The Artist Who Made Hallucinatory Logic in the Sahara Desert

The last paintings Carole Caroompas (1946-2022) made have never been exhibited. Except for one outlier, that’s also true of a series she produced from 1972 to 1975. Those two bodies of work, Hallucinatory Logic in the Sahara Desert and The Glitter Paintings, bookend the seven series for which the L.A. artist is best known. These series are a cacophonous compendium of imagery from movies, music, and literature—all forged into Caroompas’ signature set ups. They are formally taut, heraldically staged compositions that scream silently, their garish palettes and paint-by-numbers bluntness pinballing your eyeballs every which way. Both series force you to ask tough questions about relationships between power and pleasure, compulsion and liberty, identity and its undoing. And, above all that, whether you’re a man, woman, or both, the works demand you consider what role you play in the messy mix of social norms and the punk disruption that Caroompas has orchestrated, viciously and relentlessly.