Sow & Tailor gallery in Los Angeles is playing host to a new solo exhibition by Canadian artist Kayla Witt. Born in Calgary and now based in LA, Witt moved with a number of existential questions in mind: “When will I find love? Will I be successful? Will I be well? Will I be happy? When will I know I am where I should be?” I Can and Will Make Life Better for You is a meditative reflection on what she has experienced since.
From a distance, you would be forgiven to think Witt specialized in photography. While up close, her hyperrealistic scenes give way to meticulous oil on canvas paintings that were developed under the intense parameters ushered in by the COVID pandemic. Witt regularly drove across LA’s sprawling streets to document the many psychic shops riddled across the city, which she uses as a metaphor for the uncertainty of self and future.
Witt mines the often overlooked signs and symbols that are widespread across LA — from symbols of surveillance, such as cameras, eyes and signs that remind you that you are being watched, to the city’s obsession with wellness culture, emblematic of her work that juxtaposes positive images with symbols of magical thinking. In each, the artist asks her viewer, “are you where you should be?” Find out, as I Can and Will Make Life Better for You is on view at Sow & Tailor in DTLA until March 25.
Elsewhere, Gian Maria Tosatti presents NOw/here at Pirelli HangarBicocca.
Sow & Tailor
3027 S Grand Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90007
