The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises—the novel about beautiful and disillusioned era expats who travel to Spain for a bullfighting festival—bears little resemblance to the group show at Jenny's of the same name. What little they do share beyond the title also derives from its message, drawn from Ecclesiastes, the phrase alludes to a universal, generation-spanning constant: The sun sets, but it also rises. Featuring new paintings by six artists, "The Sun Also Rises'' is irreverent, rowdy, and unmistakably contemporary in spirit.

Where there are references to Hemingway, they're at best playful, and at worst disparaging. He's put on full blast by artist Mathieu Malouf (also the show's curator) in Hernest Emingway (2021)—wherein the author, who openly expressed disdain for women in his personal life, appears bedraggled and bedazzled in what looks to be a thick ring of eyeliner and layer of rose pink lipstick. Meanwhile, an artist who goes by Cumwizard69420 demonstrates a pronounced predilection for up-skirt shots, as observed in Aunt Cindy Spreads Eagle in Front of Monte Sainte-Victoire, Standing Bather with Fat Tits n Ass (both 2021), and several other colorfully titled works. Kohlton Ervin contributes a literature-inspired piece with Against Nature (2021), the name of Joris-Karl Huysmansin's acclaimed late-19th century novel. In the painting, the main figure, recalling Huysmansin's aesthetically sensitive protagonist, is flanked by sumptuous vaulted ceilings, peacock feathers, and other highbrow trappings—only now, this aesthete must endure in the 21st century.