Lafe Eaves: Let It Bleed

Lafe Eaves' first solo exhibition kicks off the Shooting Gallery's side project Gallery Three, a nice airy space tacked on to the front of the gallery's studio. Eaves' ink and watercolor paintings pulse with mysterious connections and ritual bloodletting. Bears wade in a river the color of an oil spill, dotted with papery poppies. Mushrooms sprout from the back of a bear, which emerges from the back of a kangaroo, which in turn steals the heart of a prehistoric horned creature. Stringing the images together are loops of what could be coaxial cable, which emerges from the severed trunk of a mastodon, is consumed by a blank-eyed bear, and pierces the navel of a giant flying bat. Eaves' meticulous drawing style gives these creatures dignity even as they float unmoored in a mostly blank background, penetrated by the snaking wire. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the cable seems to indicate a narrative of false knowledge: We may think we're plugged into the world, connected to nature, maybe even in control –– but really we're part of the same ineluctable cycle of nature the animals depend on. And, yes, there will be blood.