Summary<\/p>\n
Spr\u00fcth Magers Los Angeles has unveiled Horror, a new group show curated by artist Jill Mulleady
\nRunning through February 14, the exhibition gathers work from a star-studded roster stretching across generation and place, all exploring the aesthetic and psychological power of horror<\/p>\n
We fear what we think we know, argues Jill Mulleady<\/a>, featured artist and curator of Spr\u00fcth Magers<\/a>\u2018 new group show, Horror. Staged at the gallery\u2019s Los Angeles outpost, the exhibition gathers an intergenerational lineup of names exploring the aesthetic depths of horror and the tight grasp it has on our personal and collective psychologies.<\/p>\n \u201cHorror takes things we inherently trust \u2014 the human form, domestic spaces, children\u2019s toys, or the natural world \u2014 and renders them repulsive,\u201d Mulleady penned in the exhibition statement. \u201cHorror finds its true power in betrayal.\u201d\n<\/p>\n The exhibition builds on the legacy of Mike Kelley<\/a>\u2018s seminal 1983 exhibition and text, The Uncanny<\/a>, though tilts more toward visceral shock than the ambient discomfort of Sigmund Freud\u2019s historic concept. Here, we see artists employ fear and repulsion as means to uncover deeper social and cultural truths, the ones we often busy ourselves with trying to bury.\n<\/p>\n Many works turn to the body as a volatile site of transformation, including pieces by Cindy Sherman<\/a>, Tyler Mitchell<\/a>, Sondra Perry and Precious Okoyomon<\/a>. Others, such as those by Paul Thek and Anne Imhof<\/a>, twist realism into psychological rupture, forcing viewers to encounter mortality and decay head-on.\n<\/p>\n Horror, as the exhibition suggests, is a cultural barometer; it\u2019s an allegorical space where we can digest our fears safely. In this reading, the monster is never supernatural, but rather a metaphor for political and institutional collapse, as in the work of Kara Walker<\/a>, Arthur Jafa<\/a> and Henry Taylor. Elsewhere, contributions from Jonathan Glazer<\/a>, Jordan Wolfson<\/a>, Otessa Moshfegh and Harmony Korine, force self-reflection with brilliantly humorous hand, refracted into cinematic fragments and sculptural pleasures.\n<\/p>\n \u201cBy shocking us into intense self-reflection about what we fear and why, horror connects our internal landscape to the wider human narrative,\u201d Mulleady continues, \u201cit transcends chaos, becoming a tool for reflecting a profound empathy for the precariousness of the human experience.\u201d\n<\/p>\n