My, what big teeth you have…

In a media landscape that emphasizes and exaggerates division and disunity by tailoring information to every individual’s specific worldview, it is difficult to imagine a time when virtuousness and the politics of survival were more-or-less universally understood within the same set of standards. But everyone still knows their fairy tales. The Brothers Grimm and their brand of folklore are hallmarks of the MONOCULTURE even after their Disneyfication: Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel taught stranger danger; Rumpelstilskin and Jack and the Beanstalk warned against short-term deals that cause long-term pain; The Frog Prince is a reminder to never judge a book by its cover. We all know these things to be true because we were all given the same roadmaps in our youth, illustrated in picture-book form. 

You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone…

Employing the Grimms as a foundational touchstone for her practice is an immediate access point for viewers from all backgrounds. The works within ALL THE BETTER TO EAT YOU WITH, Jeanine Brito’s third solo exhibition with Nicodim and her second in Los Angeles, are compositionally constructed as instantly recognizably stage settings, rife for the subversion of the expected morality play. Much in the spirit of Maria Warner and Angela Carter, the paintings within this body of work draw back literal curtains on reproductions of enchanted forests with Brito’s likeness cast throughout the various set pieces as a sort of rogue theater troupe, making and unmaking a pastiche of ribald scenes of less-than subtle double entendres and gender-as-pantomime. If the forest is a vehicle for possibility (to parse Jack Zipes), then these canvases expose them with teeth-bared, all the better to eat you with.

– Ben Lee Ritchie Handler