Paranoid Style
DYLAN KAPOSI
DYLAN KAPOSI
Paranoid Style, Josh Lilley London
Opening Evening, March 13, 2025
Skepta blared through my ears as I strolled through Fitzrovia. Was I late enough? I wasn’t early, so I guess I was on time. The sun was reclining, and the sky made a pastel blue Edward Hopper-style shimmer, which is something it sometimes does in the early spring in London. It made me want to weep.
When I stepped into the gallery I realised, for the first time, the intimacy of the affair: it was a private viewing after all. I took my headphones out as I passed through the doors, the trap drums abated, and was greeted by a glass of brittle white wine.
I took a great big sip.
“Hey, how’s it going?” was the first thing I heard. The second was “What do you do?”
“I’m a writer,” I responded, with a paranoid smile. The collector nodded vaguely, they were no longer interested. So, with a sigh, I turned to meet the art.
The first room of the two-floor white-walled building housed Salim Green’s intricate work interspersed with beautiful glass casts made by Sula Bermudez-Silverman. There was a playfulness to the textures and a thoughtful delicacy in Green’s objects. The works invited me to get up close and think about what I had for breakfast, or whether my mother was disappointed in me, or if I’d been rude to my friend the previous night. These are the things that good art should make you think.
Through the archway leading into the second room, Nehemiah Cisneros’s work was shown alongside Bermudez-Silverman’s final piece.
Taking in the second room I started to think that maybe, just maybe, this entire show meant something to me.
One reason is because I first read Richard Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style when I was hiding out in a rural village in the Alps for a couple of months trying to regain my senses. It took me seven weeks to realise I wouldn’t find them in a pile of snow or a heap of dried-out firewood, so I packed my bags and returned to London, adamant that my senses must be hiding in a corner somewhere dark and dingy, cowering in my native city. After all, that was what I did most of the time.
The second reason the show excited me is because I’m inclined to enjoy the fruits of Los Angeles’s artistic endeavours. How could I not? There’s a beauty, and ease, and a sardonic self-awareness to Los Angeles’s visual culture. All these emotions resonate with me.
Let go of personal identity, the city precedes you: you are the city.
I’d arrived at Josh Lilley straight from the Noah Davis show at the Barbican, feeling the levity of a very Californian tinge to my London quotidian life—even the sunset was complying.
What are young LA artists doing in 2025? How are they making sense of things? Presumably, just enjoying themselves? That’s the impression that Paranoid Style gives.
Nehemiah Cisneros’s paintings make you forget yourself. Each of Cisneros’s works is a beautiful and visually charming object and yet—at the very same time—is packed full and replete with powerful symbolism. Hung above the stairs, visible through a break in the wall in the second, first-floor room, a vast painting of Santa Monica Pier looms over the basement section of the gallery. The scene in the foreground is fanciful, fleeting, and surreal.
Viewed in the round, in the final room, Jacob Fenton’s works achieve a cool and assured conclusion to a beautiful show. Through a masterful application of oil, Fenton has succeeded in reminding me of the deep-fried highly saturated online content that I used to post in a bid to imitate my idol Chief Keef. The only difference being that Fenton’s work captures iconic images, infamous film stills, and omnipresent iconography. Perhaps this means something, I’m not sure. All I know is I liked how the paintings looked.
Josh Lilley’s Paranoid Style brings together west-coast artists with a love for what they do. It puts them in a highly British context. The result is a gently curated show, a fascinating tapestry of visual culture, and the chance for people in London to feel a bit of LA sun, even if by proxy.
Thank you Josh Lilley Gallery
Paranoid Style
Sula Bermudez-Silverman, Nehemiah Cisneros, Jacob Fenton & Salim Green
14 March – 16 April 2025
Opening Evening, March 13, 2025
Skepta blared through my ears as I strolled through Fitzrovia. Was I late enough? I wasn’t early, so I guess I was on time. The sun was reclining, and the sky made a pastel blue Edward Hopper-style shimmer, which is something it sometimes does in the early spring in London. It made me want to weep.
When I stepped into the gallery I realised, for the first time, the intimacy of the affair: it was a private viewing after all. I took my headphones out as I passed through the doors, the trap drums abated, and was greeted by a glass of brittle white wine.
I took a great big sip.
“Hey, how’s it going?” was the first thing I heard. The second was “What do you do?”
“I’m a writer,” I responded, with a paranoid smile. The collector nodded vaguely, they were no longer interested. So, with a sigh, I turned to meet the art.
The first room of the two-floor white-walled building housed Salim Green’s intricate work interspersed with beautiful glass casts made by Sula Bermudez-Silverman. There was a playfulness to the textures and a thoughtful delicacy in Green’s objects. The works invited me to get up close and think about what I had for breakfast, or whether my mother was disappointed in me, or if I’d been rude to my friend the previous night. These are the things that good art should make you think.
Through the archway leading into the second room, Nehemiah Cisneros’s work was shown alongside Bermudez-Silverman’s final piece.
Taking in the second room I started to think that maybe, just maybe, this entire show meant something to me.
One reason is because I first read Richard Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style when I was hiding out in a rural village in the Alps for a couple of months trying to regain my senses. It took me seven weeks to realise I wouldn’t find them in a pile of snow or a heap of dried-out firewood, so I packed my bags and returned to London, adamant that my senses must be hiding in a corner somewhere dark and dingy, cowering in my native city. After all, that was what I did most of the time.
The second reason the show excited me is because I’m inclined to enjoy the fruits of Los Angeles’s artistic endeavours. How could I not? There’s a beauty, and ease, and a sardonic self-awareness to Los Angeles’s visual culture. All these emotions resonate with me.
Let go of personal identity, the city precedes you: you are the city.
I’d arrived at Josh Lilley straight from the Noah Davis show at the Barbican, feeling the levity of a very Californian tinge to my London quotidian life—even the sunset was complying.
What are young LA artists doing in 2025? How are they making sense of things? Presumably, just enjoying themselves? That’s the impression that Paranoid Style gives.
Nehemiah Cisneros’s paintings make you forget yourself. Each of Cisneros’s works is a beautiful and visually charming object and yet—at the very same time—is packed full and replete with powerful symbolism. Hung above the stairs, visible through a break in the wall in the second, first-floor room, a vast painting of Santa Monica Pier looms over the basement section of the gallery. The scene in the foreground is fanciful, fleeting, and surreal.
Viewed in the round, in the final room, Jacob Fenton’s works achieve a cool and assured conclusion to a beautiful show. Through a masterful application of oil, Fenton has succeeded in reminding me of the deep-fried highly saturated online content that I used to post in a bid to imitate my idol Chief Keef. The only difference being that Fenton’s work captures iconic images, infamous film stills, and omnipresent iconography. Perhaps this means something, I’m not sure. All I know is I liked how the paintings looked.
Josh Lilley’s Paranoid Style brings together west-coast artists with a love for what they do. It puts them in a highly British context. The result is a gently curated show, a fascinating tapestry of visual culture, and the chance for people in London to feel a bit of LA sun, even if by proxy.
Thank you Josh Lilley Gallery
Paranoid Style
Sula Bermudez-Silverman, Nehemiah Cisneros, Jacob Fenton & Salim Green
14 March – 16 April 2025
