Diving for Pearls

Bradley Bell, Pippa Garner, Reverend Joyce McDonald, Andrés Monzón-Aguirre

June 26–August 10, 2024

Bradley Bell (b. 1999, San Francisco, CA) is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work probes the tension within the mechanics and history of painting production. His abstract paintings utilize a wide variety of materials–old, new, cheap, expensive, “high”, or “low”–that are deployed in a systematic fashion through various performative “Painterly” modes: expressive, mathematical, diaristic, ignorant, or trained. Bell holds a BFA from University of California, Los Angeles, and in 2023, he held his first solo exhibition at Carlye Packer, Los Angeles.

Pippa Garner (b. 1942, Evanston, Illinois) pushes back against systems of consumerism, marketing and waste and has created a dense body of work including drawing, performance, sculpture, video and installation over her six decade-spanning career. Her uncompromising approach to life and practice has allowed her to interact with the worlds of illustration, editorial, television and art without ever quite becoming beholden to them. She was recently included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial: Even Better Than the Real Thing, the 8th Yokohama Triennale: Wild Grass: Our Lives and Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living. Recent solo exhibitions include $ell Your $elf at Art Omi, New York and Act Like You Know Me which traveled to White Columns, New York; Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland; FRAC Lorraine, Metz, France; and Kunstverein München, Germany. In 2023 Primary Information produced a facsimile of her iconic 1982 catalogue Better Living. Public collections holding her work include Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.

Reverend Joyce McDonald (b. 1951, Brooklyn, New York) lives and works in New York. After her HIV diagnosis in 1985, and a long battle with addiction, McDonald was ordained as a minister at the Church of the Open Door in 2009. She uses her own struggles to drive her work as an artist, activist, advocate, and “spiritual nurse.” Through her art and ministry, McDonald shares her contagious joy and love and inspires women to get in touch with their inner beauty and dignity. She is also an active artist-member of Visual AIDS. McDonald has held recent solo exhibitions at Maureen Paley, London (2023) and Gordon Robichaux, New York (2021). Public collections holding her work include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; and the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Andrés Monzón-Aguirre (b. 1987, Medellín, Colombia) is an artist working between New York City and Medellin who translates displacement and ancestral memory into ceramics, sculpture and painting. Referencing specific indigenous iconographies of Colombia, Monzón-Aguirre abstracts personal and collective imagery as an act of remembrance and even an opportunity for healing. Monzón-Aguirre received their BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009) and an MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (2019). Recent solo exhibitions include Calados [Openwork]  at National College of Art Lahore, Pakistan; Égida at Stars, Los Angeles (2023); Generaciones at Museo Universitario Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín (2022); and Bodegón at Jeffrey Stark Gallery, New York City (2021). Public collections holding their work include Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.