Laurie Lipton’s supremely detailed large-scale graphite drawings document the haphazardness of modern life as well as the darker more sinister underbelly of consumerist culture. Looking at these images, one can’t help but be reminded of how the proletariat is...
Blood On Clay: Gerardo Monterrubio
Gerardo Monterrubio marks his ceramic sculptures with his memories and experiences as an Oaxacan immigrant. Free-flowing drawings upon his pottery relate engrossing autobiographical narratives interlaced with cultural commentary. His work recalls a vast historic...
Provocative Depictions on Female Sexuality
The image on the wall delivers a message of warmth and messiness. Amanda Charchian calls it 7 Types of Love, Agape, and it presents a disembodied pair of female lips floating against a soft sea of pink, a cloud of blood seeping from the red lipstick. As a photograph,...
Code Orange
The following photographs are the finalists from Artillery's March/April issue. The winner is Michelle Fierro (seen above and first in the photo gallery). See her photo published in the print version of Artillery, March/April, 2018. Congratulations to Michelle...
SHOPTALK
Comings and Goings We say farewell to Marc Foxx Gallery on Wilshire Boulevard, in business since 1994. Interestingly, they’re not a victim of the disruptive Metro construction on Wilshire; their building wasn’t effected, but one of the partners, Rodney Nonaka-Hill,...
ART BRIEF
Salvator Mundi, a portrait of Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, was sold to a Saudi Arabian prince for $450 million (including fees) at Christie’s New York auction last November, smashing the previous art sale record by more than a factor of two. Christie’s...
UNDER THE RADAR
I have a confession to make: I am Miroslav Kyropnik! (crickets) One of my sub rosa projects at UCLA was the creation of a body of work by a totally fictional outsider artist who took found photographs, magazine illustrations, and art reproductions and added speech...
DECODER
Artists will ask, “What’s your Instagram?” It’s horrible. Anything: Twitter, Facebook, just Google me, even asking for a business card is fine (even though I’ve never had one), but not my Instagram. Please? Melissa is millennial. She keeps DMT in her vape pen—“Well,...
Report From Mexico City
It’s starting to rain in Mexico City on Friday afternoon, but Rodrigo Feliz is, in fact, happy. That’s because on the second day of Material Art Fair’s fifth edition, it’s already clearly a triumph. Formerly director of Mexico City’s acclaimed Labor Gallery, Feliz has...
CURFEW
In September 2017, the Los Angeles Times ran the headline “Four must-see art shows that speak to the anxiety triggered by Trump’s DACA reversal.” In November, HuffPo posted “A Guide To The Anti-Trump Art You Can See In New York Right Now.” In January 2018, one of the...
SIGHTS UNSCENE
BUNKER VISION
The desire to make drawings move goes back centuries. A 5000-year-old bowl found in Iran contains a sequence of images of a goat jumping up to a tree that could appear to be an early animation if the bowl was spun quickly enough. A 3000-year-old lamp found in China...
ASK BABS
CHOOSE ME DEAR BABS: How do I get a studio visit with the curators of Made in L.A. [The Hammer Museum biennial]? None of my artist friends know how to get works considered for the biennial. I wish there was more transparency in terms of how they survey the emerging...
Dave and Jeff’s Wonderful Column Area
“Why do we call Deutschland Germany?” Kischnec asked his friend Linda, one of the passing chickens dangling from the conveyer belt. “It’s not like it’s hard to say: DOITCH-londt. What’s the fucking problem? Same with other countries. But I imagine you know more about...
BOOKS
Minnie Panis has a problem with existence. Minnie, budding Dutch conceptual artist and central character in Niña Weijers’ debut novel The Consequences, finds the idea of her own existence an excruciatingly difficult one. In this, however, she is not alone. The notion...
COMICS: Albrecht Dürer
RECONNOITER
Naima J. Keith is the deputy director of Los Angeles’ California African American Museum (CAAM), arriving in 2016 from the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Being an LA native, what was your awareness of CAAM, their programs, and their history before leaving Los...
Catherine Opie
Both love letter and indictment, “The Modernist,” Catherine Opie’s new photographic installation and short film, blurrily overlays real places and occurrences with imagined events, creating an alternate near-term history of Los Angeles. Known as a portraitist and...