There is a moment in Jasmine Monsegue's Everything That Glitters at CONTROL Gallery in Los Angeles that helped kick off Frieze week that was a great reminder of where she came from and where this art comes from. The work, Third Coast, and thinking of Houston and where Monsegue was raised within a Afro-Caribbean, Latinx and African American culture deeply embedded in the Southern United States, gave context to some of the more unique aesthetics I had seen over the course of airbrush's resurgence in the art world over the last half decade. This is Houston, the South, and LA all in one, a rowdy and underground look at car culture, lowbrow and DIY fashion.
Known for years as Spacebrat, Jasmine Monsegue had a seductive, maximalist style that felt like the grabbing of memories into a cacophony of images appearing on a canvas. What makes this show at CONTROL so fascinating is how she adopts minimalism into some of her most effective works. Vanessa and The Pony, in particular, are standouts, showing a misty, almost mythical approach to a salacious topic, in the vein of Jane Dickson. As the gallery notes, "The Pony depicts an industry-known strip club in a desolate area of Memphis, Tennessee. The piece is haunting but enchanting; the push-and-pull between soft blur and clearly rendered, and the brightly colored building against the dark and isolate setting, pushes the viewer to feel the tension that exists in sex work."
This show now has moved Monsegue into a new territory, exploring dichotomies and becoming a storyteller while creating ghostly, haunting and mysterious works. There is a lot of glitter that may exist somewhere deep in these works, but the subtle ways she approaches them is illuminating. —Evan Pricco
