The Other Art Fair 2025
In The Land of Gods and Monsters featuring Josh Cabello & Kim Garcia
Get in touch for available work
Get in touch for available work
"Fuck yeah, give it to me, this is Heaven, what I truly want" - Lana Del Rey
In the Land of Gods and Monsters, curated by Feia founders Thomas Martinez Pilnik and Jake Cavallo, is a two-person show featuring Kim Garcia and Josh Cabello that pinballs viewers through purgatory in between Heaven and Hell. Where you land is your choice, but deep within this constructed, twisted, and lush garden of evil are nods to queer utopias, Dionysian rituals, longing, life after near-death, post-colonial identities, vast ecosystems, and small pockets of grief, love, trauma, and new growth.
In the vestibule, a kind of purgatory in its own right, Cabello envelops the space with scenes of queer fantasy and Edenistic natural environments that cast a tantalizing, if a little uncanny, light around the room. All the while Garcia’s phantom limbs dance across an etched concrete floor that suggests Gustave Doré’s illustrations while eschewing colonial ideology. Then, to enter the fair, you must pass Garcia’s inescapable contemporary recreation of Rodin’s Gates of Hell. However, instead of being asked by Dante to abandon all hope, Garcia has transformed this original monstrous expression into something significantly more personal; a gateway that delves deep into the re-discovery of her father’s lost memories, colonial pasts, and reflections on the pursuit of the American Dream.
In the vestibule, a kind of purgatory in its own right, Cabello envelops the space with scenes of queer fantasy and Edenistic natural environments that cast a tantalizing, if a little uncanny, light around the room. All the while Garcia’s phantom limbs dance across an etched concrete floor that suggests Gustave Doré’s illustrations while eschewing colonial ideology. Then, to enter the fair, you must pass Garcia’s inescapable contemporary recreation of Rodin’s Gates of Hell. However, instead of being asked by Dante to abandon all hope, Garcia has transformed this original monstrous expression into something significantly more personal; a gateway that delves deep into the re-discovery of her father’s lost memories, colonial pasts, and reflections on the pursuit of the American Dream.
In the Land of Gods and Monsters looks beyond the naive promises and false truths that a paradisiacal Los Angeles offers these artists. Especially now, innocence and naivety are exchanged for something much deeper. Here, we cling to a future that is possible because of impossibly difficult pasts. What happens when we construct a world that can hold complex truths? That seems to be the question these artists are asking constantly as they make their work.
Josh Cabello’s practice is rooted in nature. His paintings wade through a strange evening light and reveal layers of references to an oft-forgotten yet rich history of queer texts, films, and images. Through depictions of yonic petals, fertilizing stamen, creeping limbs, curious faces, and vibrant ecosystems, Cabello offers fleshy revelations of our interior worlds laced with a dangerous sense of foreboding. Enter his universe, frolic in this overgrown paradise, but watch for the thorns hiding in plain sight.
By welding together, contorting, and blurring the lines between reality and fiction, Kim Garcia does to memory what memory does to us. Held within her monumental works are historical colonial narratives drawn from her Filipino ancestry, whose threads lie frayed from her father’s dementia. Deeper still sit somatic memories, flashes of tenderness under impermeable surfaces, ecstasy within trauma, and unearthed possibilities for constructing a future born of a suppressed past. Garcia invites you to enter through these gates but asks that you hold on to all hope.
Josh Cabello’s practice is rooted in nature. His paintings wade through a strange evening light and reveal layers of references to an oft-forgotten yet rich history of queer texts, films, and images. Through depictions of yonic petals, fertilizing stamen, creeping limbs, curious faces, and vibrant ecosystems, Cabello offers fleshy revelations of our interior worlds laced with a dangerous sense of foreboding. Enter his universe, frolic in this overgrown paradise, but watch for the thorns hiding in plain sight.
By welding together, contorting, and blurring the lines between reality and fiction, Kim Garcia does to memory what memory does to us. Held within her monumental works are historical colonial narratives drawn from her Filipino ancestry, whose threads lie frayed from her father’s dementia. Deeper still sit somatic memories, flashes of tenderness under impermeable surfaces, ecstasy within trauma, and unearthed possibilities for constructing a future born of a suppressed past. Garcia invites you to enter through these gates but asks that you hold on to all hope.
Together, these two artists make life more complicated, but for the better. By navigating through the simplistic binaries of utopia versus dystopia, memory against reality, and fact and fiction, Garcia and Cabello offer us all a portal to a more compelling universe, the one in which we already live. Instead of producing vessels of pure escapism, these artists hold up a mirror that reflects a whole human history of imagery, artifacts, warfare, ritual, conquest, destruction, growth, and so much more. They find paradise, they twist it, they turn it in their hands, and they reveal a more potent truth.
Because of this connection, In The Land of Gods and Monsters will push us beyond just finding our individualistic versions of paradise. Instead, you will be asked to confront the God complex and monstrous ego that lies within us all, that brings you into this warehouse, the part of you that just wants to escape this hell-on-earth. Through that interrogation, you might find peace with the Gods and Monsters that surround you, shed your cynicism, look back to move forward, and aspire instead to live like an imperfect angel, here in our chosen garden of evil.
Because of this connection, In The Land of Gods and Monsters will push us beyond just finding our individualistic versions of paradise. Instead, you will be asked to confront the God complex and monstrous ego that lies within us all, that brings you into this warehouse, the part of you that just wants to escape this hell-on-earth. Through that interrogation, you might find peace with the Gods and Monsters that surround you, shed your cynicism, look back to move forward, and aspire instead to live like an imperfect angel, here in our chosen garden of evil.