” relationship culture. Taylor and Connelly are often within their creation interacting with the objects in the room and making it clear that this isn’t merely a painting or a sculpture or even an environment, but that these rooms represent realities.

DOSSHAUS Paper Thin Hotel at Corey Helford Gallery. Photo Courtesy of the Gallery.

In the largest gallery space at Corey Helford is the light and whimsical work of Camilla D’Errico. D’Errico borrows pop surrealist mannerisms from Mab Graves and Mark Ryden, but peppers it with a more playful, graffiti-influenced hand like French street artist Fafi. D’Errico’s characters are child-like, yet sensual, and have a touch of Margaret Keane’s big eyes. These characters clearly do not live in our world. This show focuses on characters that inhabit an under-the-sea world. Butterflies decorate the gallery walls among the Technicolor oil paintings in colors taken from the work. D’Errico also branches out and takes her work off the walls and into trendy vinyl toys, collectibles, and even furniture (a set of chairs sits in the middle of the large gallery space with D’Errico’s colorful characters decorating the upholstery). Following the cues of many contemporary Pop Surrealist and “New Brow” painters, D’Errico is building not only a body of work, but also a brand.

Camilla D’Errico: Sky at Corey Helford Gallery. Photo credit: Kristine Schomaker.

In Gallery 3, Corey Helford special projects curator Caro Buermann has put together an exhibition of three female artists (or artists who happen to be female). Though these artists are creating distinctly different works dealing with different themes, they all seem to be vaguely off-putting and a real departure from D’Errico’s candy land. Alessia Iannetti creates drawings of women with fireflies, bees, and birds inhabiting the space with them. The graphite on wood panel drawings are haunting and captivating, and also feminine without being girlish. The portraits of her women are sophisticated and ethereal, suggesting an appreciation for the “divine feminine.”

Erika Sanada has created the creatures that inhabit her fears and anxieties, and they come to us emerging from the walls and curled up on pedestals. The creatures appear to be in motion and living. Created from ceramic, they resemble hairless cats and are adorable and terrifying all at the same time. If they are representative of Sanada’s inner anxieties, it suggests that while uncomfortable to live with, they are comforting in their familiarity. Painted in pastel color fades, with pupil-less eyes, they are cute in the light of the gallery, but would not be welcomed following you home.

Erika Sanada: Meet Me Halfway at Corey Helford Gallery. Photo credit: Kristine Schomaker.

Finally, Tarntara Sudadung’s paintings marry the parts of the other shows in the various gallery spaces and seem to be the thread that makes them all stay together. Emerging from smoky haze, the women in Sudadung’s oil paintings are serene in their misfortunes. In “A Butterfly Fan,” a girl gazes with violet eyes over the top of a fan, with black hair cascading down her shoulders. Upon closer inspection, the viewer can see through the fan slightly, and will notice that she has a bloody nose and red knuckles as though she has been in a fight, and is smirking slightly. Most of the women in Sudadung’s world have ties to her interest in Eastern culture and religion, and seem to be mythical and not quite human.

Three completely separate exhibitions are on display at Corey Helford until May 5th, all part of maybe not the same world, but different dimensions of that world. The female-dominated energy in the gallery is transporting, and leaves you feeling like one of D’Errico’s wide-eyed woman-children, or part of Sudadung’s milky haze.