Twenty-three works by twelve painters initiate contact across time at Allouche Gallery Los Angeles. Desert of the Hyperreal is a selection of paintings by artists living and working in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, London and Istanbul. Their diverse and contrasting practices collapse the distance between the contemporary and ancient.
Stencils of hands and paintings of animals are the earliest records of human art. Experts debate the why of these venerable images, but television shows, Tiktok filters, and the digital ad panopticon emerged from the same primeval impulse. An avalanche of modern simulation has replaced reality, causing a withdrawal from intimacy with the world, which philosopher Jean Baudrillard calls, “the desert of the real.” The works in Desert of the Hyperreal highlight a conversation between a mind which seeks to be emptied and the projections competing to command it
