On View: Group Show @ Copro Gallery

The group show that just opened at the Copro Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica is like falling through the looking glass into a world of dark fantasy and foreboding dreams. Featuring the work of Chrystal Chan, Mark Elliot, Ken Keirns, and Genevive Zacconi as well as guest artists Erik Alos and Kelly Eden this group show opens the doors to our subconscious fears and occult imaginings. Kelly Edens work speaks to gluttony and overindulgence in a candy colored world, her images show us the grotesqueness of our appetites no matter how pretty the package. Genevive Zacconi's paintings appear to have come from some alchemists lab or a medieval moment mori . Each image is full of mystery and skulls litter the canvases along with magical symbols and pagan artifacts. Ken Keirns paintings seek humor by tarnishing the characters of our childhoods, his cartoonish girls are whores working for the puppets from Sesame Street, now styled as urban pimps. Erik Alos' work uses surrealism to show us the devastation caused by pollution, his paintings are filled with blighted landscapes and malnourished waifs, animals that spew industrial smog and fleshless bones. Chrystal Chan's work seems to come from some sunlit Art Nouveau otherworld, filled with majestic priestesses, dark fairies, and regal queens her paintings conjure up the golden age of illustration as well as the work of James Jean. Mark Elliot's paintings exist in a plastic world of surrealist horrors, using fantasy images and classical poses he leaves the viewer both unnerved and intrigued.

Walking through this show is like sifting through the images from a dream after waking, full of meaning but also mystery. Exiting the gallery I was left with these words from A Midsummer Nights Dream, "If these shadows hath offended think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here whilst these visions did appear."

Chrystal Chan 2 Chrystal Chan