Challenging traditional conceptions of photography, Klea McKenna creates embossed photograms based on haptic, rather than visual, impressions. In a darkroom, she generates each image by pressing light-sensitive paper against an object and thus capturing the item's...
Hiba Schahbaz; Sharif Farrag
Two artists exploring aspects of their Islamic heritage and personal identities converge in a pair of enchanting shows at New Image Art Gallery. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Brooklyn-based artist Hiba Schahbaz applies her rigorous undergraduate training in...
Sarah Cromarty
"WISHFUL THINKIN'," the title of Sarah Cromarty's show at Klowden Mann, indicates its tenor of hope against hope. Cromarty layers cardboard, digital prints, paint, glitter, rhinestones and sundry other materials to create 3D paintings affecting appearances of escapist...
William Lamson
Channeling Death Valley into downtown LA, William Lamson has transformed Make Room into "Badwater," an ecologically themed installation as poetically evocative as it is scientifically ingenious. Via an elaborate system of pumps, fans, hoses, timers and other...
Robert Yarber
Robert Yarber's spellbinding nocturnal realms feel at once familiar and otherworldly. Each of his paintings is far weirder than the sum of its parts, with generic characters and unplaceable urban locales coalescing into bizarre, morbid scenarios. Yarber's mysterious...
Akunnittinni
Prints and drawings by three generations of Inuit women offer a fascinating glimpse into remote Canadian Arctic life at the Armory Center for the Arts. "Akunnittinni," the show's Inuktitut title translated as "between us," fittingly summarizes its convergence of a...
Jay DeFeo
Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) is popularly epitomized by her monumental masterwork The Rose (1958-66), whose counterpart, The Jewel (1959), is on permanent display at LACMA. It's rather misleading, for her diverse oeuvre encompasses far more than just those heftily textured...
Jonny Negron
Aftermath of Puerto Rico flooding looms large in the backgrounds of Jonny Negron's psychically charged scenes. Indoors and outdoors, water is everywhere. Resembling graphic novel or zine illustrations, Negron's eleven gouache-on-paper paintings in "A Small Map of...
Sam Davis & Josh Mannis
Watch out! Don't tread on the dead rats; they're part of the show. "Macrosolutions to Megaproblems" is a small but captivating assortment of quirky pieces by Sam Davis and Josh Mannis at M+B. At first, you might be so distracted by Mannis' attention-grabbing paintings...
Joshua Hagler; Elizabeth Dorbad
Just as sordid episodes leak bit by bit from grand American narratives, a morbid sense of truculence stealthily emerges from Joshua Hagler's bright palette and superficially quaint old-time imagery. His show "The River Lethe" at the Brand Library encompasses two...
Sara Berman
Contorting harlequins bow and sprawl over pastel chairs, rugs, walls and potted houseplants in Sara Berman's paintings. Are these mysteriously leotarded people lost in reverie, engaged in awkward stretching exercises, or merely lolling indolently? It's impossible to...
Norm Laich
Many conceptual artists employ sign painting techniques, but few execute such craftsmanship on their own. That's partly what renders Norm Laich so intriguing. Overlapping shows at ICA LA and AWHRHWAR complement one another to provide insight into Laich's work as...
Yasmine Diaz
Just inside the house comprising the Women's Center for Creative Work is a cozy den that, except for its moody lighting and nostalgic decor, seems to fit right into its residential setting. Though appearing to have long existed in its current furnished state, this...
Torbjørn Rødland; Will Boone
However ordinary an entity may seem, Torbjørn Rødland will find a way to pose it, light it and accent it so as to produce, as if by alchemy, an uncanny photo that gradually unhinges you the more you gaze. See, for instance, Voodoo Shoe (2017, pictured above), which...
Alexa Gilweit
Promise of the past rudely collides with dread of the future in Alexa Gilweit's nostalgic Americana scenes viewed through dystopic lenses. Satirically titled "Big Winners," Gilweit's show at AM Gallery consists of paintings inspired by mid-century ads depicting...
Mattea Perrotta; Jonathan Ryan
Mattea Perrotta abstracts figures and Jonathan Ryan abstracts architecture; their juxtaposition at The Landing educes the two painters' similar manners of distilling contemplative moods from their divergent subjects. Ryan's buildings frequently assume anthropomorphic...
Pippa Garner
There is irony in donning a mass-produced item that ostensibly projects one's individuality via a saucy slogan coined by somebody else. Pippa Garner uses her art like a knife to cut straight to the revelatory heart of such prosaic absurdities. Under her satiric lens,...
Alexandra Carter
Alexandra Carter's current show, "All gods are hot," is a maze of artworks so tightly packed that one can hardly turn around without colliding with translucent paintings adorning the walls and hanging from the ceiling at Radiant Space. Even so, cramped quarters seem...