We dragged our asses out of bed the morning after the PURE White Party and made a sorry appearance at the hotel breakfast buffet, along with many equally sorry-looking dykes. After greeting us with a wry call of "Morning, ladies!" the gay male wait staff proved quite caring and sympathetic as they served us our coffee.

After the excesses of the previous night, the Cute-Little-Red-Headed-Girlfriend and I felt a need to, shall we say, cleanse the palette. So instead of attending one of the numerous pool parties on offer, we opted to visit a nearby art gallery, m modern. I've been interested in some of the exhibits they've held in the past but never made the trip out to Palm Springs expressly to visit. Now I was in the neighborhood.

m modern specializes in contemporary art and artists representing the movement known as "Pop Surrealism." There were two solo shows on display while we were there, Floating World, New Work from Pizz and Imagination is Salvation by Stone. I was intrigued by the title "Floating World" because of my interest in Japanese woodblock prints known by the name ukiyo-e (floating world).

Pizz's paintings resembled ukiyo-e prints in their emphasis on objects and figures of mass commercial desire: cars, models, pleasure spots. In the canvas I photographed here, I like the way the curves and deep purple color create unity among the various figures . The Cute-Little-Red-Headed-Girlfriend pointed out the striking flatness of Pizz's compositions, in contrast with their sinuous surface lines.

Unconstrained by city rents, m modern has the space to display a wide variety of other artists in addition to its current exhibits. We saw work by other artists I've written about here, such as Shephard Fairey, Shag and Tim Biskup. Seeing our interest, the gallery kindly opened up some closed-off areas that were under construction to us as well. In addition to paintings and prints, m modern displayed sculpture, toys and furniture. I stopped to take a picture of designer Karim Rashid's "Orgy Couch," below, which seemed relevant to my time at Dinah.

I had hoped to see work by the artist Yumiko Kayakuwa, who recently had a show at m modern, but had to settle on flipping through the pages of her book, The Wild Kingdom of Yumiko Kayukawa. I became interested in the work of two artists on display, Joey Remmers, whose paintings of dislocated women in graytone landscapes I thought were beautiful. Also Glenn Barr, whose pictures seethed color while mixing mythological themes with scenes of urban life.

View more photos at my page.