Has the well of previously undiscovered L.A. artists (to East Coast audiences, anyway) run dry? Apparently not, as Pat O’Neill’s New York debut attests. Two films, five sculptures and twenty-odd drawings by the California artist, made since the 1960s, reveal preoccupations with slick surface and surreal juxtapositions that resonate with the post-Internet sensibility. Safer than Springtime (1964), the most photogenic sculpture on view, combines polished, Disney-fied forms of a yellow cylinder, green pickle and a red squiggly “puddle.” Trouble in the Image (1996), a 38-minute 35mm film transferred to video, is a collaged nonnarrative epic of sorts. The work layers nearly 20 years’ worth of animation, found footage and experimental sound design, loosely reflecting on the process of creation.
Pictured: View of Pat O’Neill’s exhibition “Let’s Make a Sandwich,” 2015, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.