Launching Rosamund Felsen Gallery’s new location in Downtown L.A., Kim MacConnel presents large & small scale paintings, from the late 80’s and early 90’s, which have never been exhibited on the West Coast.
Bewildering in their beauty and iconoclast in their bravado, the paintings are an exercise of subversion in response to the notions of what painting is suppose to be and how it is suppose to be made. As an exploration to the nature of abstract painting, the paintings reprieve the confines enforced by conceptualism and abstraction which often privilege concept creation over authentic visceral engagement.
Created by a process, where particles are flocked onto the canvas, the paintings are also a rumination of art made outside of the West and non-Western art’s appreciation of textiles, causing the textured paintings to appear as if on velvet.
The paintings defiantly combine visual memories of MacConnel’s childhood in Mexico and his awe & wonder of patterns seen on his travels in Africa, all the while using the formal techniques of Western abstractionism. The compositional play, use of cultural cross-pollination, and rediscovery of joy & sensuousness in the paintings, are all part of the coup d’etat of the early Pattern & Decoration art movement, of which MacConnel was a key pioneer.
Western Visions
October 3, 2026
