Christy Gast at Nina Johnson
By Maximilíano Durón February 20, 2025 12:04pm
Below, a look at the best booths on view at Felix LA, which runs through February 23.
Denim is in at Nina Johnson’s booth. Spread across the cabana hotel room and patio are three soft sculptures by Upstate New York–based artist Christy Gast. Implicit in these disembodied legs is the sexuality and curvature of the body. The only floor work of the three, La noche está estrellada (2025), is fabricated to be kneeling, with a disco-cover where the wearer’s waist should be. There’s an implied sexual innuendo to the fact that the sculpture is kneeling, even if the imagined person’s gender identity is unknown. Nearby is a wall-hung sculpture, Four Button Fly (2024), in which four pairs of jeans twist into each other—an orgy or a polycule perhaps. Gast made these jeans herself, using denim she treated with chemicals so she could press various flora onto them to give them an ethereal woodsy feel.
On the patio is Asses & Angels (2023) showing three twisting pairs of jeans with green bandanas sticking out of the back pockets. They’re smeared with what appears to be dirt stains but are hand painted gouache marks by the artist; it has a rough and tumble kind of vibe to it. Per the queer hanky code, the green handkerchief would signify a call for sex work; which pocket one wears it in would determine if you are seeking or offering sex work. That the bandana is draped (and coated in resin) and extends from one pocket to the other adds to the ambiguity.