REVIEW:

13ThingsLA
By Shana Nys Dambrot
January 7, 2025

Jen P. Harris: Tomboy, and Kim Manfredi: Bloom through February 14th at Patricia Sweetow Gallery. Two concurrent solo exhibitions are each grounded in an exacting devotion to material as a way of thinking. Harris works directly with fabric, allowing cloth to register handling, repetition, and the accumulated codes that settle into cloth over time. Manfredi extends a painterly lineage of bold brushwork and nuanced edge into a desert-informed vocabulary, sifting Coachella Valley sands and mixing particulate matter with luminous pigment to build chromatic fields that feel ecological, theatrical, and hard-won. Shown side by side, the exhibitions reflect the gallery’s commitment to obsessive material intelligence—fabric and sand, stitch and brush, memory and labor, emotion and environment, history and perspective. On view downtown through February 14; patriciasweetowgallery.com. —SND”