Hola Los Angeles:

I’m culture writer Carolina A. Miranda, with a dispatch about a posthumous show of LA artist Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s formidable paintings.

First, I want to give you a heads up about Field Set, an upcoming event organized by Los Angeles Nomadic Division. Artist Kelly Akashi was one of the many Angelenos who lost her Altadena home to the Eaton Fire. In the wake of that event, fellow artist Phil Peters began making regular recordings of her property's subterranean soundscape as debris removal proceeded. The pair will present the piece, which includes sculptural interventions by Akashi, at the site of her former home. Performances will take place on May 23rd and May 24th; see nomadicdivision.org for deets.

I also want to say THANK YOU. The reason I’m able to bring you news about these types of happenings has everything to do with the donors who help make this newsletter possible. I am deeply grateful to those of you who support KCRW. And I’d like to encourage those of you who haven’t yet done so, to become a member. It’s easy to join, and membership unlocks a world of exclusive events. Culture matters! And so do the donors who keep our coverage alive! Be part of our crew by visiting join.kcrw.com.

Now, onto the main event…

At top: Kelly Akashi and Phil Peters will present Field Set at the site of Akashi's Altadena home. (Kelly Akashi)

PAINTING THE DARKNESS

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, The Shape of the Rock That's Hurling Towards the Sea, 2022, at Jeffrey Deitch. (Charles White / JW Pictures / Estate of Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Jeffrey Deitch)

Like many people on January 6th, 2021, I was glued to my laptop watching Trump supporters violently ransack the U.S. Capitol. Eleven months later, I found myself standing before Don't You See That I Am Burning (2021), a canvas by Celeste Dupuy-Spencer that captured the events of that day — a work so vivid I could practically taste the tear gas. Presented as part of Prospect.5 in New Orleans, the painting shows a roiling mass of figures breaching the walls of the Capitol. Faces dissolve into ghoulish masks. One corner is consumed with smoke, fire, and tumbling bodies — a literal vision of hell.

I’ve thought about this painting regularly as Trump has sanewashed the severity of the riot — describing it as “a day of love,” pardoning the perpetrators, and now creating a fund for their benefit with an eye-watering amount of taxpayer money. Dupuy-Spencer’s painting stands as a forceful counter to this impunity. And it was again on my mind as I viewed her solo show at Jeffrey Deitch in Hollywood — an exhibition that is enveloped in a pall of mourning: Last month, Dupuy-Spencer died at the age of 46; the cause of death was not disclosed.

Don't You See That I Am Burning (2021) on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans in 2021. (Carolina A. Miranda) 

Burning in the Eyes of the Maker, as the exhibition is titled, is a dark show. It features roughly three dozen works dating back to 2020 that examine the vagaries of power and violence. The sardonically titled The History of Brilliant Women (2022) shows a crowd gathered around a figure that has been set ablaze. A 2025 canvas portrays a searing moment from the Verdi opera Rigoletto, when the title character realizes that an assassin under his employ has mistakenly murdered his beloved daughter.

But the showstopper is a 17-foot painting titled The Shape of the Rock That’s Hurling Towards the Sea (2022), which depicts cycles of creation followed by inevitable destruction. First shown at Art Basel in 2022, it consists of four hinged panels that recall a church altarpiece. The left panel shows a compressed history of earthly evolution; the others feature apocalyptic scenes. Figures fall into a parting ocean. Rats dine on detritus as suited men gather in a gilded chamber. Immigrants are rounded up by ICE. From the center emerges the visage of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who died by lethal injection in 2002, framed by the shadowy silhouette of a demon. Dupuy-Spencer was an artist inspired by ancient myth and the work of other painters (like Goya, who had a knack for depicting terrible savagery). But her art is of our place and time — an unblinking portrait of our era’s specific brand of moral rot.

Self-Portrait in the Dark, 2024. (Charles White / JW Pictures /
Estate of Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Jeffrey Deitch)

Born in New York City in 1979 and raised in the Hudson Valley to the north, Dupuy-Spencer spent formative periods in New York, followed by New Orleans (where her mother was from) and Los Angeles (where she ultimately settled). She described herself as “trans, masculine presenting,” but went by she/her in gallery materials and in interviews. In a 2021 profile in Los Angeles Magazine, the artist described a tumultuous early adulthood, which included struggles with addiction and a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis when she was 28. Whatever limitations MS may have put on her physical health, she nonetheless approached painting with a singular intensity — sometimes spending days in the studio.

In the mid-2010s, Dupuy-Spencer began to draw the attention of critics and collectors via exhibitions at Nino Mier (who then had an LA space), as well as her inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the 2018 Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum. The work in these shows surveyed the world around her with grit and wit. She captured Trump supporters at a rally, men in football jerseys at a bar, a backyard gathering, and crooner George Jones ascending into heaven.   

Untitled, 2026. (Charles White / JW Pictures / Estate of Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Jeffrey Deitch)

Her work was widely praised. But Spencer-Dupuy was uneasy being treated like an art world darling. “The art world likes to talk about power. It likes to imagine itself as a site of resistance, critique, and progress. But this is mostly fiction,” she writes in a forthcoming monograph to be published by Monacelli/Phaidon. “The art world is an economy first, a social sorting mechanism second, and a meaning-making structure only when convenient. Secretly, sheepishly, it is soft power.” And Spencer-Dupuy was outspoken about the abuses of power. She was very vocal about the genocide in Gaza, which led a pro-Israel group to accuse her of “Jew Hatred.” (Never mind that she was half Jewish.)

These myriad factors, says gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, “made her question what she was doing as an artist working in the commercial system.” Her posthumous show at Deitch reveals an artist who refused to be contained by what might appeal to the market. Instead, she reckoned with humanity’s worst impulses, in the process engaging various mythological traditions, including Christianity, ancient Greek legends, and the occult. (In her monograph, she even cites a concept from Star Trek.) The new paintings are forbidding, yet magnetic — evocative of the past, but of the present, too. “Through painting, artists speak to one another across time using fragments, gestures, and broken syntax,” she wrote in her monograph. “A time-traveling telephone wire.” Here’s hoping some future generation picks up.

📞📞📞

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer: Burning the Eyes of the Maker is on view at Jeffrey Deitch through May 30th; deitch.com. The artist’s monograph will be released next month. It is available for pre-order at Phaidon.com.

WHILE YOU'RE THERE...
If you’re making the trip to Deitch, don’t miss the Charles Ray show at the gallery’s sister space down the street. It features a wild, infrequently shown 1988 sculpture titled Pepto-Bismol in a Marble Box that — you guessed it — features a pool of bright pink Pepto-Bismol in a white marble plinth. It’s a wry play on minimalism, one bearing an unmistakable aroma of chalky mint.

Charles Ray's ode to Pepto-Bismol. (Carolina A. Miranda) 

AROUND THE INTERNET

• I chat with Ben Davis of The Art Angle podcast about LACMA’s new building.
• The Lucas Museum will charge a $25 adult admission.
• The Getty has allotted an additional $1.8 million to its Black Visual Arts Archives initiative.
• The Times’ Jessica Gelt reports on a survey of artists and the sticky topic of generative AI.
• Critic Philip Kennicott reviews the refreshed installation of Presidential portraits at the National Portrait Gallery.
• The Epstein Files are now an art installation in downtown Manhattan.
• This review makes me want to run out and buy A.E. Stallings’s book about the history of the Elgin Marbles.
• Signing off with Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso’s hilarious Himno del Mediocre, a Europop-inspired earworm.

Thanks for reading! And please support KCRW! 🤓

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