twisted tales

Erin Dunn · Jenn Berger · Jessika Wood ·  Tanya Haden · Audrey Jackson

December 6, 2025 - January 31, 2026

Los Angeles, CA — CMAY Gallery is pleased to announce TWISTED TALES, an exhibition that brings together five contemporary artists—four based in Los Angeles and one from New York—whose figurative works share a vivid sense of imagination and psychological intrigue. Each artist constructs a unique visual world where narrative, emotion, and symbolism intertwine. While their approaches vary in style and medium, all of the works possess an illustrative quality that tells unusual stories—playful, haunting, and deeply personal.

Jenn Berger’s figure paintings transform everyday people into uncanny, emotionally charged presences—blurring the line between portraiture and narrative to evoke both familiarity and strangeness.

Erin Dunn’s work engages with the body—especially the feminine body—through imagery drawn from ritual, myth, and fairy tale. Her paintings and mixed-media works balance playfulness with intensity, exploring the intersections of material, narrative, and identity.

Tanya Haden’s art weaves whimsical, cartoonish, and surreal elements into layered compositions that reveal underlying themes of vulnerability, intimacy, and power dynamics.

Audrey Jackson’s paintings, inspired by personal memories and film photographs of loved ones, layer silhouetted figures and cryptic symbols into dreamlike compositions that channel emotional memory into visual form.

Jessika Wood’s paintings and ceramics transform domestic interiors, figures, and objects into vividly colored, subtly surreal narratives. Her boldly patterned canvases and hand-painted vessels alike infuse the familiar with whimsy, emotion, and quiet psychological tension.

Curated by Carl Berg and Virginia Anton, TWISTED TALES highlights artists emerging from diverse MFA programs: Jenn Berger (University of California, Irvine), Erin Dunn (Rhode Island School of Design), Tanya Haden (California Institute of the Arts), Audrey Jackson (Claremont Graduate University), and Jessika Wood (ArtCenter College of Design).

Following the curatorial approach of CMAY Gallery’s recent exhibition Abstraction Discovered and Rediscovered, TWISTED TALES continues the exploration of artists from different art schools and generations. This exhibition examines the variety of influences, processes, and personal mythologies that shape each artist’s creative journey, showcasing the breadth of experimentation and storytelling within contemporary figurative art.

The exhibition brings together five distinctive artistic practices, each marked by a unique visual language and sensibility. As with every CMAY group show, TWISTED TALES creates a space for dialogue—inviting viewers to compare, contrast, and reflect on the diverse paths that have led these artists to their current moment. Collectively, the works illuminate the richness and complexity of figuration in contemporary painting, where narrative and imagination remain vital sources of artistic inquiry.

TWISTED TALES functions as both a curatorial exploration and a conceptual proposition. It intertwines discovery, re-evaluation, and dialogue—situating artists from varied positions within the art scene and underscoring the enduring vitality of narrative-based, imaginative painting today.