David Pagel reviews the exhibition Mimi Lauter: Dining Out at Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, on view through October 27, 2012.

Pagel writes: "More than just about any other artist of her generation, Lauter excites our desire to know what we are looking at only to short-circuit such unimaginative, even mechanical activities. What results is an extraordinary dance between our capacity to think clearly and our knowledge that that’s not enough… Refusing to play into our culture’s current obsession with instantaneous gratification, Lauter’s slow, sensuous pictures of organic forms are Old World in their appreciation of subtlety and love of sophistication."