REFLECTIONS

BY LOVE BERTO AND COLE M JAMES

Opening Tuesday, February 15th from 6-9pm with artists in attendance 

Exhibition through April 1st, 2022

By appointment: showgallery.as.me/ or margot@show.gallery

Show Gallery is pleased to present Reflections, an exhibition by LA-based artists Cole M James and Berto Reed (AKA Love Berto), curated by Wil Phearson III and Margot Ross. 

Reflections is an exhibition that investigates macro thought as a collective woven into singular interpretations by Cole M James and Love Berto. In their work, both dissect the contemplation of how light (our internal structures) reflects from surfaces (our state of the world) while uniting past and future thought into one's present gaze. Exercising their unique approaches and coming from different cultures, they prove the importance of reflecting not only on oneself but for the whole. 

'The Evolution of Consciousness', a collection of large-scale paintings by Love Berto reflects the last three years of production which was a time of undoing and self transformation. For Berto, this was ”a time of uncertainty, struggle, and fear. An interpretation of love and how we face the divide. The inevitable brutality of man and the tyranny of the powers that be. It's the work that got me through it all.”

Cole M James’ is showcasing over a decade of work, which reflects they/them internal reflections on their perceptions and how to respond to others actions of microaggressions. Their work successfully acts as a mirror to question race-based constructs of identity, while educating the viewer on how they/them experience life and move through space.

According to Cole, “There are truths to being African American, I will never know the language of my ancestors or the traditions of their ancestors. This began my investigation into the unknown or rather an embrace of the unknowable and the ability to transcend the unknown into the imagined and the experiential. My intention is to embark on an imagined story of creation with a system of reactions centered on the sharing of hopefulness in experience as it coincides with memory.”

Cole M James The work of Cole M James is that of a negotiator, navigating the African Diaspora, circling the expanse of queerness and fumbling through womanhood. James’ interdisciplinary work explores the intersections between digital production and the analog collections of lived experiences. James was born in Chicago and raised in Moreno Valley, California. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Cal State San Bernardino and Masters in Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University. James currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. 

Berto Reed, AKA Love Berto, is an American artist from Miami who currently lives and works in Ventura, California. He’s a painter, muralist, collage and mixed media artist. Upon closer inspection, his abstract paintings hold intricate patterns often found in nature. Arrangements closely connected with his deep appreciation of earth’s own life. Berto works on canvas in acrylic, and oil, sometimes adding other materials such as collage. Lately, working with paper has become an integral part of his practice. 

Berto has also worked in acting, directing, and writing for commercials. He has lived and worked in Athens, Canggu, Hamburg, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New York City and Paris. His love of surfing led him to travel the world and you can find his murals and site-specific works internationally in the United States, Australia, Bali, Costa Rica, Indonesia, New Zealand and Senegal.