Bataclan, 2018, oil on canvas.

Moving, vibrant, and visionary, Susan Ossman’s States of Exception, at Cal State LA’s Ronald H. Silverman Gallery, serves as both a recent retrospective of the artist’s work, and as a poignant and prescient reminder of the varied circumstances and situations that affect not just our personal lives but all human life.

-Genie Davis

Ossman is preoccupied with space. Both physical and metaphorical. The work has a strong sense of place, but at the same time, the depictions of fabric produce a feeling of impermanence and shape‑shifting evocative of transient lives where landscape, language and a sense of self are forever being renegotiated.

-Natalia Zagorska-Thomas