A must-see for abstract painting devotees, Xylor Jane's show at Parrasch Heijnen is aptly titled "Magic Square for Earthlings." Adhering to logic so bizarre as to have issued from outer space, her enchanting pictures do indeed appear to possess kinetic thaumaturgy as...
Wilding Cran: : Maria Lynch
A simple reconfiguring of space at Wilding Cran has yielded a tiny, jewelbox of a gallery for small yet impactful exhibitions. Black Over White by Brazilian artist Maria Lynch is part of Pacific Standard Time LA/LA, the vast project supported by the Getty Foundation...
A Sea of Art Afloat at SoCal’s Art Fairs
All weekend, the Westside was ablaze with art. StART Up Fair, located at The Kinney (no relation to our editor!) Hotel in Venice, featured over 67 artists in a series of terrific and eclectic motel-room installations. At Friday’s opening, performance artist Guta Galli...
THE EVIL OF BANALITY – Rachel Feinstein at Gagosian
Times change. In 1963, Hannah Arendt famously wrote about Adolf Eichmann and the “banality of evil”; in 2018 we get artist Rachel Feinstein exploring the evil of banality. It’s not just that the pieces at Secrets, her latest show at Gagosian, are banal, they’re...
Weekend Art Spree
Exciting art opened all over the greater Los Angeles area this past weekend, from Lancaster to Chinatown. Monica Wyatt’s exciting mixed-media show in Lancaster, "Continuum," drew a crowd north on the freeway to MOAH: CEDAR, curated by Jill Moniz. The adjunct gallery...
Jen DeNike and Katherine Bradford
Jen DeNike and Katherine Bradford have converted Anat Ebgi's small secondary space, AE2, into a mysterious bipartite chamber dominated by the theme of people at sea. Superficially, these two divergent artists' collaboration seems surprising. Yet their palettes...
The Formaldehyde Trip at The Broad
Traversing pre-history, Mesoamerican cosmology, and sexually free interplanetary-futurism, The Formaldehyde Trip, a live performance with video and songs, creates alternate realms for the overlooked casualties of colonialism. Dedicated to the memory of Bety Cariño, it...
ltd los angeles: : I am no bird…
Some of us respect what makes people different from one another. By withholding judgment of others, we avoid enveloping them in our own contexts, selfishly assuming their futurities. Yet psychologist Marie-Louise Von Franz asserts, “Wherever known reality stops, where...
Making Widgets Not Revolution
The rendezvous point was a small coffee shop and bar. Along with about 30 other recruits (participants) I was given a lanyard containing a welcome letter and a schematic of Colony 933. I almost missed a small tightly-rolled scroll that outlined a brief modern history...
Ed Moses: A Remembrance
Last Tuesday night (January 16, 2018), a day before he died, Ed Moses had an art opening of his latest work at a gallery space next to the new Hal’s restaurant in Playa Vista (where you can see a remarkable installation of his painted sliding door screens). Ed wasn’t...
Opie and Bahbah Pack ‘Em In
The spectrum of photography lovers never ceases to amaze when it comes to enjoying art—especially when it comes to re-imagining reality and wishing that which doesn’t exist. This past weekend, Los Angeles has its share of the well-defined, distinguished along with the...
Picture as Primary Object – Sarah Charlesworth: Doubleworld
As we move forward into 2018, we recognize a bit more concretely how our experiences in 2017 and immediately prior influenced and began to reshape our perception of the larger (and certainly the political) world. This is nothing new. Radical cultural change (or its...
Carmina Escobar’s Fiesta Perpetua!
In ancient days of strife and warfare, a death squad of bird-women used the strategies of sound and seduction to destroy their enemies. Homer gave the Sirens a starring role in book 12 of The Odyssey, where they attempt to divert Odysseus from his returning home to...
Design Crosses Art: SF Art Fairs
Sometimes art looks like design, and sometimes design looks like art. It’s hard to know the difference these days as both artists and designers seemingly want to merge one with the other. Either way, the 5th edition of FOG Design + Art was the perfect hybridization....
Judith Linhares
Via her expressionistic brush, Judith Linhares teases latent absurdity and uncanniness from hackneyed pictorial genres. Female nudes, sublime landscapes, exotic animals and floral still lifes are jumbled and transposed into worlds of outré wildness. The Pasadena-born,...
CB1 Gallery: : Georganne Deen
Georganne Deen did not become disillusioned by recent geopolitical events—she’s been feeling that way for a long time. It’s just that her newest paintings reflect certain newly topical aspects within the widening gyre of social entropy, expressing in both style and...
There’s Still Art: Astrid Hadad
On Thursday evening, when performance artist Astrid Hadad began telling a glitter-bombed, sombrero-wearing rubber chicken that everything would be okay, I remembered that there was still good in the world. The day’s news had been completely crappy, and I had ridden...
Gankstas, Hipsters, Art Lovers
From an immersive psychedelic installation to on-trend political art, the first Saturday night gallery openings of the new year were bursting with visual and social pleasure. At Jason Vass in DTLA, artist Tony Puryear’s weekend pop-up, gankstas! Know Your...