Gina Beavers

Gina Beavers paints images mined from social media, replicating this material in thick marbled acrylic on linen. Using her disarmingly photorealistic painterly style, she replicates mouth-watering foodporn, images of sweaty bodybuilders or stills from makeup tutorials. Often comically blurring these visual pools, a woman’s body may be cut into as a slice of cake, or tutorial stills are repeated ad infinitum. Drooping globules of ketchup trickle down the canvas, painted lips look wet to the touch and beads of sweat glisten in these glossy, three-dimensional paintings. With an eye for sensuality, gluttony and pleasure, Beaver’s paintings look deeply at the emotive depth of internet culture, teasing out signifiers of class, consumption and bravado within curated online profiles. Tackling this contemporary media as a landscape artist would a meadow or a valley, the minutia of consumer culture are crystallised by her brushstrokes. Taking a seat at the table with other photorealist painters such as Wayne Thiebaud and Ralph Goings, Beavers shares their fascination for food, but her dissection of consumption in relation to digital cultures places her firmly in the contemporary moment. ...

Various Small Fires (Los Angeles /Dallas /Seoul) began as a series of conversations with artists and curators in Esther Kim Varet’s Venice Beach kitchen while working on her doctoral dissertation. VSF debuted in Hollywood as an official gallery in 2015 with a roster of artists and its current Johnston MarkLee Architects-designed building. The Hollywood gallery contains three exhibition spaces, a unique sound corridor, and an outdoor gallery. VSF’s exhibition program explores several curatorial lines: climate, equality, and an international conversation. The gallery is known for offering artists debut shows, creating intergenerational conversations among the artists on its roster, and solidifying artists’ legacies within art history. In 2019, VSF opened a second location in the Hannam neighbourhood of Seoul, South Korea, followed recently this Spring by VSFs third outpost in Dallas, Texas. While Varet has very personal connections to both locations, they are also superlative art communities. These expansions emphasise the gallery’s commitment to innovation and global dialogue in the twenty-first century. In 2021, VSF became a member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). ...