Through August 1, 2026
Two solo shows, “THE, THE” by M. Mark Bauer and “World Raw” by Cate White, depict stylized figures in various states of cartoonish low-brow duress, but that may be their only point of connection. Reminiscent of the Chicago Imagists who eschewed abstraction in favor of a third coast vernacular, Bauer and White capture, each in their own way, the dogged, non-heroic absurdities of life in 2026.
Each of Bauer’s eight paintings depict multiple cartoonish, chimerical figures patterning the picture plane without reference to a formal horizon line. The figures emerge from a background atmosphere of mottled color or dense geometric patterns as hybrid insects with human eyeballs, feathers and a dapper plaid coat sported by the foreground figure, with a fish poking out from its coat pocket in “Don’t Mind” (2024).
In “Artist Just Thinking” (2024) he mixes in a rat-in-a-tutu appendage, a glazed-eye shark apparently comprised of wood with paws and a blunderbuss pistol on its fin. The creature crawls towards a centaur with a beard and cowboy hat, a highly patterned bird with “Bird Brain” inscribed on the crown of its nest-like head, beside a cat coming out of a mouse’s head. A figure in the top right corner with spaghetti-like hair bears the name “ARTIST,” situating a portrait of the titular thinker. But there are additional figures besides, all playful, a little psychedelic, and crisply rendered in acrylic. They create a roiling cacophony of personality, eschewing a compositional hierarchy or a single focal point. It is up to us to navigate our way through or visually stabilize the fray.
White’s “World Raw” includes twelve paintings made between 2017 and 2026, many of which include sidelined or miniature figures flipping off the viewer, or smoking, or making tiny speech-bubble statements like “make me a star,” or “not happy,” like the marginalia one might discover scratched onto a classroom desk. There are nine large, PEZ-dispenser-cum-totems-cum-worry-dolls called “Tools for the Task at Hand” (2021) as well, and a robust stack of vibrant, diaristic watercolors on paper, each one slipped into plastic sleeves and fitted in a nondescript binder proffered on the show’s entry plinth.
“Mama” features three figures at the beach. In the central foreground of the composition a brunette woman holds a toddler. The blonde, naked child looks at us with a mix of disconcertion and curiosity. The woman, frowning in a red t-shirt and blue shorts, looks over her shoulder at a man of leisure reclining behind them in a beach chair holding a red plastic cup. He wears sunglasses, bathing shorts, a red cowboy hat and flip flops, and is gazing off into the distance. Although the figures occupy the same patch of grass, the image is divided into two additional horizontal planes, a middle swatch of watery grays, and an orange sky with the fine-lined all-caps inscription, “MAMA,” filling the horizon.
The painting feels disconcertingly personal, in no small part due to the bluntly delivered expression of the mother and child together with the muddy color palette. The dominant narrative renders the medium secondary, even when abstract marks diffuse the boundaries of a figure or form. In doing so, White reinforces the vulnerability of images and the human experience that inspires them in counterpoint to those interminable posted snapshots of families by the seaside and the AI imagery those same photographs now seed.
White is described as a self-taught artist, but that entry point does her a disservice. Like Raymond Pettibon’s drawings on paper, White’s watercolors evoke a first impression of naïveté giving way to an intentional and performative voice. “World Raw” is sardonic by way of a pithy effortlessness. Performing the artist’s inner life yields larger, cultural conditions. Pettibon never forefronts any absence of formal education. Whatever skills White’s MFA from the Arts and Consciousness Department at JFK University provided, she makes deliberate choices through an “anti-painting” style that de-emphasizes paint as a medium of inherent canonical esteem in favor of allegorical painting. The style of rendering disarms us with its raw, populist sensibility. These works swim against a current of slick, digitally circulated image-making with the bravado of awkward, raw vulnerability.
“The Flood” (2021), for instance, transforms a blue eight-armed, tongue-exposing goddess, specifically Kali (Hinduism) or Mahakali (Buddhism), into a blue octopus with pink eyes and thick black eyelashes, her tongue stuck out. The octopus wears Kali’s iconic Mundamala necklace of skulls, which identifies her not only as the goddess of death, destruction and rebirth, but also as the mother of sound, language, and knowledge.
In White’s iteration, the octopus has released a swath of ink that settles around the base of her head like a dress. Each of her tentacles grasp something different: a bloody saber, rockets, a phone, a bongo drum, a phallus, a rifle, a rake. The octopus appears to be under water, though it is littered with small human bits: a miniature torso, dollar bills. She is bathed in a triangle of yellow light that appears to emit from the hull of a ship. A miniature caricature of Bernie Sanders in his brown and white mittens appears in a small ship, marking the horizon line with his presence.
“Canceled” (2023) leverages a similar composition, with a central female figure bathed in overhead light. A host of butterflies appears throughout the picture plane, and three vultures descend on a central figure. She is concealed behind an elaborate wooden wall. Her head, arms, breasts, and legs hang through this wall. A red stain on the fence is suggestively placed in the position of the figure’s vagina. The Apple logo sticks out of one ankle. A banana peel hangs off of the other foot. Rotten food — eggs, fishbones, a watermelon rind — pepper the ground beneath her feet. Hands and fire reach up from below, a hellscape cropped just out of view. A devil figure stands on the right, red phallus distended, feeding the face a hot dog with a red hand. Raphael’s “Two Cherubs” are collaged on the fence line above the entrapped figures.
The same unrefined sensibility plays out in the artist’s ironic-but-not YouTube painting show, “How Do You Paint with Cate White,” inspired by Bob Ross’ “The Joy of Painting,” but more like “Painting with John.” White is consistently performing, whether she herself is on camera or the paint is manifesting an attitude. Her gestures go beyond camp and irony to grapple with agency and authenticity.
We live in a time when visual artists (and arts-adjacent professionals) rely upon corporate platforms — and the attention economy that feeds them. The question of “selling out” seems downright arcane today. The cost of living is very high, particularly and by reputation in the Bay Area, where our association with AI development and other outsize companies invest hundreds of billions of dollars, but starve culture. That, it turns out, is the actual target of White’s performative and diaristic aesthetic, be it sincere or ironic.
