The folks at the Western Corridor shared live/work studio/venue/loft known asThe Hills Esthetic Center have recently added a fresh white cube and brick gallery to their space, and this last Friday kicked off their exhibition foray with a show of work from Mike Kloss called The Hills Have Thighs.

Mike Kloss, The Hills Have Thighs

While Kloss’ work spans plenty of media, its collages and sculptures and drawings and photographs mostly filter found object modification through a aesthetic both psychedelic and fragile, like a good trip a heartbeat away from sorrow. The work plays with themes of danger and death in a mostly superficial way, exploiting the colors of and textures of man’s destructive relationship to nature, and so we see a work like Neglectful Plant Designer (described on the walking list as a “murdered and decapitated palm,” dimensions variable) next to gstad, a joyful pop-consumer “collage on floaty ocean,” both pieces halting a few steps shy of any possible message to enjoy the imagery and language of the meaning-making.

Mike Kloss, gstad

While these sculptures and collages were fun, I thought the stronger work was in Kloss’ drawings, dark and inky and spookier, with narratives and potential narratives still flighty with titles like “Zombie Volcano” but slowed and grounded by their straightforward construction.

Mike Kloss, Drawings

For a first show at a group space curated by close personal friends of the artist, The Hills Have Thighs could have been much less cohesive and, especially with an artist like Kloss who employs humor in his work, easily filled with with just the funny shit. Luckily, or maybe as a credit to those close friends’ good tastes, the show comes off pretty well balanced and smart, with your trippy shark vagina work to enjoy over there and fifteen really good drawings to get dark on over here. I liked it.

I give it a:

7.3

Mike Kloss’ The Hills have Thighs opened January 22nd @ The Hills Esthetic Center, 128 N. Campbell Ave. More images can be found at Kloss’ flickr page.