LOS ANGELES – I keep in mind when the smoke plume from the Palisades and Eaton fires left LA in January, its black veil drifting out to sea like a hand loosening its grip. Just lately, it feels just like the smoldering mass has returned as an ICE-shaped fist tightening from the coast to the San Fernando Valley. Fireplace and smoke have develop into a logo of civic rebellion, from incinerated Waymos and cop automobiles to the grey clouds that burst out of the LAPD’s tear gasoline canisters and munitions. The shifting symbolism of this risky component in LA is the topic of the group present Burn Me! at The Field. Curated by Molly Tierney, together with the gallery’s proprietor, Mara McCarthy, and her father, artist Paul McCarthy, it took form after the McCarthy household and Tierney misplaced their properties within the Eaton blaze. The ensuing exhibition examines how fireplace has formed artwork and life west of the San Bernardino Mountains — within the final six months and much earlier.
Artworks half-destroyed in January dot the gallery’s entrance rooms, intermingling with sculptures and work that look at the intersections between fireplace and social or environmental change. Jason Rhoades’s “Recession Era Perfect World Park Bench” (2001), beforehand a reproduction of an uncomfortable city park bench, now bears Eaton’s scars: The aluminum tubes that fashioned its again and seat are actually sagging and disjointed at jagged angles, whereas the L-shaped cinderblocks supporting these bars are singed brown. Equally, the artist’s “Perfect World Swing Set” (2000–2001), a easy playground construction, appears like a post-apocalyptic relic, its black patina evoking suburban decline. For his Excellent World venture, first put in in Hamburg in 1999, Rhoades positioned a pristine duplicate of a whole city on an elevated Plexiglas platform supported by precarious, disorderly aluminum scaffolding, which he in comparison with a “Garden of Eden” lofted over “Hell.” The broken art work eerily displays this assertion.
Molly Tierney, “Eight Flags” (2017–current), rags, flags, years, particles, oil, enamel, concrete on canvas
The works in Burn Me! use fireplace, deliberately or unintentionally, to embody at the moment’s social, political, and environmental struggles. Molly Tierney’s “Eight Flags” (2017–current) is an almost floor-to-ceiling grid of American flags, their stars and stripes coated in black oil, particles, and mud, a veneer that makes the floor seem burned. This purposeful aesthetic impact (the work was not broken within the fires) conjures current political sentiment and environmental devastation directly. Elsewhere, Paul McCarthy’s bronze sculpture “Ship of Fools, Ship Adrift, Hummel Box, Affected” (2010/2025) riff on Plato’s “Ship of Fools” parable, which charts the cursed journey of a ship’s dysfunctional crew. Now, McCarthy’s crowd of inept seamen are coated in an ashy crust, surrounded by a bent, fire-damaged hull. The work’s current situation reveals one other, up to date story of poor management, its char serving as proof of insufficient metropolis wildfire preparation and governmental failure to staunch local weather change-fueled disasters.
One lacking work haunts the exhibition: Wally Hedricks’s protest portray “Burn Me!” (1990), which featured the titular phrase jubilantly painted over an American flag—created in response to the “culture wars” and George H.W. Bush’s conservatism on the time. Destroyed in January, it now holds manifold meanings, even in its absence. Within the midst of seemingly unending environmental and political crises, it feels increasingly troublesome for voices to be heard, and artwork to be seen — whether or not that’s as a result of it’s destroyed by fireplace or maced by police. With Burn Me!, The Field posits a technique ahead. These artworks develop below immense pure and unnatural menace, boasting their scars as new metaphors for up to date life in LA.
Paul McCarthy, “Ship of Fools, Ship Adrift, Hummel Box, Affected” (2010/2025), bronze with black patina, version of 10 plus 3 AP
Set up view of Burn Me! at The Field, Los Angeles. Foreground: Paul McCarthy and Jason Rhoades, “Snail, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother…” (2002–4), fiberglass
Set up view of Burn Me! at The Field, Los Angeles. Foreground: Jason Rhoades, “Perfect World Swing Set” (c. 2000–2001), polished aluminum tubes, chains, steel, melted plastic
Set up view of Burn Me! at The Field, Los Angeles. Wall: Paul McCarthy, “NPP1P2, WAR PIG, Drawing Session” (2025), 2 Channel 4K video, 16:50 minutes.
Wally Hedrick, “III Vietnam Series” (1957), oil on canvas
Molly Tierney, “Untitled (Christmas Tree Lane)” (2018), melted plastic bins
Johanna Went and Jasmine Rudoph, “Rage Craft #10: Project 2025” (2025), embroidery thread on muslin
Paul McCarthy, “Walla Walla Paul Leg Table (working title)” (c. 2015), wooden, bronze
Burn Me! continues at The Field (805 Traction Avenue, Arts District, Los Angeles) by means of July 5. The exhibition was curated by Mara McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, and Molly Tierney.
