LOS ANGELES – I bear in mind when the smoke plume from the Palisades and Eaton fires left LA in January, its black veil drifting out to sea like a hand loosening its grip. Just lately, it feels just like the smoldering mass has returned as an ICE-shaped fist tightening from the coast to the San Fernando Valley. Hearth and smoke have turn into a logo of civic rebellion, from incinerated Waymos and cop automobiles to the grey clouds that burst out of the LAPD’s tear fuel canisters and munitions. The shifting symbolism of this risky ingredient in LA is the topic of the group present Burn Me! at The Field. Curated by Molly Tierney, together with the gallery’s proprietor, Mara McCarthy, and her father, artist Paul McCarthy, it took form after the McCarthy household and Tierney misplaced their properties within the Eaton blaze. The ensuing exhibition examines how fireplace has formed artwork and life west of the San Bernardino Mountains — within the final six months and much earlier.
Artworks half-destroyed in January dot the gallery’s entrance rooms, intermingling with sculptures and work that study the intersections between fireplace and social or environmental change. Jason Rhoades’s “Recession Era Perfect World Park Bench” (2001), beforehand a duplicate of an uncomfortable city park bench, now bears Eaton’s scars: The aluminum tubes that shaped its again and seat at the moment are sagging and disjointed at jagged angles, whereas the L-shaped cinderblocks supporting these bars are singed brown. Equally, the artist’s “Perfect World Swing Set” (2000–2001), a easy playground construction, seems to be like a post-apocalyptic relic, its black patina evoking suburban decline. For his Excellent World challenge, first put in in Hamburg in 1999, Rhoades positioned a pristine duplicate of a whole city on an elevated Plexiglas platform supported by precarious, disorderly aluminum scaffolding, which he in comparison with a “Garden of Eden” lofted over “Hell.” The broken paintings eerily displays this assertion.
Molly Tierney, “Eight Flags” (2017–current), rags, flags, years, particles, oil, enamel, concrete on canvas
The works in Burn Me! use fireplace, deliberately or unintentionally, to embody at this time’s social, political, and environmental struggles. Molly Tierney’s “Eight Flags” (2017–current) is a virtually floor-to-ceiling grid of American flags, their stars and stripes lined in black oil, particles, and dirt, a veneer that makes the floor seem burned. This purposeful aesthetic impact (the work was not broken within the fires) conjures current political sentiment and environmental devastation without delay. Elsewhere, Paul McCarthy’s bronze sculpture “Ship of Fools, Ship Adrift, Hummel Box, Affected” (2010/2025) riff on Plato’s “Ship of Fools” parable, which charts the cursed journey of a ship’s dysfunctional crew. Now, McCarthy’s crowd of inept seamen are coated in an ashy crust, surrounded by a bent, fire-damaged hull. The work’s current situation reveals one other, modern story of poor management, its char serving as proof of insufficient metropolis wildfire preparation and governmental failure to staunch local weather change-fueled disasters.
One lacking work haunts the exhibition: Wally Hedricks’s protest portray “Burn Me!” (1990), which featured the titular phrase jubilantly painted over an American flag—created in response to the “culture wars” and George H.W. Bush’s conservatism on the time. Destroyed in January, it now holds manifold meanings, even in its absence. Within the midst of seemingly unending environmental and political crises, it feels increasingly more troublesome for voices to be heard, and artwork to be seen — whether or not that’s as a result of it’s destroyed by fireplace or maced by police. With Burn Me!, The Field posits a technique ahead. These artworks develop underneath immense pure and unnatural menace, boasting their scars as new metaphors for modern life in LA.
Paul McCarthy, “Ship of Fools, Ship Adrift, Hummel Box, Affected” (2010/2025), bronze with black patina, version of 10 plus 3 AP
Set up view of Burn Me! at The Field, Los Angeles. Foreground: Paul McCarthy and Jason Rhoades, “Snail, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother…” (2002–4), fiberglass
Set up view of Burn Me! at The Field, Los Angeles. Foreground: Jason Rhoades, “Perfect World Swing Set” (c. 2000–2001), polished aluminum tubes, chains, steel, melted plastic
Set up view of Burn Me! at The Field, Los Angeles. Wall: Paul McCarthy, “NPP1P2, WAR PIG, Drawing Session” (2025), 2 Channel 4K video, 16:50 minutes.
Wally Hedrick, “III Vietnam Series” (1957), oil on canvas
Molly Tierney, “Untitled (Christmas Tree Lane)” (2018), melted plastic bins
Johanna Went and Jasmine Rudoph, “Rage Craft #10: Project 2025” (2025), embroidery thread on muslin
Paul McCarthy, “Walla Walla Paul Leg Table (working title)” (c. 2015), wooden, bronze
Burn Me! continues at The Field (805 Traction Avenue, Arts District, Los Angeles) by July 5. The exhibition was curated by Mara McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, and Molly Tierney.
