Weho, Los Angeles
Cali Thornhill-Dewitt
Safe Words
Karma InternationalKarma International Los Angeles is pleased to announce the gallery’s first solo exhibition, Safe Words, with Cali Thornhill-Dewitt. Having moved from British Columbia to Los Angeles at the age of three, Dewitt, now 44, reminisces fondly of the days when his city was a hollow, desolate landscape canvased with violence and just the right amount of degradation. Even while dispelling his fondest memories that fester in gnats and decay, he enjoys a juice from the Green Grotto in the “new” downtown. It’s what space can become and how detrimental time can be. Dewitt views being anti-human as a harsh reality–but a reality none the less. It is difficult to come to terms with the idea of humans being the most cold-blooded species, but it is what it is, beauty is tragedy, and the like. Always carrying a perverse sense of self-determination, Cali moved to New York, lived in a meat locker in the literal Meat Packing district, contracted scabies and measles then, somewhere along the line, fell ass-backwards into art. Safe Words, like most of Dewitt's work, is an ode to our inhumanity. It’s about everything wrong with all of us and our tendency to straddle the line between pollution and contribution without caring to define the difference between the two.