Life is Delicious — Couch in the Desert

(left) D Stevens, *Rather Ambiguous,* paper mache, 2023. (right) Devin Balara, *Drawings of Cheese on Rocks*, stained glass, 2024

Life is Delicious at Curve Line Space Los Angeles

by Tiffany Lin

M Jiang, *Mine*, 2024, found metal plate, ceramic, solder, mirror shard, pebbles from Pyramid Lake, Bid starts at $32,845

What might a few punks and well-meaning grifters bring to a dinner party? Perhaps a few glass shards of cheese to whet your teeth before biting into a bludgeon-sized turkey leg, a cluster of neon grape-grenades, or gravel-coated stone fruit. Such are the offerings at Life is Delicious, a group exhibition curated by Alana-lynn Berglund, currently on view at Curve Line Space in Los Angeles through May 11th, 2024. Sparsely installed and thrumming with verve, the show brings together nine artists from across the continental US, most of whom have connections to underground music and performance. Much of this is attributed to Berglund’s role as Associate Director of the Holland Project, a radical, community driven arts and music space in Reno, NV that has hosted thousands of events since opening in 2007. The result is a fun-loving show that brings a DIY sensibility to the table, transforming alternative materials, trash, and recyclables into cacophonous objects of contemplation.

Reception for Life is Delicious w/ artist Dom Rabalais

The space opens with a party – Dom Rabalais’ sky-high painting renders hedonistic intimacies in day-glo paints; human figures and animals tangle together amid quivering candle flames. D Stevens’ humorous corn-cob turned bomber plane looms overhead. Devin Balara presents a picture perfect cheese board composed of eight wedges fabricated from glass, creating a reverse trompe l’oeil as cubist cheese rises into the third dimension. Cheeky callbacks to punk zine aesthetics are played up in the collage work of Anny Ayala Ortega and Madison East, who cuts-and-pastes fragments of old classifieds to create concrete poetry. For the exhibit’s feast themed occasion, one of East’s collages is digitally printed on a tablecloth with wavy red trim.

Additional textural delights can be found in M Jiang’s sculptural wall piece that presents sand encrusted grenade-plums held together by a soldered branch on a silver platter. Explosive weaponry is also referenced in Kelci McIntosh’s Bomb Ass Grapes suspended overhead. The grape clusters here are made out of foraged trash from New Orleans’ Tropical Isle bar, famed for their Hand Grenade cocktail served in trademarked novelty yard cups. For dessert, Summer Orr serves up iridescent chunks of jello around a ceramic fish atop a cake stand. All this is set to a soundtrack by the (now defunct) band Tummy+ whose scratchy tunes, dubbed onto a yellow cassette tape, are the exhibition’s namesake: Life is delicious, shoutout to god.

One leaves the show feeling a little lighter – something about the gummy keys of the tape player, crumbling jello, the decidedly non-archival, fugitive nature of materials makes one romantic for the simpler times of fleeting youth, grateful for long standing friendships and community. Berglund’s arts advocacy and influence as a cultural worker resounds through the show. Despite waking up sticky on the couch, losing your glasses in the pit, working through financial precarity, and manic-depressive spirals, Life is Delicious pronounces you’re doing more than ok, now gather round and eat.

Exhibition ephemera designed by Alana-lynn Berglund

Life is Delicious, curated by Alana-lynn Berglund
Featuring Anny Ayala Ortega, Devin Balara, Madison East, M Jiang, Kelci McIntosh, Summer Orr, Dom Rabalais, D Stevens, Tummy
On view March 26 – May 11, 2024
At Curve Line Space, 3348 N Figueroa St, Los Angeles

Photographs by Miwah Lee, images courtesy of Alana-lynn Berglund

TIFFANY LIN is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles working at the cross section of graphic narrative, installation, and social practice. Her work parses through constructions of identity at odds with the natural world. She is compelled by the interplay of flora and fauna, human instincts versus institutions, and new modalities of interdependence.

Lin holds a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Illustration Practice and a BA in Gender & Women's Studies and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lin previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Posted and published by Lyssa Park on April 29, 2024.