Last November, the Chinese-born, Los Angeles-based artist Kim Ye presented an arrangement of bizarre objects reminiscent of common household furnishings at OHWOW in West Hollywood. “Immediate Surroundings,” her first solo exhibition with the gallery, explored ideas of the uncanny, the surreal and fetishism. A large sculpture of foam blanketed in the skin of a brown leather couch sunk into the concrete floors (We Did This Together, 2013), while an exhausted set of white drawers fashioned out of latex and wood resembled a neglected Claes Oldenburg (Slippery Drawers, 2013). Falling prey to gravity and their clumsy composition, the works were visually in flux between collapse and resurrection. Kim Ye furthered this irony by carving intricate designs in colorful window blinds, where the device’s privacy function was eliminated for purely aesthetic purposes. Yet, while a puerile interpretation of the world may be her inspiration, her works behave like grotesque models in a tragic domestic set arranged by an alien. The artist will continue this methodology in a series of new works where she replicates designer shopping bags using rubber cement and latex sheets — the same materials used by fetish clothing manufacturers. Later this year she will exhibit with Veronique D’Entremont at Salomon Huerta’s space in Eagle Rock, and she is developing a one night performance to be premiered in Silver Lake this fall. (James Shaeffer)