Perhaps you’ve never wondered what it would feel like to be a monarch butterfly drunk on Aperol Spritz. That’s a shame, but one that can be rectified by allowing Alejandro Jiménez-Flores, also known as florencio, to introduce you to kiki, the subject of a series of radiantly kitsch paintings on view at Adds Donna during the virtual NADA Chicago Gallery Open earlier this fall. The pictures include gouache-on-muslin illustrations of kiki’s fabulously inebriated soirée, featuring shimmery lights of all colors, and a pair of small, psychedelically dyed silk rondels that suggest the exciting but worrisome effect of alcohol on kiki’s eggs. It’s unclear if kiki is florencio’s alter ego, although it seems a strong possibility: in a video on the exhibition website, the artist relays kiki’s story as a poem, told with great empathy and all the gender fluidity of metamorphosis. Besides which, who wouldn’t want to envision themselves gorgeously patterned and dancing through the air under a disco-ball moon?
Perhaps you’ve never wondered what it would feel like to be a monarch butterfly drunk on Aperol Spritz.
Lori Waxman