The danger isn’t in front of you, it’s around you. It’s invisible, indiscriminate and unyielding. It’s the noxious cocktail of aluminum, barium and strontium that hangs overhead, woven into the sky like atmospheric lacework. The uncertainty takes the form of an ominous robotic deity, bolts and all, presiding over the fate of a vulnerable earth like a gambler at a poker table. Such is the universe of Romanian artist [Mi Kafchin](http://www.nicodimgallery.com/artists/mi-kafchin), whose oil paintings render the fear of impending doom resulting from human fallibility, or forces out of human control.
Kafchin was born in Romania just months after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, when the massive socio-political and environmental aftereffects of the catastrophe barraged her childhood and developed in her a drive to explore beyond the limits of the marred cultural and geographic backyard in which she was raised.
_Chemtrails_ is Kafchin’s second solo exhibition at the Los Angeles and Bucharest-based [Nicodim Gallery.](http://www.nicodimgallery.com/) Ranging anywhere from five to ten feet in height and length, Kafchin draws from the monumentality and rich storytelling of pioneers like [Diego Rivera](https://www.diegorivera.org/diego-rivera-paintings.jsp) through the painting of a radioactive worker at Chernobyl and a gothic scene of Eastern Orthodox priests exorcising a woman in torment, to the cartoonish-inspired works of current artists like [Jonny Negron](https://www.instagram.com/jonnnynegron/?hl=en) through Kafchin’s bathing reptilian wino.
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_Chemtrails_ opens this Saturday from 6-8pm at Nicodim Gallery, 571 S Anderson Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033. The show runs from April 20th until June 1st.
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