Mixed feelings like mixed nuts, a grab bag of options when you already know which one you’d want. Or maybe the labeling is intentionally misleading, and a slinky-snake jumps out of the can when you open it. Sometimes life punches you in the face. New meaning is revealed as language pivots (it doesn’t matter which side of the door you’re on, if it isn’t attached to a wall). How much deconstruction can an object sustain before it ceases to be itself? And is meaning always between the lines, an intangible miasma made manifest through our collective belief? There is that jolt of clarity when you trip and lose your balance, but catch yourself just before hitting the ground. A kaleidoscopic de-coupling and re-coupling of meaning and form: backing a car into a fence can reveal a fluidity of form concealed within the properly functioning object. A wrought iron fence, bars on the windows, bars on the headboard — all demarcations of boundaries, objects bearing a force of suggestion. Steel bars signal simultaneously the safety of those within and the maleficence of those without. Zillow recommends the removal of security bars from windows prior to putting your house on the market. But getting back to beds, are metal slats purely a thing you grip on to? A titillating nod to imprisonment? A counterpoint to the softness of the bedding, of the flesh? A sock on the doorknob means don’t come in.As a child in Soviet Ukraine, I felt guilty and ashamed of my longing for the spiritual comforts of the Eastern Orthodox Church, with its endless beeswax candles, incense, and incantations. This only doubled my guilt and shame over masturbating quite so much, since neither the Church nor polite secular society would approve.Sincerity can be embarrassing, impolite. Tanya Brodsky (b. 1982, Kiev, Ukraine) earned her MFA from UC San Diego in 2016, and her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. She lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2016, she was a fellow at SOMA Summer Program in Mexico City and in 2013 she participated in the Mountain School of Art. Brodsky’s work has been exhibited at CES Gallery, Commonwealth and Council, BBQLA, Elevator Mondays, Visitor Welcome Center, Vacancy, New Wight Gallery at UCLA, (all Los Angeles), SPF15, San Diego; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Bizkaia Aretoa, Bilbao, Spain; and Galeria Alternativa Once, Monterrey, Mexico. Upcoming exhibitions include Privacies Infrastructure, a temporary public art installation in collaboration with Materials & Applications, curated by Aurora Tang and Jia Gu.‖ This presentation of relief sculptures made in complementary pairs, created by Morrison’s unique processcombining both printmaking and casting techniques, brings to the forefront a conversation between artifact andreplica. Referencing Etruscan frescoes, early Puritan Gravestones, and more directly the gestures of GianLorenzo Bernini’s dynamic figurative works, Morrison recasts these symbols with the industrial material ofgypsum cement, alluding to the way artifacts are imitated if not outright looted – their original purpose andsignificance lost or misinterpreted. Through this process of dislocation, artifacts or replicas often take on a newkind of cultural significance where their possession and display is meant to indicate status and wealth.Do these objects that imitate artifacts become kitsch when a “faux” material meant to imply this sense of valuefails to do so? Imitation gold and silver, for instance, are often employed in this effort and are featuredpredominantly in the exhibition. Recalling a piece of jewelry Morrison had in the 90s, two large panels depictevil eye chains in gold and silver leaf. The evil eye, originally a talisman considered to have magical powers ofprotection, is depicted with broken links, revealing its artificiality, refuting its symbolic properties andtransforming it into a cheap trinket.Morrison further mines this moment of failed expectation. The Letdown, sharing their title with the exhibition,are two panels of milky-colored recurring wave patterns. The works are named after the physiological responsethat occurs during breastfeeding; the letdown involves the release of oxytocin (the “love” hormone)strengthening the bond of mother to child. The works recall a memory of simultaneously experiencing theletdown breastfeeding her son while feeling extreme despair watching Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidentialcampaign concession speech. This bittersweet moment triggered a heightened awareness of injustice soprofound that it called her to action, altering her sense of place and duty in the world. Turning the waves intoguilded flames, she carries this experience of complicated emotion into Ecstasy, two panels depicting gesturinghands. Though hands are a repeated trope in Morrison’s work, here they specifically reference Bernini’s TheEcstasy of Saint Teresa. Teresa, (one of the few female saints) accounted to have experienced a love of Godwith a pain “so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain,that I could not wish to be rid of it.” This conflation of the body’s letdown while feeling emotionally let down,waves of euphoria and waves of pain, inform Morrison’s understanding of high and low, unmet expectation,false narrative, and the power of imagery and symbolic gesture.Despite the cynicism required to grasp the concept of kitsch, Morrison nevertheless strives for a level of reposein her pieces. In two final panels Morrison recreates a souvenir pendant that depicts a landscape. Sherecognizes that while it may have sentimental value it is not a piece of fine jewelry. Interrogating andtransforming the souvenir into art object through her labor-intensive process, Morrison seeks a sincere meansof making something well-crafted and whole.Erin Morrison (b. 1985) received her MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2014. Her relief paintings havebeen included in several recent group exhibitions including Sonia Dutton, New York, The Pit, Los Angeles, C.E.S, LosAngeles, Chimento Contemporary, Los Angeles, Samuel Freeman, Los Angeles, UPFOR, Portland, and JamesHarris Gallery, Seattle.