Contemporary Artist Takes Aim at Wellness Culture for L.A. Exhibition: “Art Can Be a Shift in Perception”

Wellness, self-help and “woo woo” culture are the backbone of Nora Turato’s new exhibition so, naturally, it brings the contemporary artist to Los Angeles for her first West Coast outing. Hosted by Wilshire Boulevard gallery Sprüth Magers, it’s not true!!! stop lying! runs from Feb. 28-April 27, and finds Turato playing with words and phrases by pulling text from about anywhere she finds inspiration — social media posts, commercials, movies, billboards and viral trends. She then places the text across enamel panels or paints them extra-large on walls. The former graphic designer even created a custom font for the pieces.

One wall features the word “authenticity” and another “haha” in supersized letters. The enamel pieces showcase phrases like “speaking my TRUTH!!!”, “become pointless,” “SLEEP / it’s good for you! and “this isn’t me / I need some healing.” The Croatia-born artist who is based in Amsterdam also zeroed in on movies like the Peter Sellers-starrer Being There, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Todd Haynes’ Safe starring Julianne Moore for additional pieces. For example, one reads, “I’M GOING CLEAR / total organization is necessary!” It was pulled from the scene in Taxi Driver that finds Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle flexing an arm and saying, “From now on, it’ll be total organization. Every muscle must be tight.”

What does it all mean? Well, the answer is complicated. It’s social commentary and critique, of course, but it’s also personal. “Basically, I’m interested in how can I expand my awareness of myself from within. I think that’s kind of what all these things get at, and it comes naturally from me being involved with these [practices],” says, referring to a journey of healing that started when she felt the pressure of a big show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art a few years back. She had been working with veteran Hollywood dialect coach Julie Adams on a live performance piece that finds her playing many roles with varying vocal patterns. “I was really tense in New York, and hit a wall and thought, OK, I need to get into therapy. I needed to start working on myself. I was asking myself, why am I not happy? It led me to want to look inward.”

Turato did a deep dive into therapy, breath work, meditation, yoga, psychedelics to help her open up and “make sense of things” happening in her life, in the media and beyond. “There’s clarity that comes,” she says, “but once you start noticing all of the typography around you, all of these messages that you’re constantly being fed, it can feel really intense and influence you on a subconscious level.” Language, she adds, “can be like a mirror. One of the great things about being an artist is that you can always work out what you see in the reflection through your art. Art can be a shift in perception.”

For “authenticity” and “haha,” she got inspired after noticing the push by advertisers to present an ideal of the authentic self. “Be you or do you,” she explains. “I even saw a billboard for Jennifer Lopez’s new album, ‘This is Me…Now,” which seems to be selling an identity. What is authentic? Not even babies are authentic, which is a very simple and basic thing. It’s not Jennifer Lopez. Authentic is being sold to us as an identity, like an egoic interpretation of how you should be.” ‘

Sprüth Magers will also a public reception for it’s not true!!! stop lying! from 5-8 p.m. on Feb. 27, during which time Turato will present the themes as part of a live 40-minute performance piece that finds her metamorphosing into a series of characters all with distinct vocal intonations and body movements, similar to the MoMA show and originally commissioned by Performa, New York, in 2023. (The show is timed to Frieze Los Angeles, where Turato will also have a piece on view.) “It’s a bit like TikTok, switching channels or just scrolling,” Turato explains of the performance. “It uses that structure where you never really get anywhere but you’re experiencing a story and then another story but you never finish it. It hypnotizes the mind.”

It’s Turato’s first time on the West Coast and launching her show in L.A. feels like a perfect fit based on early feedback. “Everyone kept telling me, ‘Oh, this show is so L.A.,’” she says with a laugh, while wearing an accessory she just picked up in the city, a blue baseball cap with the letters L.A. on it. Turato’s L.A. agenda includes opening the exhibition, going for a hike and maybe some sight-seeing stops. She’s already checked out one of the buzziest tourist destinations of the moment: Erewhon. “I was very curious about it, but I got really stressed out the second I walked inside.”