Lesbian shut-ins trapped in their apartment, arguing while a hidden dead body rots in their closet, mushrooms abound; an Amazon delivery driver brings a book of adult jokes to a young Amish woman caught in the woes of contradiction between her religion and her dreams; two open-mic hosts, clad in clean white sports jackets and black bowties, pulling names from a hat, inviting oddballs to the stage for a chance at stand up comedy and an impromptu interview. This is CHRYSALIS from New York-based artist Georgia Gardner Gray, which sees characters in transformation, paralleling the ethos of her exhibition of the same name. 

Now on view at Regen Projects through March 29, Gray combines performance art, sculpture, and painting in her first exhibition with the Los Angeles gallery. The boney, pre-historic presenting aluminum “CHRYSALIS” grounds the show: it is not only the centerpiece of the physical gallery space, but doubles as a stage, hosting humorous scenes of the aforementioned modern-day bizzare. 

Inspired by Salvador Dalí, Gray’s CHRYSALIS magnifes processes, protocols, and rituals–nevermind the other side of transformation, but transformation itself. She considers different ideas of metamorphoses with civil war reenactments that require a change of costumery, time, and space: a soldier in 1800s garb sits on a white plastic patio chair, foot resting on a cooler, while across the way southern belles lay in the shade, drinking out of red solo cups.

Questions of modernity continue with portraits of women in the city looking out of their apartment windows, women in dressing rooms shopping for clothes and trying on dresses, Amish women in old sneakers harvesting potatoes. In Gray’s CHRYSALIS, we are reminded that our definition of modernism expands beyond our individual experience of the day to day. 

Gray illuminates the comedic aspects of otherwise somber backdrops, and with underpaintings and an unruly color panel, characters trapped in their canvases or performing on stage feel both far away and just in arms length. They remain preserved in their own moment all the while hurdling through space, perception, and even projection. We feel like we know them, but we cannot be sure. Perhaps Gray’s thinly veiled barrier between the observer and the observed is the sticky, gooey, translucent innards of our own exoskeleton. 

Live performances of CHRYSALIS are showing at Regen Projects on March 29 at 1 PM and 4 PM.