Appropriately titled after Oscar Wilde’s seminal novel The Picture of Dorian Gray,
Hod’s new exhibition, Dorian’s Gardens, is visually exquisite but, like Dorian Gray’s
portrait, the paintings ultimately betray their true nature through rough gestures, ghostly
traces of color, and a myriad of painterly “mistakes” that proudly reveal beauty and decay
as one. Together Hod’s group of lustrous, pastoral landscapes reimagine aesthetic
perfection through a lush orchestration of exotic flowers, velvet petals slick with dew,
manicured hedges, and sun-dappled pathways veiled in haze. Though, laying beneath
the surface is an eerily quiet unrest– Hod’s symbolic reaping of the garden’s vitality. In
the artist’s interpretation, Dorian’s Gardens is a suspension of transient bloom, a state of
longing, of vanished innocence, and hidden truths. A florid world where splendor
conceals grief, and perfection is a carefully painted mask.
Equally present in Dorian’s Gardens is Hod’s affinity for art history. A palatial ambiance
that recalls Old Masters is achieved through color palettes of deep turquoises, jewel-
toned reds, and purples melded with black and brown tones. The relaxed brushwork of
Life as a Memory, a portrait of a couple taking a stroll, is a melancholic recall of poems
and letters of loneliness. While Hod’s newest figurative sculpture, Lonely girl with tiger
evocative of the allegoric bronzes from the Renaissance–carries themes of desire.
@kohngallery Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angelas
