Kim Dingle

By 2008, Kim Dingle had spent the better part of the new millennium running her restaurant, Fatty’s, which she had launched out of her studio seven years prior. The daily, unrelenting demands of the operation had begun to wear on her. Reflecting on the experience as a whole, the Los Angeles artist decided to reframe the repetitive nature of her responsibilities as something positive, rather than draining: with this, the concept for the paintings in “Restaurant Mandalas”—Dingle’s solo show at Andrew Kreps—took shape.

The series—which Dingle revisited and ultimately completed this year—centers on restaurant-related imagery rendered in a manner akin to how one would approach the creation of mandalas while meditating. In this light, Dingle's restaurant-related endeavors invite therapeutic—rather than stressful—associations.