Artworks

Kim Dingle

Help Wanted - Restaurant Mandala, 2012/2020

Oil on canvas

48 x 48 in (121.9 x 121.9 cm)

(Inv# KD20-011)

Kim Dingle began her series of restaurant paintings in the mid-2000s, when the artist opened and operated a full-service restaurant, “Fatty’s” in her Eagle Rock, Los Angeles studio. Conceived of nearly accidentally, beginning with Dingle and her partner making coffee for themselves, it quickly expanded to serve the neighborhood, with Dingle working as the “Director of Wine and Janitorials”. A parallel for the artist’s own life, these works show the overwhelming conditions that led the artist to close the restaurant. Dingle’s restaurant mandala series, which is at the core of the forthcoming exhibition at the gallery, were started in 2008 in Dingle’s backroom studio. Dingle imposed the traditional, meditative form of the mandala, onto the restaurant floor plan, as an attempt to reclaim the repetitive nature of service as a therapeutic exercise.