Lightning, volcanoes, geysers and ice floes possess hellish glory whose terror is facilely reduced to quaintness. Depicting these comely but deadly natural forces, Kelly Berg's artworks illustrate humans' relationship to the earth's crust as a labyrinthine blend of...
The Struggle Continues: Atelier Populaire and the Posters of the Paris ’68 Uprising
May marks half a century since the student and worker protests against rising unemployment and poverty under Charles de Gaulle’s conservative government in France. In May 1968, students and faculty at the L’ecole des Beaux-Arts took over the lithography studio and...
An Evening with Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson strolled onstage in a flowing orange cloak over black jacket and skinny pants—perhaps a character out of Harry Potter? “I’m sorry I’m wearing my bathrobe,” the multi-media artist quickly apologized as she sat down. “I caught the flu, and I’m still...
Shulamit Nazarian: : Fay Ray
Fay Ray often says her work is about the construction of identity, which is something a lot of artists say. But in “I AM THE HOUSE” Ray takes that premise in sublime new directions, in a series of sculptures and photo-based works that through formal materials, actions...
Alake Shilling
As 356 Mission prepares to shutter, two unorthodox shows whet regulars' regret for the singular gallery's imminent finis. Closing April 22, Charlemagne Palestine's plush extravaganza is apposite to new artist Alake Shilling's outlandish show that will remain through...
LA Louver: : Alison Saar
Alison Saar’s “Topsy Turvy,” her new exhibition at LA Louver, looks to the sixties for strength: the 1860s. Painted on linen and canvas, carved in wood, and shaped from tin, Topsy the slave girl from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Civil War era novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin looks...
David Hockney’s Loved Ones
Walking around the gallery it was impossible to escape a slightly ‘déjà vu all over again’ sort of feeling. No sooner had you passed a portrait in the new exhibition by David Hockney, then the same person would be passing by in the flesh—often attired in exactly the...
Lorser Feitelson
"Lorser Feitelson: Figure to Form" at Louis Stern Fine Arts is a small but insightful survey of the noted painter's transition from Post-Surrealism to Hard-Edge Abstraction. Including nine paintings Feitelson (1888-1978) completed between 1945 and 1962, this show...
Diane Rosenstein Gallery: : Jesse Edwards, Matthew Sweesy
Matthew Sweesy’s “Nocturnes” and Jesse Edwards’ “Hot Town,” currently at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, are exercises in nostalgia. The two artists, while working in different mediums and styles, have a strikingly optimistic quality. Whether it’s the pop culture references...
Blast from the Past
It was a celebratory evening at the Underground Museum benefit auction, My Kid Could Do That, on Friday evening. The benefit was in support of ProjectArt’s mission for arts education for children…and we all know how important that is for human beings, and society in...
Ben Sanders
Ben Sanders envisions paintings and completes drawings while sitting in church. It sounds as though the pictures yielded by this arrangement would be moralistic, maudlin or mocking; but instead, he transfigures personal and religious narratives into open-ended...
FILM: Isle of Dogs
In the dystopian future of Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animation Isle of Dogs, Megasaki City is gripped with the panic over the contagious dog flu. The nefarious Mayor Kobayashi (voiced by Kunichi Nomura) exiles all dogs to Trash Island, a place piled with the detritus...
1301PE: : Kerry Tribe
Kerry Tribe’s film Standardized Patient, which was commissioned by SFMoMA in 2017 and is currently at 1301PE, is a filmic expression of thoughtful storytelling centered on a controlled social environment that is often unexplored within the wooly conceptual arts—the...
The Fatal Optimism of the Bar Graph: Nicolas Grenier
Even before pie charts and bar graphs, before we’re plotting curves and breaking down conic sections in algebra and analytic geometry, we become accustomed to the graphic visual representation of every kind of trend, concept, and systematized data or information. It...