One approaches the montages squinting, blinking, and straining to piece together their arrangements. No matter how hard the viewer attempts to “get it,” the works’ resolution remains just out of reach.

Mier’s retreat to the consolations of scrolling, a kind of peripateticism or journeying, led him to devise an exhibition dedicated to the “gest,” that is, a “tale of adventure” or a knightly exploit—from the Anglo-French geste, which means, among other things, “romance.”

In an age that sees allegations of forced sterilizations of immigrant women at a Georgia detention center, and a de facto medical experimentation being visited upon essential workers who are forced to work in this pandemic without adequate safety gear, McMillian offers us a devastating message and reminder.

Having attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ferrari Sheppard brings his formidable intellect and passionate engagement to this series of acrylic, charcoal, and gold-leaf portraits of Black girls and women spending time together and offering themselves moments of contemplation or repose. Sheppard constructs these figures out of kinetic bursts of color, scrabbles of charcoal stick, and weeping drips of paint.

Scott Benzel's new show at LA's Bel Ami gallery, Mindless Pleasures, gives viewers an important opportunity to contemplate the mysteries of deterministic chaos during this period of human history.