ALI LIEBEGOTT

ALI LIEBEGOTTROOMS AND OTHER FEELINGS

October 29 - December 17, 2022
OCHI Aux, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

OCHI is pleased to present Rooms and Other Feelings, an exhibition of new work by artist Ali Liebegott. This is the Artist's first exhibition with the gallery. Rooms and Other Feelings will be on view at OCHI Aux, located at 3305 W Washington Blvd in Los Angeles, California from October 29 through December 17, 2022. An Artist’s Reception will be held on Saturday, October 29th from 5:00 to 8:00 PST.

For more than 20 years, Ali Liebegott has been a visual storyteller, using watercolor, ink, and oil to make paintings and drawings that feature sharp observations full of well-seasoned characters, familiar places, and quotidian wit. Chronicling the goings-on of the everyday, Liebegott welcomes the viewer into her community and immediate surroundings as seen through the lens of her own queer consciousness. Each brightly colored self-portrait, landscape, and interior scene depicts personal experience with nuance and complexity and draws on the elusive nature of memory and feelings. Subtle and voyeuristic, the paintings focus on ambiguous moments of existence. Like distant memories, space is flattened, distorted, and morphed as Liebegott lingers on a moment, unafraid to consider the absurdity or the tenderness of the present.

Moving beyond visual representation, Liebegott’s compositions emphasize the feeling of looking, staring, gazing, and interacting. Imagining an observer always slightly out of the frame, the objects in each painting radiate a heightened awareness of isolation, exposure, and attention. In Shrimp Cocktail (2021) perspective is oriented down onto a plate of shrimp arranged on a bed of ice, accompanied by lackluster garnishes and a sliver of stemware. Stiffly composed in a portrait orientation, the meal appears unremarkable yet has been rendered with detail and care, as if the protagonist just out of frame was listening to other peoples’ conversations while dining alone in a restaurant. Entenmann’s Factory Outlet (2022) depicts empty coffee carts tucked into the back corner of a grocery store alongside assorted desserts, day-old and discounted. Illuminating the commonplace can reveal the drab. Exploring the vulnerability of being noticed, Liebegott paints vignettes of the unseen details of life—poetic, temporal, and endearing.

Ali Liebegott (b. 1971, Newbury Park, CA) is a painter and a writer primarily interested in inclusion and representation for queer communities. Liebegott’s work has been exhibited widely at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, PA; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in St. Louis, MO; Southern Exposure in San Francisco, CA; Invisible-Exports in New York, NY; and OCHI and Junior High Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Liebegott has read, performed, and exhibited her writing throughout the United States and Canada and is the author of four books: The Beautifully Worthless (2006), The IHOP Papers (2007), Cha-Ching! (2013), and The Summer of Dead Birds (2019). Liebegott received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and co-founded the non-profit RADAR LAB, a free annual retreat for queer writers. She is the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards (2006, 2008), a Ferro-Grumley Award (2008), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1999), and a Peabody Award (2015) for her work on the television series Transparent. Liebegott lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

 

A painting of the exterior and patio of a restaurant made from a distance. There are signs on top of it that read "Machos Tacos" and "Burgers - Hot Dogs" and "eshly squeeze range e"A portrait of a figure holding a red rose in an empty cement lot. There is a Sizzler billboard in the backgroundA portrait of an orange and white cat sitting in a room with pink carpet and blue walls. There is also a bowl of food, a toy, and a brush on the floorA still life painting of cranberry sauce laying horizontally on a white plate accompanied by a small daisy on a brown table with a brown wall in the background. The cranberry sauce is still in the shape of the can it came from and has one slice made from its right edge.A painting depicting two plates of bacon, eggs, toast, and condiments on a blue gray tabletop.A painting of the inside of a store with blue and white tiled floors and muted yellow wall. There are various baked goods display racks, a coffee station, and a sign that reads "Entenmanns Coffee Cake."A painting of a living room with a yellow couch installed in the center. To the left there is a brown side table with a blue lamp on top. On the right there is a chest of shelves containing various urns with names on them.A painting of brown and yellow shag carpet with two shoes and pant legs poking in from the bottom left side.A painting of an empty dentist's waiting room. It has blue carpet and white walls, a fishtank, shelf with flowers, and the door is on the far wall. There are two knees poking in from the bottom left side of the imageA painting of a watermelon sitting on the lap of a figure, from the perspective of their eyes. They are laying on a bed in a room with a television opposite them that reads "Dateline." The figure is only wearing dark red shorts and white socks and has a few tattoos.A painting of a television with a tennis game on inside of a wood paneled room. On the right side of the image, there is another room with a television playing a tennis game as well. In the foreground, we see a leg laying on a bed with white and yellow sheetsAnother painting of a shrimp cocktail arrangement in a bowl of ice.A painting of a shrimp cocktail arrangement in a bowl of ice.A painting of an opened steel chest of ice with a bowl of fruit salad and various halved fruits on the ice. There is a wall made of white bricks in the background and some condiments and kitchen accessories on top of the lid.