“That’s her favorite art gallery—I’m not going there anymore,” I’d tell myself despite Corey Helford Gallery exhibiting artists I enjoy like Billy Norrby, Camille Rose Garcia, Herakut, Silvia Ji, and Martin Wittfooth.

I said that for a long time. I wouldn’t even drive within half a mile of her West L.A. apartment after our breakup. And she lived on Venice Blvd. Magnetic repulsion made Washington Blvd my best friend for a while.

Two weeks ago, I told myself, “that was her favorite gallery—and it still could be—but I want to go again,” because Martin Wittfooth was presenting his new series The Archaic Revival and I’d never seen his paintings in person. I’d seen scanned images online, shrunken to display on my computer and my phone. I wanted to view his oil paintings in four dimensions, in real time, in an environment I could inhabit. And I wanted to be free of the mythology that Corey Helford Gallery was hers somehow, when it was for anyone curious about pop surrealist, low brow, street and contemporary art.

— Q.D. from Culver City, CA

Ξ

Art and magic are no different. But we are.

We wrote the 5 mysteries.

We’re from another world.