Light up a cigarette and enjoy the party—the title of France-Lise McGurn’s solo exhibition here, “Mondo Throb,” signifies a rhythmic, vibrating, and discotheque-style environment. Mondo, which means “world” in Italian, is highlighted through the visceral connotations produced by the strong sound of something throbbing.

Utilizing a mix of gesso, oil, acrylic, markers, and spray paint, McGurn constructed much of the show in situ, producing Soft, psychic, sweet surprise (all works cited, 2016) a wall mural, and several untitled floor drawings. They cavort and intersect with a number of (mostly) studio-made paintings, two of which are Aerobics gives you herpes and Puttanesca, where we take in the soft lines of hair, naked limbs, and genitals intersecting and fusing with one another. The artist’s renderings of freedom and licentiousness create an immersive, eroticized environment. The consistency of McGurn’s repeated imagery and palette, alongside the evocation of a time-based and performative practice, intersects with her club-night residency called DAISIES at Jim Lambie’s Poetry Club in Glasgow. Co-run with Katie Shannon, they invite associated artists and DJs to add to the establishment’s ever-evolving decor.

The predominant sensation explored in McGurn’s disobedient, sensuous, and unruly exhibition is ecstasy, in all of its marvelous and multifarious guises—carnal, divine, euphoric. By eschewing didacticism or formal interpretation, McGurn has created an evocative and extended sense of time and place that appeals to a common sense of vital force.

— Philomena Epps