All Hail Swoon, Superchief, and Pearly’s Beauty Shop

“Tonight is really about play,” says Caledonia Curry, the artist known as Swoon. “Vanity was kind of a playful reference, because we wanted to use human beings as canvas.” Vanity is the theme of Swoon’s collaborative exhibit at Superchief Gallery L.A., Pearly’s Beauty Shop, curated by Superchief and New Image Art. The private opening was a benefit for Swoon’s philanthropic Heliotrope Foundation, and to temper the serious, community-focused tone of much of her work, she drew the crowd in with one of her trademark immersive pieces, the Beauty Shop.

Pearly’s Beauty Shop is an abstract salon, adorned by golden mirrors, art deco furniture, and staffed with a team of stylists and artists including Swoon herself, Evelyn Fugate, Corinne Loperfido, and Iggy Soliven, who sat upon multiple tiers like sirens in a Jodorowsky film, transforming attendees into members of their candy-striped species.

It was conceived by Swoon’s assistant Olivia Katz, and the two previously brought it to life in New York, says Superchief cofounder Bill Dunleavy. But on opening night, it was less of an installation and more like an Easybake Oven®, spitting out freaks onto the dance floor.

“I’ve never been to a barber shop,” says Swoon, a poofy redhead. “I’ve never gotten my hair done, I’ve never worn make-up, I’ve never gotten my nails done.” It’s a unique experience, says Dunleavy, giving people “face to face time with an artist that they really admire.”

Though the limelight goes to the title piece, the rest of the show features plenty of thematically-fitting works, like Bonethrower’s acrylic demon (Superchief cofounder Ed Zipco jibes, “He’s got a third eye to stare at himself. He’s doing great!”). Bill Dunleavy pointed out two erotic works by Stickymonger (each featuring a Lolita in a state of bondage, soaked with strawberry jam), as well as a poster for a Luke Pelletier exhibit with a cynical commentary on post-WWII entitlement culture, rendered in popping oils. The show also features work from Swizz Beats and Shepard Fairey, who DJ’d the opening.

“Swoon got famous at a lucky time, during the first wave of street art,” says Dunleavy. Curry began wheat-pasting her drawings in New York City in 1999, and continued doing disruptive work throughout the early 2000’s whilst being featured by Jeffrey Deitch at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, all the way up to her landmark installation Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014. From there, her career pivoted toward philanthropy, says Dunleavy, creating the Heliotrope Foundation in 2015. “She’s working in Haiti, giving people a semblance of normality in a society that completely fell apart after a natural disaster, and she’s building grassroots arts communities in New Orleans and in Braddock, Pennsylvania.”

Heliotrope’s next goals according to Swoon are to build a bamboo house in Komye, Haiti (in addition to the two standing super adobe houses and community center), and to finally open The Braddock Tiles and The Music Box, community art spaces dedicated to ceramics and music in Braddock and New Orleans.

…But back to that glittering, satin-draped machine of self-indulgence. It might strike one as odd to theme a benefit show for Haitian relief and low-income community arts after vanity (that is if one isn’t reading this cynically). It may also seem a bit obtuse for two-dimensional pieces of art to vie for attention against a full service beauty salon. However, for those of us like Swoon, who have never been a stylist’s canvas, it was a chance to feel as transfixing as a nine-foot wheat paste.

Pearly’s Beauty Shop is at Superchief Gallery L.A. through June 25, 2016

(Photo by Kevin Gonzalez)