January 9, 2025
Ayin Es
On the Mend
Compound Yucca Valley
November 16, 2024 - January 12, 2025
Ayin Es
Ayin Es is an illustrator, artist, musician and story teller who creates art to explore aspects of their personal life. The work shares their fears, triumphs and "the broken aspects of their psyche," making these personal issues public.
For the exhibition On the Mend at Compound, Es presents paintings, sculptures and works on paper that contain simply drawn characters representing the artist, as well as a dog-like animal called "Dan" that embodies the positive aspects of life. Spanning the last fifteen years, the pieces on view present "Dan" in multiple shapes, colors, sizes and activities, such as playing drums, wearing a crown and surrounded by brownies and bits of celery. "Dan" even appears as Frankendan (2010), a stuffed animal that is simultaneously comforting and out of sorts.
In the watercolor Riding A Jesus-like Fish (2023), a figure with a red line across their chest rides on a giant fish with two arms and three legs as it walks on undulating waves. Related works including the painting No Secrets on my Sleeve (2024) and the series of embroideries on muslin Many Mes and As Needed (2023-24) are more directly about healing as a transqueer artist who recently underwent "top surgery." Two uneven grids each containing 24 of these small embroideries share a wall in the back gallery. In As Needed Es depicts pill bottles with three half white, half red capsules by its side. Many Mes is a delicately sewn black line that pictures a figure with floppy ears and a red flower growing out of the top of it's head. It has wide open eyes and a straight horizontal line as a mouth that parallels a black line with red jagged stitches across it's chest. Though simple, the image expresses pain and sadness, as well as hope.
While many of the works contain Es's "alter-ego," they are for the most part self portraits that process their surgery and its aftermath. In these works, Es appears as a human animal hybrid with sad eyes and floppy black ears. In Recovery (2023), they recline on a bed, medicine bottles by their side. In Queer Mutant Cake Thing (No Arms. I'm Lazy) (2024), the figure appears more distraught with the top of their scarred torso emerging from a cake-like form with black boots. King of This and Joypack (both 2024) are rendered in a more agitated and expressionistic fashion where the scarred figure is surrounded by colorful lines that follow the contour of the head and body.
Es created a care package to accompany the exhibition with home made bandaids, a reworked can of Campbell's chicken soup and other soothing offerings. Perhaps the desired take away is expressed in the watercolor and ink on paper piece Happy Person (2023). In this small but powerful work, the floppy eared, wide eyed figure smiles. There is a flower growing from the top of its head and they hold a leash with a "real" dog under a colorful rainbow beside a garden of flowers. The healing has occurred. The red scar that appears in many of the other works is gone, paving the way for the next chapter in the artist's life.
On the Mend
Compound Yucca Valley
November 16, 2024 - January 12, 2025
Ayin Es
Ayin Es is an illustrator, artist, musician and story teller who creates art to explore aspects of their personal life. The work shares their fears, triumphs and "the broken aspects of their psyche," making these personal issues public.
For the exhibition On the Mend at Compound, Es presents paintings, sculptures and works on paper that contain simply drawn characters representing the artist, as well as a dog-like animal called "Dan" that embodies the positive aspects of life. Spanning the last fifteen years, the pieces on view present "Dan" in multiple shapes, colors, sizes and activities, such as playing drums, wearing a crown and surrounded by brownies and bits of celery. "Dan" even appears as Frankendan (2010), a stuffed animal that is simultaneously comforting and out of sorts.
In the watercolor Riding A Jesus-like Fish (2023), a figure with a red line across their chest rides on a giant fish with two arms and three legs as it walks on undulating waves. Related works including the painting No Secrets on my Sleeve (2024) and the series of embroideries on muslin Many Mes and As Needed (2023-24) are more directly about healing as a transqueer artist who recently underwent "top surgery." Two uneven grids each containing 24 of these small embroideries share a wall in the back gallery. In As Needed Es depicts pill bottles with three half white, half red capsules by its side. Many Mes is a delicately sewn black line that pictures a figure with floppy ears and a red flower growing out of the top of it's head. It has wide open eyes and a straight horizontal line as a mouth that parallels a black line with red jagged stitches across it's chest. Though simple, the image expresses pain and sadness, as well as hope.
While many of the works contain Es's "alter-ego," they are for the most part self portraits that process their surgery and its aftermath. In these works, Es appears as a human animal hybrid with sad eyes and floppy black ears. In Recovery (2023), they recline on a bed, medicine bottles by their side. In Queer Mutant Cake Thing (No Arms. I'm Lazy) (2024), the figure appears more distraught with the top of their scarred torso emerging from a cake-like form with black boots. King of This and Joypack (both 2024) are rendered in a more agitated and expressionistic fashion where the scarred figure is surrounded by colorful lines that follow the contour of the head and body.
Es created a care package to accompany the exhibition with home made bandaids, a reworked can of Campbell's chicken soup and other soothing offerings. Perhaps the desired take away is expressed in the watercolor and ink on paper piece Happy Person (2023). In this small but powerful work, the floppy eared, wide eyed figure smiles. There is a flower growing from the top of its head and they hold a leash with a "real" dog under a colorful rainbow beside a garden of flowers. The healing has occurred. The red scar that appears in many of the other works is gone, paving the way for the next chapter in the artist's life.