{"id":7080772,"date":"2026-10-09T10:23:27","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T10:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7080772"},"modified":"2026-10-09T10:23:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T10:23:27","slug":"messages-from-the-other-side-two-exhibitions-by-laura-whitcomb-in-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7080772","title":{"rendered":"Messages From the Other Side: Two Exhibitions by Laura Whitcomb in Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>An inspired message isn\u2019t simply delivered in sentences, visions or auditory moments: it is an unfolding process that repeats, expands and evolves. A spiral in time and ideas suggests growth outside simple repetition; it is, instead, an evolution, the gradual unfolding of creation. Progress finds itself branching out of recurring patterns of existence. The encounter of dictation and discarnate beings within artistic contexts fills forward-looking questions with expansive meaning. Progression of consciousness spirals onwards when inspired conversation finds sanctuary. Two recent exhibitions, \u201cDynaton: Convocation of Radiant Beings\u201d (Ch\u00e2teau Shatto, June 5 to Aug. 1, 2026) and \u201cDictation from the Other Side\u201d (Karma, July 23 to Sept. 12, 2026), both curated by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.labelcuratorial.com\">Laura Whitcomb<\/a>, the founder of Label Curatorial, examine how artists understood messages, presences, and nonordinary forms of intelligence as methodological. This allows the work a place to speak, expand and inspire change once more.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibitions are a cluster of signals and harmonics, reintegrating energized artistic development as they center complex ideas that once received a biased welcome. Calling attention to these ideas today proves these conversations now find sanctum amongst endless turmoil and inspire hope within the viewer. \u201cDynaton\u201d and \u201cDictation from the Other Side\u201d display works of astonishing scale: Marjorie Cameron, Louise Janin, Gertrude Abercrombie, Marian Spore Bush, Wolfgang Paalen, Jacqueline Lamba, Paulina Peavy, Unica Z\u00fcrn, Harry Partch, Aleksandra Ionowa, Gordon Onslow Ford, <a href=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/blog\/leonora-carrington-legacy\/\">Leonora Carrington<\/a>, Andr\u00e9 Masson, Roberto Matta and more visionaries congregate on walls and within display cabinets. Though separated in two different galleries, for two different presentations, within which rooms create more partitions, the togetherness of the ideologies and experiments, the communication and expansion of cosmologies grant a visual of the access to the other dimensions and planes of ideas. Like the people who created them, the thoughts that formed them and the beings that guided them into expression, the works presented are storied. Behind finalized pieces are networks of beliefs that emphasize divergent methods: cosmology, psychology, automatic practice, music, material experimentation, esotericism, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Each piece recounts a system of its own and the creations presented allow for the acknowledgment of different webs of awareness. Watching over it all is Laura Whitcomb\u2019s palpable refusal to let these lie still, stressing the reinstatement of dictation as a missing term in the history of modernist art. Both shows act as a moving petri dish of ideas, amongst which are found a constellation of hermetic, scientific, magical, <a href=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/blog\/remembering-hilma-af-klint\/\">Theosophic thinking<\/a>, which often parallel Indigenous cosmologies, participating in creating rest from an ego-driven world. Navigation throughout the rooms symbolizes paths and journeys of knowledge \u201cin the service of healing\u201d as forms and colors ebb and flow towards each other within and outside of the works. The artists, their pieces, the show then and the curation today can be experienced as interrogation: what can we continue to understand from it all now?<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/leonora-carrington-mouse-take-heed.jpg\" alt=\"Leonora Carrington cut paper figure with bird heads on a black ground, a small mouse and handwritten text beside it\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/leonora-carrington-mouse-take-heed-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/leonora-carrington-mouse-take-heed-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/leonora-carrington-mouse-take-heed.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1974\"\/><figcaption>Leonora Carrington, \u201cMouse take heed&#8230;,\u201d c. 1940s. Cut paper and thread on paper, 27 \u00d7 20 inches. Courtesy of The Estates of Luchita Hurtado and Lee Mullican; Ch\u00e2teau Shatto, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"revisiting-dynaton-at-ch\u00e2teau-shatto\">Revisiting \u201cDynaton\u201d at Ch\u00e2teau Shatto<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cRather than treating California as a provincial outpost, Dynaton approached it as a laboratory where a reverence for Indigenous Mesoamerican cosmologies, quantum physics, Jungian psychology and extraterrestrial imaginaries could cohabit the same pictorial field,\u201d says Whitcomb. Dynaton, founded by Onslow Ford, Wolfgang Paalen, Lee Mullican and fused with the philosophical writings of Jacqueline Johnson, was prompted by Wolfgang Paalen\u2019s \u201cFarewell au Surr\u00e9alisme\u201d (1942). The 1951 Dynaton show in San Francisco was a momentous show for California culture that anchored a group of artists\u2019 interest in developing the echoes of these discoveries and conscious reasoning, enabling a navigation of the world that was \u201cfluid, relational and no longer divisible into fixed subjects and objects.\u201d Rather than using the development in physics and science for destructive war-related intentions of the time, artists were adamant on exploring growing discoveries as a means to explore them in conjunction with specific Indigenous cosmologies, in an effort to seek new consciousness. Paalen and Onslow Ford\u2019s arrival to San Francisco from Mexico, by way of Europe, together with Mullican\u2019s return from military service, was a very willful offset against the Manhattan Project and the then trajectory of the scientific developments at Berkeley and the Bay Area. The most recent restaging of the exhibition, developed out of additional scholarship and archives from the Lucid Art Foundation, demonstrates the enlargement of the possibilities presented by the artists at the time. This new curation of the seminal show features the original artists as well as the work of Leonora Carrington, Jeanne Reynal, Harry Partch, Alice Rahon, Luchita Hurtado and others, who have also explored the different dimensions of these perspectives and participated in Paalen\u2019s Mexico-based publication DYN, \u201cwhich was a philosophical think tank for what would soon congeal as Dynaton. The exhibition also restores Jacqueline Johnson to the account of the group as its essential fourth figure: a writer whose philosophical texts made its complex ideas legible to a wider audience,\u201d says Whitcomb. In revisiting \u201cDynaton,\u201d the show lets visitors experience and understand its constant relevance.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/wolfgang-paalen-espace-libre-space-unbound-1941.jpg\" alt=\"Wolfgang Paalen painting of swirling pastel spirals in blue, yellow and violet\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/wolfgang-paalen-espace-libre-space-unbound-1941-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/wolfgang-paalen-espace-libre-space-unbound-1941-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/wolfgang-paalen-espace-libre-space-unbound-1941.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1318\"\/><figcaption>Wolfgang Paalen, \u201cEspace Libre (Space Unbound),\u201d 1941. Oil on canvas, 45 \u00d7 57.5 inches. Courtesy of Ch\u00e2teau Shatto, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/blog\/tag\/surrealism\/\">Surrealists<\/a> would circumvent the conscious world to bring the untouched subconscious to the surface; the artists of Dynaton enlarged its possibilities instead. An early member of the original Surrealist group, Gordon Onslow Ford sought greater independence from the restrictions within the artistic movement. Dynaton crystallized ideas beyond the visible world, unraveling progressive happenings between the artists of the group and the presences the artists on occasion attributed to discarnate sources, in the tradition of Breton\u2019s idea of Les Grands Transparents, welcoming a wider genealogy of ancient ideas. With this remaining one of the most underrecognized chapters in West Coast history, \u201cDynaton: Convocation of Radiant Beings\u201d at Ch\u00e2teau Shatto, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the original San Francisco Museum of Art show, adds a new twist to its curling, as it highlights the equally seminal work of the women who contributed to its expansion: Jacqueline Johnson, Eva Sulzer, Luchita Hurtado, Alice Rahon and Jeanne Reynal. Philosophies and artistic freedom collide within its contents, creating new geography found within radiating maps of conscious discoveries. The results feel within reach: an inspired macrocosm echoes bacterial investigations in Lee Mullican\u2019s Drawing 5 Series (1949) and Wolfgang Paalen\u2019s \u201cMessenger from the Three Poles\u201d (1949) adds shape to extraterrestrial existence, the lungs of a prophet carrying an energy that \u201cmove[s] our bodies and minds\u201d (DYN, 1942\u201344).<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/alice-rahon-untitled-1950.jpg\" alt=\"Alice Rahon painting in deep red with dark ridges and three small black circles, in a gilded frame\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/alice-rahon-untitled-1950-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/alice-rahon-untitled-1950-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/alice-rahon-untitled-1950.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1340\"\/><figcaption>Alice Rahon, \u201cUntitled,\u201d c. 1950. Mixed media on masonite, 17 \u00d7 22 inches. Courtesy of Ch\u00e2teau Shatto, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In \u201cTake a Sight,\u201d published in the original Dynaton catalog of 1951, the philosophical thinking of Jacqueline Johnson pinpoints the overall trajectory of the show:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cBeyond the edge of the known, beyond the corner where the mirror stops, there is the openness. And this openness invites us always toward a new unity of being, toward the unknown beginning to be known, out of which action finds again and again its proportion and its justness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/gordon-onslow-ford-future-of-the-falcon-1947.jpg\" alt=\"Gordon Onslow Ford composition of interlocking black, blue and pink shapes with small symbols\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/gordon-onslow-ford-future-of-the-falcon-1947-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/gordon-onslow-ford-future-of-the-falcon-1947-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/gordon-onslow-ford-future-of-the-falcon-1947.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1176\"\/><figcaption>Gordon Onslow Ford, \u201cFuture of the Falcon (Version 1),\u201d 1947. Casein on paper, 24 \u00d7 37.6 inches. Courtesy of The Lucid Art Foundation and Ch\u00e2teau Shatto, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Further evidence into this lacework of investigation is seen in the additional ways Gordon Onslow Ford participated in the reverberating effect of its catalog by closely collaborating with Harry Partch, the composer, instrument builder and philosopher who revived Pythagorean tuning, \u201can intervention that helped set the microtonal zeitgeist and profoundly reshaped experimental music,\u201d says Whitcomb, and \u201cgave Dynaton\u2019s return to ancient sources a reciprocal soundtrack, dually offering a gateway to access a lost consciousness.\u201d Standing amongst the rest of the archive, \u201cKithara I\u201d (1938\u201343), gives prominence to the force of Partch\u2019s harmonics. The exhibition visitors feel their comprehension of the origins of mystical musicality expanding as the ancient wisdom takes shape.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/harry-partch-kithra-i-1938-43.jpg\" alt=\"Harry Partch\u2019s Kithara I, a tall wooden stringed instrument on a stand\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/harry-partch-kithra-i-1938-43-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/harry-partch-kithra-i-1938-43-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/harry-partch-kithra-i-1938-43.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1600\"\/><figcaption>Harry Partch, \u201cKithara I,\u201d 1938 to 1943. Musical instrument, 76 \u00d7 46 \u00d7 16 inches. Courtesy of Ch\u00e2teau Shatto, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The 2026 exhibition, \u201cDynaton: Convocation of Radiant Beings,\u201d also asserts that Onslow Ford\u2019s 1942 lectures at The New School were a catalyst to a series of ideas that would then be known as The New American Painting. \u201cAccording to Martica Sawin, painters such as Rothko, Pollock and Motherwell were in attendance, hearing these ideas first-hand. In our account, those lectures become a crucial hinge &#8211; transmitting a British-Surrealist cosmology into the emerging Abstract-Expressionist milieu, before those same concepts are further developed on the West-Coast in the Dynaton Constellation,\u201d says Whitcomb. \u201cBy bringing this influence forward, we challenge Clement Greenberg\u2019s \u2018virgin birth\u2019 narrative of American postwar art and position the exhibition as a counterargument to histories that present postwar American abstraction as emerging apart from European Surrealism and its \u00e9migr\u00e9 networks.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/dictation-from-the-other-side-karma-installation.jpg\" alt=\"Installation view of Dictation from the Other Side at Karma, with small framed works around Juanita Guccione\u2019s Syzygy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/dictation-from-the-other-side-karma-installation-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/dictation-from-the-other-side-karma-installation-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/dictation-from-the-other-side-karma-installation.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\"\/><figcaption>Installation view, \u201cDictation from the Other Side,\u201d Karma, Los Angeles, 2026. Courtesy of Karma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"dictation-from-the-other-side-at-karma\">\u201cDictation from the Other Side\u201d at Karma<\/h2>\n<p>A sense of fluidity within the nurturing of a more uniting form of thinking lies in the interpretations of messages communicated to the artists, each challenging and confronting rigid ideals of the time. Not unlike the philosophies deliberated in \u201cDynaton,\u201d the artists in \u201cDictation from the Other Side\u201d suggest their physicality as being tools: ones that celebrate joint efforts to unravel spiritual truths in asking the \u201cunrational\u201d world for more generous clarity. By melding the living body with the momentary disappearance of conscious thinking, they gain access to the extraordinary self by embracing \u201csignals from beyond this world.\u201d Whitcomb points out, \u201cWhile both exhibitions\u2019 broader gesture can be understood as psychic resistance through art, \u2018Dictation from the Other Side\u2019s\u2019 particular historical focus is on the occult, esoteric, and Hermetic affiliations that shaped these artists\u2019 practices. That distinction clarifies both the basis of their shared inquiry and what is distinctive about the Karma Gallery show.\u201d In this exhibition, a room of artists expose a shared authorship through the unknown and accommodate silence into new beginnings. This was the case for the Surrealists\u2019 muse, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Smith (1861\u20131929), a medium whose visions and automatic writing she believed were encouraged by Leopold, a discarnate being who had accompanied her through her previous lives as Simandini Nayaka and Marie Antoinette. Like Smith, the channelers rendered \u201cthe other side\u201d perceptible through trance, giving form to the unseen presences with which the artists understood themselves to be in dialogue.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/juanita-guccione-syzygy-1980.jpg\" alt=\"Juanita Guccione painting of spheres, rays and floating figures in violet and blue\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/juanita-guccione-syzygy-1980-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/juanita-guccione-syzygy-1980-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/juanita-guccione-syzygy-1980.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1324\"\/><figcaption>Juanita M. Guccione, \u201cSyzygy,\u201d c. 1980. Acrylic on canvas, 45 \u00d7 56 1\/4 inches. Courtesy of Karma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The exhibition gathers works by artists who answered fascism\u2019s mobilization of symbols, ritual, and collective belief with hermetic study and magical practice. These works by Seligmann, Donati, Franc\u00e9s, Matta and Masson, place them as compatible allies for resistance against dominance. Such is demonstrated by the presence of \u201cFist\u201d (1947), a sculpture created by Donati and used as a talisman in an Enochian ritual offered for the launch of Seligmann\u2019s \u201cThe Mirror of Magic.\u201d As seen with Dynaton emerging in San Francisco as the group\u2019s direct refusal of the use of the scientific advancements, Whitcomb mentions the comparison with these Surrealists\u2019 \u201ccountering fascism through the psychic incantations of art.\u201d The divided rooms in \u201cDictation from the Other Side\u201d take the viewer on a diversified group exploration of spiritual discoveries. In keeping with the celebration of what can be gained from unearthliness, the exhibition spotlights postwar America too. New research into the Lionel and Joanne Ziprin archive reveals their Lower East Side as a crucial center for Kabbalistic and Hermetic study. The harmonic engine within its probing housed Harry Smith, Jordan Belson, Bruce Conner and others. One encounters film, poetry, jazz, assemblage and small-press publication and fruit of this labor, with Charlie Parker as a fundamental player, as seen through the work of Wallace Berman, Gertrude Abercrombie, Arthur Monroe and others. Additionally, \u201cPrince of Serpents\u201d (1965) pitches itself as a clear mirror of Cameron, a suggestion of the artist\u2019s mercurial double who considered herself a vehicle for the spirit of Babalon. Effervescent with spirituality and possibility is Betye Saar\u2019s \u201cEnchantress and Twilight Bird\u201d (1964), the inspired motion behind music sings itself into new visuals through Ted Joans\u2019 \u201cBird Lives\u201d (n.d.) and possibilities fragment into new horizons through the collage work of George Herms, \u201cJuggler\u201d (1966). Gertrude Abercrombie watches over with \u201cSelf Portrait\u201d (1935). After a lifelong study of symbolic forms and her participation in the Musicalist movement, Louise Janin returns to the West Coast for the first time in more than a century, with her Cosmogrammes, made in Paris, offering a rare opportunity to encounter her work. The intermediary between the tidings of the artists who birthed the works cradles the infinity of their ideas, tames the unfathomable, and, as asserted by the curator, show the final forms \u201cnot as biographical curiosities, but rigorous methodologies.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/marjorie-cameron-prince-of-serpents-1965.jpg\" alt=\"Small Marjorie Cameron painting of a figure with blue hair, in a light wood frame\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/marjorie-cameron-prince-of-serpents-1965-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/marjorie-cameron-prince-of-serpents-1965-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/marjorie-cameron-prince-of-serpents-1965.jpg 1358w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1358\" height=\"1536\"\/><figcaption>Marjorie Cameron, \u201cPrince of Serpents,\u201d 1965. Casein on mat paper, 7 1\/2 \u00d7 4 3\/4 inches. Courtesy of Karma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The mediumistic works of Madge Gill, Paulina Peavy, Louise Janin, Unica Z\u00fcrn, Aleksandra Ionowa, Marian Spore Bush and others command inspired attention. \u201cTheosophical and mystical explorations that anchor the broader spiritual lineage of the exhibition are underscored by Louise Janin, Juanita Guccione, and Beatrice Wood, along with Anna Zem\u00e1nkov\u00e1, whose work offers a powerful example of an engagement with the Urpflanze, the primal plant understood as a source of imaginative creation and a portal to other worlds,\u201d says Whitcomb. Entities interconnect within the automatisms presented, \u201caccidental\u201d shapes grow faces and nature becomes alive with clairvoyance through the eternalization of messages the artists attributed to varied intelligence and discarnate beings. From the works selected we learn courage in presenting subversive risk in the name of revolutionary ideas. Engagement with these seemingly immobile journeys preserve the greatness of strategies that celebrate precious humanity neglected by the societies during which they emerged. Paulina Peavy\u2019s masks embody portals towards these different paths. The technique with which they came into shape underlined the deeply personal road Peavy never strayed from, and on which she encountered vital guidance and solace from the asserted belief in a spirit guide, Lacamo. Marian Spore Bush\u2019s contact with entities referred to as \u201cThey,\u201d with whom she worked in dialog with, culminating into impressive detail and technique as seen in \u201cThe Pawn Broker (Three Vultures)\u201d (1933\u201334). The guiding entity Madge Gill referred to as Myrninerest is welcomed and eternalized through her generous body of work. Magical paths also present mystical ceramics, as the vessels created by Beatrice Wood, whose inspirations varied from Dada to Theosophy to Eastern Mysticism are offered for admiration amongst the gentle botanics of Aleksandra Ionowa and the complex bestiary of Unica Z\u00fcrn. This assemblage shows women artists who developed disciplined visual, literary, and material procedures for working with trance, automatism, mediumship, dreams, and chance.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/anna-zemankova-untitled-1970s.jpg\" alt=\"Anna Zem\u00e1nkov\u00e1 pastel of two tall plantlike forms in orange and green\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/anna-zemankova-untitled-1970s-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/anna-zemankova-untitled-1970s-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/anna-zemankova-untitled-1970s.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1978\"\/><figcaption>Anna Zem\u00e1nkov\u00e1, \u201cUntitled,\u201d c. 1970s. Pastel on paper, 24 3\/4 \u00d7 17 3\/4 inches. Courtesy of Karma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"signals-from-beyond-this-world\">Signals From Beyond This World<\/h2>\n<p>In \u201cDictation From the Other Side,\u201d the echo of a question asked by the curator surrounds the viewer: \u201chow does modern art history change when form is understood as received rather than invented?\u201d Considering the flowing explorations between both shows, this could also be asked off the back of visiting \u201cDynaton.\u201d The egalitarian spaces boast work demonstrating the resistance towards dominant values and the far-reaching capability of consciousness as a driving force towards positive change. The different disciplines and variation of inspiration, guides, channelers and mediums don\u2019t create a boundary between the different participants; they perform cumulative strength instead. The evocations of an oasis of progress and a sanctuary of thought entail being granted permission to belong, to speak and to erupt. A quote by Gertrud Sandqvist in \u201cThe Great Affirmations\u201d feels particularly poignant:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In one way or another, the inner image, or visual idea, has to be transported to the outside world, so that it can be shared, and be visible to others. This transposition can be done using anything at all &#8211; signs, symbols, figures, colour fields, letters, words. It can be done with allusions, with invocations, with things that are not visual but aural. The process can be made to follow certain rules, which the artist sets for herself, and can be mingled with new, complex entities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Whitcomb concludes, \u201cTaken together, \u2018Dynaton: Convocation of Radiant Beings\u2019 and \u2018Dictation from the Other Side\u2019 make a case for turning toward the unknown and the ancient wisdom of the perennial philosophy\u2014not as an escape from history, but as a salvific resource for humanity at what may be its most perilous hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/unica-zurn-untitled-1966.jpg\" alt=\"Unica Z\u00fcrn ink drawing of intertwined creatures and faces\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/unica-zurn-untitled-1966-480.webp 480w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/_img\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/unica-zurn-untitled-1966-960.webp 960w, https:\/\/awomensthing.org\/media\/2026\/laura-whitcomb-dynaton-dictation\/unica-zurn-untitled-1966.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 781px) 100vw, 43.5rem\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1936\"\/><figcaption>Unica Z\u00fcrn, \u201cUntitled,\u201d 1966. Ink on paper, 15 \u00d7 9 7\/8 inches. Courtesy of Karma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Laura Whitcomb\u2019s exhibitions read like a set of correspondence between natural and supernatural sciences. The curation proposes the continuity of forces beyond rational thinking, as the information gained from a number of systems form parts of another. Here, the artists have done more than produce the silhouette of an idea; as they were shouting a desire to continue to stage extraordinary happenings, they eternalized its breath and let freedom and liberation spiral onwards towards dynamic consciousness.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An inspired message isn\u2019t simply delivered in sentences, visions or auditory moments: it is an unfolding process that repeats, expands and evolves. A spiral in time and ideas suggests growth outside simple repetition; it is, instead, an evolution, the gradual unfolding of creation. Progress finds itself branching out of recurring patterns of existence. The encounter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7080773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[14002,18313,6425,14001,20122,2641,241364],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7080772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-angeles","tag-exhibitions","tag-laura","tag-los","tag-messages","tag-side","tag-whitcomb"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Messages From the Other Side: Two Exhibitions by Laura Whitcomb in Los Angeles - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7080772\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Messages From the Other Side: Two Exhibitions by Laura Whitcomb in Los Angeles - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An inspired message isn\u2019t simply delivered in sentences, visions or auditory moments: it is an unfolding process that repeats, expands and evolves. 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