Los Angeles artist Delia Brown's new show, “All Manner Of Things” -- a narrative cycle of paintings based on the 1968 film, Les Biches, by Claude Chabrol -- opens at Angles Gallery in Culver City this Saturday, February 25th. The opening reception is from 6 pm to 8 pm, and, as always, the public is welcome. Angles Gallery is located at 2754 S La Cienega Blvd,

Felicity & Caprice continues the artist's ongoing allegorical engagement with social issues (often with specific, art world implications). Depictions of wealth and comfort, presented in stark contrast to creativity and freedom, have long been a central concern in her work.  In recent years, this has been exemplified by her contributions to genre painting, as well as video and performance, whereby the artist employs role-playing, fantasy, and melodrama in scenes of sexual situations, violence, and conversation over cocktails. Evocative of 19th century figures such as Hogarth, Sargent, and Cassatt, Brown's creative illumination of the artist/patron dichotomy updates and expands timeless themes of exclusion, desire, and tragedy.

Brown's medium is oil on board, and on linen, and she works in a diminutive scale indicative of classical portraiture in its depictions of wealth, power, and privilege. The gracefully staged scenes deftly contain grudges and resentments--the love triangle, seduction, and betrayal. Economies of scale, in contradiction to the grand portraits of a bygone era, use the treatment of space to amplify the artist's skillful prowess as a figurative (and landscape, and interior) painter. Created over the course of years, Brown meticulously staged chance meetings, glamorous parties, and violent intimacies, to jarring affect. Discreet art historical references blend seamlessly with morality tales. Brown is fearless in her interpretation of the bohemian artist and the privileged, leisure class, bent on acquisition and dominion.

The main characters were played by Delia Brown (Caprice), actress Hollis Witherspoon (Felicity) and bookseller/art dealer John McWhinnie (Paul), who tragically passed away very recently.