Creature Comforts
| 02.20.2026 - 03.28.2026 | 12:00
Artists: Julie Buffalohead, Bryan Christiansen, Rachel Denny, Johnny DeFeo, El Gato Chimney, Hacer, Angelica Raquel, and Christian Ruiz Berman.
'Creature Comforts' brings together animal-based works by artists represented by Visions West Contemporary, exploring how animals function as companions, symbols, messengers, and mirrors for human experience. Across painting, sculpture, and mixed media, the exhibition considers the emotional and psychological roles animals play in our lives, not only as sources of care, protection, and familiarity, but also as sites of projection, myth, humor, and unease. Here, animals appear as stand-ins for personal histories, cultural memory, survival, play, and transformation, occupying a space that is at once intimate and symbolic. Rather than approaching animals as purely natural subjects, the artists in 'Creature Comforts' treat them as complex narrative devices, figures through which tenderness, tension, power, and vulnerability are negotiated. Some works draw from folklore, storytelling, and spiritual traditions; others lean into contemporary life, using animals to reflect social dynamics, identity, and emotional states. Together, these works invite viewers to consider why animals remain such enduring and flexible forms for meaning-making, and how comfort itself can be layered, conditional, and deeply human.