A Dog Named Masterpiece In 1946, the dog called Masterpiece was born. The silver toy poodle was world-renowned before he hit middle age, winning accolades across the show ring and raking in unprecedented sums in stud fees and modeling contracts. Even the Prince of Iran coveted the poodle, but his offer for purchase was denied. Masterpiece’s owner wouldn’t let him go, though in the end, Masterpiece was stolen and never found. He became Desire’s own dog. Masterpiece is a testament to a beautiful thing’s ability to conceal the labor of its making. A paragon of commodity fetishism. Similarly, Nihura Montiel’s charcoal paintings are monuments to modern beauty. The works in A Dog Called Masterpiece, her first show with Sebastian Gladstone, involve a process built on the tools of modern beauty. Her workstation contains a row of six neatly cast graphite jewelry trays. Upon the trays rest the dispersed contents of a makeup artist’s contour kit: brushes ranging from voluptuously fanned to thinly pointed. Brushes which were intended not to apply the charcoal shading of a 7ft pearled bear, but the bronzer and blush of a made-up face. As a makeup technique, contouring can be traced back to Elizabethan theater, then to the 80s drag scene and 90s high fashion and eventually to its commercial apex: the market- bending success of Kim K’s contour kit. If all the world’s a stage, why not make each selfie a masterpiece? Montiel’s work is high gloss. High femme. It hurts. It hurts Montiel most of all, because for her, beauty is a crucible of perfectionism. It is the byproduct of a relentless pursuit of something that cannot be attained. As the obsessives among us can attest, perfection is too subjective, too slippery to be owned. But Montiel will not be deterred from making a play. What may appear imperfect to Nihura comes to us as mesmerizing. Look at this 7ft toy bear. Notice how you crave every shaded pearl, how your eyes lick the lines of each and every sphere. Is it fearsome, the way these works throw light back in your face? Do they cow you with their scale, or do they catch you lusting for shiny things? Nihura’s work is mesmerizing because it presents a viewer’s dilemma. Should we luxuriate in the fantasy of a beauty which exists apart from suffering, the beauty that tucks the pain of its maker back behind its facade? Or should we come curiously, with a willingness to integrate the object of our desire with the shadowy complexity of its process? - Nihura Montiel (b. 1988, San Diego, CA) Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA Nihura Montiel’s paintings examine themes of domesticity, privacy and the feminine, creating highly detailed renderings of everyday, diminutive objects which veer between the uncanny and the fetishistic. From a distance, Montiel’s charcoal on canvas works read as paintings or even photographs. But a closer inspection reveals them as expertly- drafted drawings, the charcoal being applied with various tools including makeup brushes. Montiel nearly always draws directly from photographs, often commercial product photography that isolates a piece of jewelry, figurine, or doll. Emmanuel Louisnord Desir (b. 1997, Brooklyn) Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA Emmanuel Louisnord Desir’s practice includes painting, assemblage, and sculpture that addresses colonialism, spirituality, and biblical accounts, particularly Abrahamic narratives and their relevance within the histories of many diasporas around the world. Desir takes inspiration from stories and teachings from the Bible, but at the same time his works question canonical Christianity through gestures that undermine colonial power. His oil paintings on wood panel collage a visual world of symbols that reference both contemporary life and historical moments. These works feature allegories that allude to larger historical and political issues while also serving as spiritual recollections of memory and testimony.