Mysterious Bodies
Samantha McCurdy x Bonnie Morano
May 15, June 21, 2025
6057 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA, 90038
Through materially distinct yet thematically resonant practices, both artists interrogate the surface of the painting as a site of revelation, concealment, and transformation. Their works propose the body not merely as form, but as space—a vessel through which energy, symbolism, and spiritual resonance emerge.
Samantha McCurdy approaches the painted surface as both skin and container. Her sculptural paintings begin with expertly crafted wooden substrates, custom armatures constructed through over a decade of refined carpentry. These structures are tightly wrapped in stretchable fabric, which clings to the geometric and organic forms hidden beneath, subtly revealing the contours of an internal presence. Over this base, McCurdy applies multiple layers of paint, sanding each coat with precision. The result is an exceptionally smooth, plastic-like finish that both heightens the illusion of manufactured perfection and reinforces the tension between objecthood and intimacy. These taut, luminous surfaces evoke the aesthetics of industrial design while maintaining the quiet presence of the handmade. Her forms, restrained yet suggestive, animate the threshold between revelation and secrecy, exterior and interior.
Bonnie Morano, by contrast, navigates abstraction through a language of symmetry, repetition, and symbolic construction. Her compositions are built from a personal vocabulary of geometric and organic forms, elements she arranges with architectural precision and meditative intent. These formal strategies create visual rhythms that echo ritual, reflection, and the metaphysical. Morano’s color palette, drawn from the material culture of precious metals, gemstones, and textiles, imbues the work with a heightened sense of value and reverence. Her paintings are simultaneously structured and ecstatic, inviting viewers into symbolic worlds that pulse with hidden meaning. Beneath their hard edges and calculated balance lies a deep connection to the spiritual, a quiet assertion of painting as a space of order, mystery, and transformation.
Though their processes diverge, with McCurdy working through physical tension and concealment and Morano through visual codes and compositional structure, both artists treat the surface as a site of energetic resonance. They investigate the thresholds between body and spirit, visibility and opacity, control and emotion. Together in Mysterious Bodies, McCurdy and Morano establish a dynamic conversation. Their works insist that the body is not merely a form to be seen, but a field in which energy, devotion, and meaning are shaped, and where the material world meets something just beyond our grasp.
Colt Seager
Thin Space
March22, April 26, 2025
6057 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA, 90038
Rhett Baruch Gallery is thrilled announce Colt Seager’s inaugural solo exhibition, following his debut as the first painter featured in our gallery in 2022. This show marks a significant milestone in his career, offering a deeper exploration of his evolving practice and providing an opportunity for our growing audience to engage with his distinct vision.
In Seager's paintings, color is more than just a visual element—it is a language, a conversation between nature and the viewer. He is drawn to the unexpected placement of colors in the natural world, where vibrant hues and soft tones play off each other in surprising ways. He finds beauty in these relationships, where each color tells a story and creates a unique dialogue within the canvas. His approach to painting is deeply personal and intuitive. For him, a painting is only complete when the colors and forms align in a way that resonates deeply. His work doesn’t seek to replicate nature but to translate its inherent beauty into something that is felt rather than merely seen. It’s this connection to the depth of color that shapes his compositions, with every hue chosen not for its literal accuracy but for its ability to stir something within.
Drawing inspiration from the wild landscape around him, Seager’s paintings frequently feature the striking colors found in grasses, wildflowers, winding rivers and tree-lined forests in the Midwest. "I find myself deeply connected to the Celtic tradition of the thin place, which emphasizes the spirituality in the landscape around us. This is a place where connection to the Divine seems effortless, as if the veil that separates heaven and earth has been lifted. These paintings act like a window into that thin place, enabling contemplative moments to look beyond yourself. They invite your mind to pause and wander throughout the surface of the painting, absorbing the textures, colors, and balance of form.”
The act of painting becomes a conversation, where hues and vertical shapes reveal themselves gradually through the process. Each work is revisited and reworked in entire sections, building up colors and letting them muddy. The surface itself becomes a living presence—where the materiality of thick impasto rises alongside smoother expanses of color.
Inherent in each of Colt Seager’s (b. 1993, Illinois) works is his spirituality—in particular the Celtic notion of the “thin places” that exist between heaven and earth, often found in nature. “Think of a sunset in the mountains or being by a river or on the beach—these awe-inspiring moments where you get glimpses of the divine,” he explains. “I think of art as that in a lot of ways. It’s a thin place while I’m actually creating and working, but my goal is for other people to feel that thin place, where they are given a moment to pause and ask the question: Why are we here?"
Richard Shapiro
Incursions
January 25 - February 23, 2025
357 N La Brea Ave Los Angeles, 90036
Rhett Baruch Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by artist Richard Shapiro. Featured is a series of new monumental paintings and sculpture on tarpaulin that will be on view in a temporary location from January 25 through February 23, 2025 at 357 N La Brea Ave 90036
Richard Shapiro is an internationally recognized creative in the worlds of design and art. Over the last forty years his greatest love has been Arte Povera, the Italian movement of the mid 20th century. Its hallmarks and references have almost always found their way into his work. Unconventional materials and fabrication methods are broadly employed in his ongoing search for what he calls a “new language”.
His first work from the nineties consisted of found and decrepit house painters' drop cloths on which he emblazoned the names of Arte Povera's heroes. For Shapiro, a common tarpaulin is today's "poor" material. Rumpled and craggy topographies invaded by striated planes echo the inquisitive spirit of Arte Povera while breaking new ground in the quest for its next iteration.
Richard Shapiro (b. 1942; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA).