About this Event
On the occasion of Milton Avery, The Figure in Los Angeles, Karma presents a conversation moderated by Helen Molesworth at 7351 Santa Monica Boulevard.
Lucy Bull’s (b. 1990, New York) paintings are visceral works that appeal directly to the senses. Synesthetic fields of shape and color, the paintings are described in sonic, tactile, or even emotional terms that evade rational logic and are unique to each viewer. As their formal attributes function as visual bait, the eye is drawn into the atmospheric spaces of their compositions before encountering a seemingly limitless number of associative openings. Worlds take shape across their varied surfaces and just as quickly fall away again; similarly, just when the act of looking generates optical overload or disruptive dissonance, Bull’s accumulations of marks reveal discernible traces of planning and hard-fought negotiations with her materials, leading the viewer back toward the concrete realities of pigment, medium, and surface.
Marley Freeman uses oils as well as hand-mixed gesso and acrylic to create meticulous, psychologically charged color fields. Working primarily in the medium of painting, Freeman studies the ways in which the material “wants to perform,” resulting in multisensorial investigations of color and light. Her distinct vocabulary of forms is made up of brushy strokes, color washes, and shapes that freely transform across the picture plane. The influence of the material history of textile production on the artist is evident in her close attention to the textural subtleties of her paints and her reverence for their surface effects. Freeman lives between New York and Massachusetts.
Monica Majoli’s emotionally charged work engages questions of the body, desire, and memory, exploring how sexuality and intimacy are shaped by personal experience and larger cultural histories. Informed by experiences of HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and ’90s, Majoli explores intimacy and corporeality as proof of physical presence, and as a possibility for projection, encounter, and empathy. Her practice is rooted in painting, printmaking, and drawing, with decisive shifts in materiality specific to long-term bodies of work.Majoli is a professor in the department of art at University of California, Irvine. She has exhibited widely, including in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and Made in L.A. 2020 at the Hammer Museum, as well as her recent solo presentation Distant Lover 2009–2024 at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf (2024–25). Her work is now on view at Hoffman Donahue Gallery, Los Angeles. A comprehensive monograph, published by Verlag Der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, is forthcoming in spring 2026.
Helen Molesworth is a writer, curator, and podcaster based in Los Angeles. Her major monographic exhibitions include Ruth Asawa, Moyra Davey, Kerry James Marshall, Catherine Opie, Amy Sillman, Steve Locke, and Luc Tuymans. Molesworth, a prolific and award-winning author, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Clark Art Writing Prize, and the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Award for Curatorial Excellence.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, United States
USD 0.00
