Artificial Intelligence Gets Uppity The future is closer than we think. Yours Truly has been binge-watching the series Humans on Amazon Prime, which has a remarkable cast playing “Synths,” or Synthetics, in a future-world where AI androids take over the menial and...
SHOPTALK
NEW FAIRS IN TOWN, PART 2 I don’t know about you, but Yours Truly is still recovering from our robust art fair season, when for one weekend in February we had five fairs bubbling up around the city. Seeing wonderful work was bliss, driving through traffic in the rain...
COMING: Joshua Treenial 2019
The Joshua Treenial returns this weekend, April 12-14, with a new slate of artists who look at the desert -- its people, its environment, and its off-the-grid spirit in “Paradise::Parallax.” One never knows what to expect at this home-grown desert art expo – anything...
SHOPTALK
Photo LA & LA Art Show Our eyeballs may fall out, there’s so very much to see with this cornucopia of art fairs in SoCal this winter. It started with Photo LA (Jan. 31–Feb. 3) returning after a year-hiatus and leaving the cramped Reef/LA Mart downtown for the...
Vivid Vocabularies
Outsider artists, or untrained artists, have been variously labeled Primitive, Naïve, Visionary and Self-Taught. One of the things I like most about such artists is their distinct and fully-imagined worldview, a consciousness that exists without being overly precious...
Jane Brucker’s “Unravel” @ Baik Art
Jane Brucker’s work has often revolved around memory and how it resides in objects, especially objects that have been worn or used by people we have known. Incorporating notions of ephemerality and decay, her work has a poignancy that touches on our sense of loss. ...
SHOPTALK
LA ARTS DISTRICT SANS ARTISTS LA, LA, our art scene is changing so rapidly. On a recent visit to the Arts District for a preview at Hauser & Wirth, I was struck by how tidy the neighborhood is looking these days. When that gallery opened two-and-a-half years ago,...
Q&A with Stacen Berg
Stacen Berg, senior director at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, joined the gallery in 2011. Founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, the gallery now boasts branches in multiple cities, including London, Hong Kong and New York. When...
SHOPTALK
AI WEIWEI IN LA We haven’t seen much of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in these parts since LACMA presented his installation “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Head” in 2012. This fall he returned with a well-orchestrated splash—with three high-profile exhibitions opening in LA, all...
FILM: “Kusama Infinity”
Who said being an artist was easy? Today Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known as the top-selling woman artist in the world, but it’s hard to believe how many difficulties she had to overcome before she got to where she is now. Or perhaps, not so hard to...
Hammer’s Made in L.A. Comes of Age
“Made in L.A.” has finally hits its stride—this fourth edition feels fresh with discoveries, both of artists you may know and many you may not. It features 32 artists, from emerging ones with promising talent to the exciting re-emergence of an artist who fell from the...
SHOPTALK
JUDY CHICAGO IN PASADENA “If men had babies, there would be thousands of images of the crowning,” Judy Chicago said in the early 1980s. The crowning is the moment the baby’s head begins to emerge from the birth canal. During a packed talk at the Women’s City Club of...
SHOPTALK
PST AFTERMATH “An investment in the arts is an investment in our future,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti in conjunction with the release of a report on the economic benefits of PST: LA/LA. The initiative “attracted millions of visitors, supported thousands of good-paying...
Alexandra Hedison
Windows often appear in art, sometimes as framing devices, sometimes as apertures to other worlds. In her new photographic series “The In Between,” Alexandra Hedison has come upon a way to do both, using ready-made vignettes. While exploring the streets of Paris, a...
David Henry Hwang’s “Soft Power”
Soft Power is a very timely musical about the uses and misuses of power, a profoundly ambitious satire in which noted playwright David Henry Hwang tries to explain the dismal results of the 2016 elections. Hwang is no shrinking violet when it comes to tough...
Carmen Argote: Riding It Out
When Carmen Argote was 17, her father took off for Guadalajara, Mexico, back to his hometown and his dream of living in a house he had designed for himself and his family. However, his wife felt quite settled in Los Angeles—their two children had grown up here, her...
SHOPTALK: Current Art Events in LA
LOS ANGELES: A FAIR DESTINATION This winter The Other Art Fair (March 15–18) tested its feet in LA waters—launched by Saatchi Art, the online art gallery, the fair is billed as “An Art Fair for a New Generation of Art Buyers.” On the weekend the crowds came in droves...
An Evening with Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson strolled onstage in a flowing orange cloak over black jacket and skinny pants—perhaps a character out of Harry Potter? “I’m sorry I’m wearing my bathrobe,” the multi-media artist quickly apologized as she sat down. “I caught the flu, and I’m still...