John Byrtle & Nicky Lesser

Chez Max et Dorothea is pleased to present a two-person exhibition featuring

John Byrtle and Nicky Lesser at our Los Angeles headquarters. John Byrtle presents a new series of their ongoing stamp works, which explore themes of accumulation, visual overwhelm, and autonomy within a post-authorial lens. Byrtle’s stamp works combine multiple traditions of drawing, collage, printmaking, and painting to create rich and dense visual tableaux. These stamp works, often with multiple titles, demand the eye’s attention as a tour de force of looking.

The works are created from the hands of various stamp authors, a collection Byrtle began in 2016, which now stands as a likely candidate for the world's largest stamp collection, with far over 10,000 stamps. These pieces function as both archival treasures and subversive embodiments of craft and consumption. The stamp works become assemblages of various authors, transformed by Byrtle's active imagination, reminiscent of a Pop-ified Bosch or Bruegel landscape. These new works engage in situ within the exhibition space, making various interventions to the space’s architecture and presenting alongside paneled works that reveal a plurality of inhabitation.

Nicky Lesser premieres a new sculpture series entitled Rug Dogs, alongside her ongoing series of sculpted bricks transformed into scaled-down furniture. Rug Dogs explores various states of leisure and repose, playing with classical motifs of sculpture rendered in common materials. Instead of chiseled, slick stone, aluminum foil armatures and bathmats are used to depict man’s best friend: the dog.

Lesser approaches her practice as an idiosyncratic study of human daily dependencies and emotional connections, whether through furniture, which she carves from literal bricks, or through the longstanding loyal canine companions of humans. “These sculptures are about emotions... seeking comfort in an ‘other,’” says the artist, reflecting on the Rug Dogs series. In this emotional context, one can see not only the obsession with the dog as an emotional support animal but also the connection to the long and varied cultural history of rag dolls. A sewn-together doll covered in fabric, typically passed from mother to child, provides comfort and well-wishes in times of insecurity or during nights of the unknown as early proven in the controversial experiments of psychologist Harry Harlow.

Together, Byrtle and Lesser’s works create a palpable world brimming with sensations of joy while subtly critiquing the world around us. Whether addressing the rising accumulation of material, the inherent importance of domesticity in their practice, or the long line of car traffic that borders the exhibition space, a question is posed to the audience. Is it a question similar to the one Jean-Luc Godard posed in his first 3-D shot film, Adieu au Langage (Goodbye to Language), or is it more demure, more innocent, like a low-humming growl?

John Byrtle questions the role of the artist as an authority or singular identity. They host exhibitions in a 2” by 4” gallery on their left forearm, enjoy wearing other people’s shoes, and frequently misspell their last name. Byrtle has been involved in several collective art projects, including Human Resources LA, KCHUNG, Llano del Rio Collective, the Eternal Telethon, and many others. In the past year, they have exhibited at Artist Curated Projects, David Horvitz’s 7th Ave. Garden, Fulcrum Press, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and Clara’s Garage. They are currently working on a forthcoming publication, Collected Bios: 2009-2024, to mark 15 years of writing a new bio whenever asked.

Nicky Lesser was born in Los Angeles in 1988, the year of the dragon. She currently lives and works in New York. She earned her BFA from the Parsons School of Design in 2010. Primarily a sculptor, her work is concerned with fragmentation—displaying stone legs that belong to a truant sculpture—as well as collapsing social contexts by carving furniture from brick blocks. Her recent exhibitions include Daydreaming Pressed Against a Fence (2023, Harkawik), Brackett Creek Invitational (2022, Brackett Creek Exhibitions), A Light in The Attic (2022, 307 Clinton Ave), and The City ‘LaVille’ (2021, Chez Anonyme). She was commissioned by Bottega Veneta to create numerous site-specific sculptures for their store in Rome.