I step forward to admire Smith’s oil painting on canvas. I gaze into the wide turquoise eyes of the furry main character of “Clumsy Soloist,” who holds a brightly colored, futuristic sort of banjo. I can almost hear the otherworldly instrument playing, clunky, off-tempo and eager to please. A song of longing and chaos. The painting is philosophical, political, farcical, and fantastical. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy meets The Never-Ending Story meets The Great Warrior Wall. It is a unique piece, but also very much fits into this exhibition full of art which reflects this moment of time in which we live, right now. Art inspired by the city of Los Angeles, set beside art from around the globe. Together, the works feel loud and rich and collective.

I can see other works in the show complement and contrast with “Clumsy Soloist.” The bright blues, reds, oranges, and pinks in Smith’s work, draw out similar bright colors, used in different ways, and pull them to the forefront. Like the springtime green jacket and puppeteer hand, in “I’m Not Your Puppet,” by Daisy Velasco, an LA artist who speaks in vibrant shades. A green reminiscent of the grass on the surrounding hills outside the museum. The bright colors in the collection, tell their story against the backdrop of the more muted-toned works. The burnt orange in Conrad Ruiz’s “Bye Bye Bulls Eye,” and the pale earthy browns and greens in Brek’s “Broken,” and Emiliana Henriquez’s “The Little Death” and “El Passo,” all Californian in a stark desert way. The colors, bright and muted, paint a larger picture of the pallet of our world.

Another contrast I see working to tell us the story of the RAIZ exhibition is that between the bluntly real and the enchantingly otherworldly. Imaginative, colorful, and broken universes, such as in Mr. B Baby’s “Love Makin”, call out in contrast to the intimate realism of a girl shaving her legs on a tiled bathroom floor sprouting leaves, in Genavee Gomez’s “Overgrown: Sprouting from the Underground Through the Concrete.” Together, a contemporary statement is created. About who we are as a people. About the severity of life and how creative expression, fantasy, and parallel worlds, are ways to make sense of it.

The NEXUS IV: RAIZ show feels like I am stepping into someone else’s dream, but not one person’s, a collective dream, which encapsulates the present human experience. The artworks call out to each other. They work in the way a great anthology of short stories works. There is cohesion, distinction, common themes, and contrasting ones, all strengthened, and deepened, by each other. Bound as the art of now. Showing the viewer that artworks, like artists, and people, are stronger, together.