Are you one of those people who have difficulty making clear-cut distinctions between your night(or day)mares and the actuality of your everyday life? (I am – especially when I’m running a fever.) Jim Shaw not only gets you; he’s created a sacred space for your...
Cooling Off at the Coolest Pool Party
The aroma of gourmet hot dogs and the hum of pretentious gossip lured us to the Fitzpatrick-Leland house last Saturday, where the MAK Center for Art and Architecture hosted an exclusive pool party and opening reception for Paul Davies. Of course, nobody was actually...
Peter Saul: Fake News with Lolita Cros
New York, New York, June 27th, 2017: Hôtel Americano’s Salon Americano featured renowned artist, widely referred to as one of the “father’s of pop art” Peter Saul and curator Lolita Cros. The conversation, titled Peter Saul: Fake News, touched on how the artist draws...
Edward Cella: : Vernacular Environments, Part 1
Exploring the dialectic relationship between environments—both built and natural—and the figures that occupy those spaces, “Vernacular Environments, Part 1” brings to light the complexities and temporality of the vernacular. A film of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty...
Now More Than Always
When Hannah Black wrote in her open letter to the Whitney Biennial curators “it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time,” she did more than bolster a national debate...
Very Appropriate
Warhol Icon Happening
It feels like last summer was a long time ago. What with a year filled with electoral rage politics, acquitted police shootings of black people, the withdrawal from the Paris Accord, the Wall, the reintroduction of the Mexico City Policy, the U.S. Departments of...
USC Pacific Asia Museum Gala
USC PACIFIC ASIA MUSEUM HONORS CHINESE ART COLLECTORS DR. TEI-FU CHEN & DR.OI-LIN CHENAND FASHION DESIGNER TADASHI SHOJI AT ANNUAL GALA. Gala included a live DJ performance by Gingee and a four-song set by indie music artists Run River North. [gallery...
Marisa Merz: The Sky is a Great Space
There’s a scene in Paul Greengrass’s 2007 film The Bourne Ultimatum when former CIA operative Jason Bourne/Matt Damon kills a Moroccan man named “Desh” using a book, what appear to be shampoo bottles, and a towel. The death match goes down in a Tangier apartment, and...
Edgar Arceneaux – Until, Until, Until…
The subject of appearances and disappearances is not new to Edgar Arceneaux – in fact it might be considered a through-line in his work over the years. But Arceneaux is always acutely conscious of the sea-changes of time and history and the chain of causality...
Jazz in the Summertime Feels so Correct
What I was expecting: an elaborate installation that would marry musical acts with the Geffen’s front area in an interesting and artistic way. What I got: a free summer concert with food trucks, cash bar and admission to the Carl Andre exhibit (fuck that guy, IMHO)....
Marc Selwyn Fine Art: : Kristen Morgin
Kristen Morgin’s recent works at Marc Selwyn Fine Art break all the rules, and Los Angeles, the city she’s called home for over 30 years, is her muse and partner-in-crime. Abandoning traditional techniques, the artist creates delicate sculptures with painted, unfired...
Pussy Riot Goes Hawaiian, Part 2
Click Here for Part 1. Art Star and painter Masami Teraoka conceived of a collaboration with Russian performance collective Pussy Riot. These words document their performance in Hawaii. THE NINTH WAVE The marketing of The Tempest was limited to an events...
Broken Language
A black rain cloud hangs at the doorstep of Shulamit Nazarian’s compelling group show, "Broken Language." The rain cloud—No Pressure (2016) by Wendy White—is a flat, aluminum-composite cartoon of a cloud that hovers at waist-height from the ceiling by nylon rope and...
Eternal Messages to The Middle East
Saturday afternoon provided a steady viewing of the last glimpses of “Irrational Exhibits 10th Anniversary: Mapping the Divide” curated by Deborah Oliver, with a closing performance by LA-based artist, Lara Salmon, at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in...
Kerry James Marshall: Mastry
Kerry James Marshall’s current retrospective at MoCA is less a ‘Pick-of-the-Week’ than a Must of the Year. Regardless of the particulars of each individual’s experience, it is a show that compels serious reevaluation of the historical canon of Western painting (and...
Moving Shadows, Constant Stars – Young Caesar
Young Caesar is born of a certain moment – a definably Californian, forward- and global-looking moment. In Lou Harrison’s music and the awkwardly framed conceits of its libretto by Robert Gordon, there is yearning, rather than the ‘ambition’ we might associate with...
MOCA: : Patrick Staff: Weed Killer
In his latest video installation “Weed Killer” (2017), Patrick Staff approaches the topic of identity by juxtaposing the cancer patient’s experience with that of the transgender person’s and examining the ravaging effects that pharmaceuticals can have upon the...