David Castillo Annex, immediately adjacent to the main gallery, announces its inaugural exhibition, Troglodytes see better in the dark, with works by Jesse Bercowetz, Stephan Goldrajch, Andrew Guenther, The Icelandic Love Corporation, Dan Kopp, Susan Lee-Chun, Pepe Mar, Tiffany Pollack, Michael Velliquette, and Jaimie Warren.

From the shadowy libido of Bercowetz’s organic assemblages, Mar’s comic nightmare scaffolding, and Velliquette’s paper creatures; within the deep space of Guenther’s aliens and the depths of Lee-Chun’s cultural identities; behind Warren’s theatrical make-up and Goldrajch’s canopic masks; with the dusk of Kopp’s neon apocalypse, the dawn of Pollack’s prehistoric vegetation, and the Nordic perspective of The Icelandic Love Corporation; down the fathoms of our subcultures and psyches live creaturely sensibilities with the night vision to transcend the modern conflict of our waking lives.

The works in Troglodytes see better in the dark possess the valor to see what less absurd beings cannot: humor, hope, community, and spirituality in socio-political darkness. Some troglodytes, such as Bercowetz’s unwieldy amalgamations cobbled together with cable and epoxy, come from chaos. Some, such as Mar’s sculptures inspired by electronic music and pop consumerism and Warren’s disguised self-portraits, come from cult culture. Some, such as Velliquette’s hand-cut paper dioramas and Lee-Chun’s bifurcated racial personas, come from the rituals of otherness. Seen together, one develops the impression that these troglodytes are social creatures, and their artists’ emphasis on crafts and craftsmanship create a valuable nostalgia for epochs when humans lived communally with nature and one another. Regardless from under which underbelly these troglodytes crawl, all are beacons of The Icelandic Love Corporation’s belief that, even in the face of nihilism, inhibitions, and the technological prowess of post-postmodernism, “love redeems us all.”