GGLA is pleased to present Kayfabe, a group exhibition curated by the artist collective BBQLA, featuring works by David Altmejd, Pierce Brosnan, Brad Eberhard, Sasha Fisheman, Eun-Ha Paek, Luke Rogers, Mia Scarpa and Paul Anthony Smith. Centering the show around the concept of “Kayfabe”, a term taken from professional wrestling that describes the ways in which both audience and performer are equally invested in the notion of staged events as real life, the curated exhibition plays with the idea of both the artist and material as illusion and allusion as well as the viewers complicity in this whole dynamic. In a sense the entire history of representational art could be seen as a kind of Kayfabe, whether it’s cave paintings built from symbols tacitly understood by maker and viewer to represent real animals or people, or the landscape painting acting as a window to a different space or time yet composed of shallow marks on a tightly woven piece of fabric. As our technological capacities and moral depravities deepen, the blurring of what is real and what isn’t becomes harder and harder to discern. Whether it’s video deepfake technology, AI generated artwork created from ridiculous prompts or a tragic stabbing at an art fair chalked up by onlookers to be an elaborate performative ruse, we stand at a moment when perhaps all we need is some good old Kayfabe.