Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new quilted, stitched, and painted textile wall works, alongside custom functional sculptures, by Oakland-based artist Maria A. Guzmán Capron. For her second solo exhibition with the gallery, Capron draws from the beyond-believable narratives of the telenovela, presenting new works united through the title Pura Mentira, a Spanish-language expression, directly translating to pure lie. Capron shares, “This body of work centers on the concept of lies, small colloquial distortions of reality, as the catalyst for experimentation, role play, and the loss of inhibition.” Under the banner of lies, the artist brings the extraordinary potential of her surreal figures into the realm of daily life. Rather than casting judgment on dishonesty, she approaches the subject with empathy, embracing the many ways we all use lies to distort the reality of mundane scenarios as simple as running late. She celebrates the power of these subtle everyday moments, allowing them to become bridges to a hospitable space that not only permits but also encourages an indulgence in hyperbolic experiences. The artist states, “The pieces build on the themes of the embodiment of multitudes to open to alternate, unruly narratives. Pura Mentira is a work of fiction in which passion, guilt, and secrets reign freely.” Joining together a spectrum of colors and clashing patterns to construct bodily forms, Capron’s practice explores cultural hybridity, a non-binary sense of self, and the competing desires to assimilate and to be seen. Born in Milan, Italy to Colombian and Peruvian parents and later relocating to Texas as a teenager, the artist recognizes the challenges of toggling between various cultures and geographies and the impact this has on one’s sense of self. Rooted in her personal experiences, often drawing directly from her most intimate relationships, her work offers a physical manifestation of the polyvalent influences that shape us—from our cultural identities, experiences, and communities to our desires, distastes, vices, and virtues. Capron’s multilayered textile works emphasize that as individuals we consist of several identities, some that we repress and some that we exalt. Capron’s fiber works are constructed from an extensive palette of vibrant and often playfully patterned fabrics. Collaged, sewn, stuffed, and quilted together, the artist finishes each piece with a mix of acrylic, spray, and latex paints. Using both fabric and paint to define the features and dimensions of the figures, the final mélange of faces and limbs have a fluctuating relationship with each other. Exaggerated body parts —signature moves in Capron’s work—render muscular arms, puffy fingers, and slinky legs that intertwine to become one. By design, it’s not readily apparent where one figure begins and another ends. Her works highlight the diversity within many of us, where several individual personas assembled together can be understood as reflections of a single person. Capron thinks of identity as something that constantly shifts and evolves, constructing figures that are simultaneously extensions of herself and collective portraits of those who often influence identity formation, such as lovers, caretakers, and friends. Upon entering the space of the exhibition, we see the individual fiber works in Pura Mentira are held by oversized curling limbs in an open embrace, painted directly on the gallery walls. This abstracted body stretches across the walls in each room of the exhibition, with some features appearing in sculptural form. The figure culminates in the final room to reveal the face of this giantess, the eyes in the form of tables and nose and mouth in the form of seats. In the central gallery, an open heart, made from two curving crimson benches, has been placed inside the torso. These gestures not only constitute a single creature housing the multitude of personas occupying the walls in the artist’s fiber works, but also act as a welcoming invitation for visitors to travel through this body, to rest within its heart facing one another, to take up time and space. Though their presence dominates Pura Mentira, we cannot see the totality of this oversized figure; instead, their presence builds slowly as we move throughout the exhibition. Pura Mentira systematically positions visitors within this compositional logic, inviting them to experiment with their internal and external influences to draw out latent personas buried within. The artwork Desátame dramatizes this almost literally. The central figure appears in a crouched position, ready to spring into action. Their hair billowing behind them and one arm reaching above, they appear with utmost strength and confidence, while two flanking figures wrap their arms around—one alien-like figure at the waist and another traditionally-femme figure at the shoulder—pulling in opposite directions. This trio exudes the pageantry of Pura Mentira while showing a figure simultaneously embracing and pulling away from different influences. At its core a celebration of self-expression and existence beyond binary systems, Capron intentionally structures her works from fibers due to the materials' culturally inherited referentiality. Acknowledging fabric as a social marker of class, gender, and cultural identity, she fuses luxurious fabrics like silk with recycled, and off-cut, materials such as cotton and nylon. With this gesture, Capron levels the very materials that are designed to signal a hierarchy of wealth and exclusivity. In addition to serving as a metaphor for society’s inequities, her use of mainstream and mass-market materials functions as a subversive act to challenge the homogenizing capitalist landscape. Enlisting an intentional range of materials readily accessible to all, Capron demonstrates that the very fabrics used to reinforce hierarchies of class can instead be used to dismantle them while staging a space for difference to thrive. Speaking to the concepts explored in Pura Mentira and the telenovelas consumed in her youth, Capron states, “Within these works, we recognize ourselves, our passions, our faults, and desires… but here they are extra. This is a space to push our boundaries—I want the close-ups, the makeup, the fashion. Sexy, dangerous, femme identities. Sweaty, hairy masculinity. Intrigue, whispers, secrets. Plot twists and Spanish gasps. The end of purity—a space full of guilt and, because of it, pleasure.” Ultimately, Pura Mentira is an invitation to join its players in performative gestures, expanding our boundaries and embracing our ineffable qualities, all while deepening our sense of empathy and acceptance. ____ Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles is pleased to announce Overtime, an exhibition of new paintings by Kansas City, Missouri-based artist Mikey Yates. This marks the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in Los Angeles. Sourcing from memory and family photographs, Mikey Yates’ paintings illustrate the tender intimacy of quotidian experiences and personal relationships. The artist centers his exploration of these universal themes on his upbringing as a Filipino-American with both parents in the military. Having relocated every few years in his youth to cities around the globe, his genre scenes evoke a sense of transience, shifting between memory, the present moment, and the anticipation of change to come. Drawn from a significant period of the artist’s life between 2002 and 2006, Overtime recounts the tense narrative of coming of age as an adolescent on military bases at the height of America’s war with Iraq and Afghanistan. Time is a prevalent and recurring theme in Yates’ practice. The sustained moments preserved in his paintings take on an urgency in Overtime, as the artist unveils the emotional stakes at the heart of his work — both on the court and in life. Underlying the paintings is the mental strain from perpetually running the odds of your loved ones’ survival within the military industrial complex, alongside the repeated loss of childhood friendships that occur when a family is perpetually uprooted. Nested within the standardized architectural structures on the military base, the basketball court played a significant role for Yates throughout his adolescence. As one of the only spaces for imagination and creativity, the court stood in stark contrast to the foreboding realities of life on the base. Yates transfers the function of the court into his paintings, infusing a sense of optimism and play into memories from an otherwise apprehensive time. In lieu of nostalgia, his luminous palette and fluidly modeled scenes uncover a path for healing and recovery despite the looming presence of military action. With time and place electrifying the scenes presented in Overtime, Yates captures the setting, both physical and mental, of these memories in both large and intimately scaled paintings. In the largest painting in the exhibition, a work from the artist’s Imaginary Defenders series, Yates’ depicts a solo game on a basketball court dimly illuminated at dusk. The primary action takes place on the foregrounded court, where a boy plays with a group of translucent figures, their limbs elongated by the rapid motion of the game. In addition to the unbounded space of imagination and memory, these works illustrate the enduring, expressive inner world of a child isolated within a space that suppresses creativity. Around the court, kids cross the street on their way back from school and a series of military figures wait at a bus stop. Everyone is on the move to the next place. The distant horizon is broken by tall military buildings quoted from childhood photos. Stacked tightly together and overlapping, the buildings press in to enclose the totality of the composition, underscoring the mental space of anticipation that permeates the military base. In contrast with the basketball paintings, we also find the artist’s subjects rendered in domestic settings, depicting a range of emotions that speak to intimate familial connections, loss, and play. The ritual of remembrance as a salve for isolation from one’s community rests at the heart of Yates’ practice. Confessional in nature, these paintings recount private moments that occur with dearest friends and family. This restorative gesture is highlighted in So Far Away, a glowing domestic scene affectionately depicting the artist’s mother serving lumpia (a Filipino dish) while the family dog looks on intently. A wooden spoon and fork sculpture, a common decoration in the Philippines symbolizing health and prosperity, hangs on the wall above her. Minimally accessorized with select meaningful objects, the temporary home becomes wholly comforting while pointing to many places at once. Beyond the window of this warm interior, the rigid structures of the base loom in the suspense of the cold night sky, the same dusky blue found in other works. Despite the overall contrast between the interior and exterior scenes of Overtime, Yates shows consistent moments of individual expression and imagination that withstand the often stifling conditions of the base. Acknowledging the anxiety and fear of transitional states of life, the paintings of Overtime illustrate a practice for reclaiming control in unstable conditions and celebrating the cherished connections that are sources of peace even during moments of turbulence. Rendered with reverence for the past, Yates’ work is deeply rooted in the personal—a persistent attempt to remain connected to one’s cultural background, friends, and family—and the formative moments of youth that create the very foundation of self.