The Loss That Shapes the Image
“It is the image in the mind that binds us to our lost treasures, but it is the loss that shapes the image, gathers the flowers, weaves the garland.”
—Colette, My Apprenticeships, 1936
Babst Gallery is pleased to announce its exhibition The loss that shapes the image featuring works by Vanessa Conte, Gabriel Slavitt, and Jesse Howard. The exhibition will be on view February 15 – April 12, 2025 at 413 S Fairfax.
On view are selections from Vanessa Conte’s series entitled No Hard Ground (2020-2022) that feature a female protagonist whose endurance and flexibility pushes the limits of her own body, as well as the very cells of the comic book format. As Alex Jovanovich writes, “these pugilistic women refuse to surrender. They are not, per Conte, dummies of ‘fawning femininity’ sprung from the male imagination, but muscular, hardheaded beings—who know how to give as good as they can take—trapped in a capricious, misogynistic world not too dissimilar from the one we occupy in real life.”
Gabriel Slavitt uses his drawings as a net to trawl the subconscious. In the drawing Calling the Earth To Witness, a hand claws the back of a figure, leaving a mark that is more an ink-black void than a wound. Clusters of repeating imagery—empty pockets, tattered clown shoes, and fly trails—may be pure emotion made visible, but their crisscrossing paths signal the artist’s fervent search for meaning.
Jesse Howard covered his 20-acre property in Fulton, Missouri with hundreds of his hand-lettered signs until the 1970s. WHAT IS A HOME WITH=OUT=LOVE? represents one of Howard’s most minimal signs—typically, the text overwhelms the surfaces on which they were written. Despite constant vandalism and a large fire, Howard continued to make signs until his death in 1983.
Vanessa Conte (b. 1977, Yonkers, NY) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been exhibited at venues including kunstbunker forum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Nürnberg, (2023); Ginvera Gambino, Cologne (2019); Hester, New York (2016); Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (2016); Gavin Brown’s Enterprise (2013); Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2013); Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2013); Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles (2012); Galerie Jacky Strenz, Frankfurt (2006); Art Center, Pasadena (2004); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2003); and Exit Art (2003), among others. Her most recent comicThrill To Live was published in 2023 by Random Man Editions.
Gabriel Slavitt (b. 1988, Park Ridge, IL) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. In 2023, he had a solo exhibition of his paintings and sculptures at Babst Gallery. He has also exhibited at Hisssss, Los Angeles ; Sade, Los Angeles; Suite Gallery, at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia; Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles; Central Park Gallery, Los Angeles; Elsa Lee Bruno Gallery, Los Angeles; and INGRAMS, Los Angeles, among others. In 2022, he released the comic book Master of Return. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010.
Jesse Howard (1885–1983, b. Shamrock, Missouri) was first featured in Art in America. His work was included in exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1974) and at the Philadelphia College of Art (1981). His first comprehensive museum survey Thy Kingdom Come, was exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2015. His work is included in the collections of a number of museums, including the American Folk Art Museum, New York; the American Visionary Arts Museum, Baltimore; the Kansas City Art Institute; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, among others.