Maia Cruz Palileo
David Kordansky Gallery | 5130 Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles
On view through April 26
Peer into the electric landscapes of Maia Cruz Palileo and you will start seeing things. Perhaps the ghostly outline of a human body dissolving into the brush. Or, perhaps, the contours of a dog, or a woman’s body sailing through the air. In other paintings, you’ll find scenes that mirror themselves—such as in Revir, 2024, which shows a pair of figures in a small boat navigating across a body of water that catches their reflection below. But is that a reflection? Or an alternate world?
Palileo is based in Brooklyn, but was born in Chicago to immigrants from the Philippines—the work in "SATOR ROTAS," the artist's first solo show at David Kordansky Gallery, is broadly inspired by the landscapes of their family's native land. On view are small gouache-and-collage compositions that serve as studies for larger paintings, and charming stoneware sculptures of dogs—an animal Palileo associates with their forays around the Philippines—but the main attractions here are the large-scale canvases, bursting with lush forests rendered in vivid colors that feel uncannily alive.
