
In his first show with the gallery, Los Angeles-based Scott Benzel shows himself to be an able assembler of cultural ephemera that are rich with associations. In a manner reminiscent of his gallery-mate Carol Bove, he displays shelves of antique books, juxtaposing titles ranging from The Official Guide to the Best Cat Houses in Nevada to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. A display case works a cylindrical theme, combining Lynda Benglis’s infamous Artforum dildo advertisement with glass tubes you can buy in bodegas that hold tiny paper roses but double as crack pipes. The Benglis ad led to a palace revolt that gave rise to October magazine, whose first issue, in the same case, features a drawing of a pipe with the Magrittean caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” And there’s much, much more.