A bright pop fantasy world of animals, insects, and highly sexualized Asian women with full pouting lips and large docile eyes looking right at you: defying, objectifying, imploring. Yumiko Kayukawa’s exhibit “Extinction” at LA LUZ DE JESUS GALLERY is at first glance escapist, but her erotic sex kittens offer more arousing thoughts than sex. Kayukawa brings you back to earth, to the mortal world, where sex, life and death are interrelated. Kayukawa applies the word “extinction” to animals and through this application she faces her own mortality. She says, “ Extinction is an extremely scary word. I put that fear into my consciousness to help myself face it.” To be human is to be as fragile and delicate as her subject matter. It is no fairy tale where mermaids swim with fluffy baby polar bears, or highly erotic females embrace cute-faced sloths. By aligning the idyllic and the fantastic, Kayukawa hauntingly (indeed even poetically) jolts the viewer into a consciousness where life and death are in constant odds, and instead of soothing your discomfort, those sexualized femme fatales look at you as if the object to be pitied is you. For in truth their acrylic and ink are far more immortal.Catch the exhibit at LA LUZ DE JESUS GALLERY on Hollywood Blvd, Los Feliz