Articles
In Search of a City
“Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.” —Dorothy Parker This is a column about the Los Angeles art world. Or at least it was supposed to be. I successfully pitched this column on Wednesday December 4th, 2024 and my editor assigned me a deadline of Saturday, December 7th. “But I can’t write about the art world in Los Angeles with a two-day turnaround while everyone is at Art Basel,” I complained. “Nothing is going on.” She assured me I’d come up with something, but instead of coming up with something, I clicked around online looking for openings/readings/parties/raves I might attend until I felt disgusted with myself and everyone I...
Postmodern Vaudeville Amy Gerstler on Dynasty Handbag's Frenzied Satire Titanic Depression at MOCA
Even though the term ‘performance art’ has become a catch-all phrase, it still feels too narrow to convey the onstage antics of Dynasty Handbag, the performance persona of writer, visual artist and actor Jibz Cameron. When Titanic Depression debuted in New York in 2023, its sensibility was described by the New York Times as “queer vaudevillian.” That’s a more intriguing, and perhaps more accurate label. In November 2024, MOCA hosted three nights of Titanic Depression, Cameron’s multi-media live show, starring her alter ego Ms. Handbag. This show, lightly updated since its premiere, is a blockbuster solo performance: a zany, affecting...
Alternative Spaces A Look at Alternative Spaces in Los Angeles
Chez Coronado Founded by Andy Little and Calli Webb and nestled in an unused portion of a basement under an apartment building, Chez Coronado specializes (so far) in works that, like the space, are small, intimate, personal and eccentric. Their most recent offerings include witty, crafty work from Joachim Castañeda, and a moose-themed show from Molly McDonald. Devout Many tattooists learned to draw in the same spaces and for the same reasons as the gallery artists they tattoo, and in the pop-art positive land of Los Angeles the difference between the hip low-brow and the street-savvy highbrow begins to seem no more than academic. Formerly...
Artist Takeover Emma Webster
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Adrift between lust and sleep, the highway unwinds behind closed eyes, in scratchy sheets and stinging heat. A one-way street on repeat. Cracking the veneer, stripping it away, in the obvious light of day. Coming from nowhere, going nowhere, but never far enough. The same signage mile after mile. Interminable layers of fast-food landscape surround dried-up downtowns where nary a soul strolls and bluecoats rigorously patrol. Most of the time is spent spitting bile at strangers, and making unflattering assumptions based upon surface appearances, just as the same assumptions are presumably being made about me, but with less authority. I...
