What does it mean to fall from grace? To really fall, from great heights, perhaps at first thinking you’re flying and only realizing too late that this was an illusion, probably induced by the drugs. That would explain why the world out there appears so eerie, so pink...
CODE ORANGE: NOV/DEC 2018
Congratulations to our winner Osceola Refetoff and our finalists. Refetoff's photo is seen above and first in our photo gallery. His image is also printed in our November/December issue of Artillery. The following photographs are the finalists from our...
SHOPTALK
AI WEIWEI IN LA We haven’t seen much of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in these parts since LACMA presented his installation “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Head” in 2012. This fall he returned with a well-orchestrated splash—with three high-profile exhibitions opening in LA, all...
ART BRIEF
The first week of October was Ai Weiwei week in Los Angeles—a triple-header of shows including the Marciano Foundation, the opening show of former MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch’s new Hollywood gallery, and at the recent UTA gallery in Beverly Hills. First stop was the...
UNDER THE RADAR
NOTE: Ultimately, the correct response to each of these prompts is one or more paintings. 1. How is a painting different from the screen of your phone? 2 Does the image in a painting end at the edge of the canvas, or continue to infinity? 3. What is a painting? Give...
DECODER
Writing “It’s beautiful but…” means you’re stupid. Other fields don’t put up with this shit. “Delicious” is no joke: in the 17th century the Dutch and Portuguese went to war over it (Spice War: 1602 to 1663, ended with the Treaty of the Hague). No matter how...
SIGHTS UNSCENE
BUNKER VISION
Chances are that if you show a civilian a 500-year-old painting, they won’t be able to name the painter, unless it’s Bosch. His name is even listed as an adjective (“Boschian”) in online slang dictionaries. For somebody who produced fewer than 30 paintings in his...
In Remembrance: Artillery Co-Founder
Charles Rappleye died on Saturday, September 15, at his home in Echo Park at the age of 62. He battled with cancer for nearly seven years. Charlie had a rich career as an award-winning investigative journalist and an author of four nonfiction historical biographies....
Field Report
“A new thing, a spring later, a different maker” are the words moving-image artist Nathaniel Dorsky uses to position Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle), 2018, his newest work which investigates light and objecthood. The film, which premiered at the 2018 Toronto...
RECONNOITER
Roger Herman is a Los Angeles-based artist and professor at UCLA department of art. How long have you been teaching painting at UCLA? Was teaching a profession you wanted to do, or was it a matter of practicality, a way to supplement your income as an artist. I have...
COMICS: DEAD OR ALIVE
Tomoo Gokita
Without overt intention, this has become an age of portraiture. It’s not only Instagram, but portraits precede every tweet and supervise every LinkedIn profile. Tinder and Bumble offer portrait-based dating, and any number of applications propose that you select new...
Richard Hoblock
Richard Hoblock’s recent paintings appear as peekaboo scrims offering tantalizing glimpses into abstruse corners of the artist’s mind. Each of 16 abstractions in the San Francisco-based painter’s show “View from the Cheap Seats” appears non-objective but specific in...
Danial Nord
Danial Nord’s solo installation at the Torrance Art Museum, Cloud Nine (2018), presents translucent human-like sculptures, lit by LEDs responding to social media and video feeds. Nord fire-casted clear polycarbonate sheets into the shapes of recognizable figures...
Michael Williams
“Fructis,” Michael Williams’ first exhibition with David Kordansky Gallery, presents the painter’s familiar wisecracking take on the ephemera of the everyday, as seen in his inkjet paintings, and his formally ambitious “Puzzle” paintings, which take a serious stab at...
Sarah Awad
The title of Sarah Awad’s recent show seems intended to encapsulate its scope, which is as expansive as the painting from which it’s borrowed. However appropriate it might be for that particular painting, applying it to the exhibition as a whole, though, seems...
Paul Anthony Smith
Paul Anthony Smith is a Jamaica-born, Brooklyn-based artist who digitally composites photographs of people (family, friends and strangers), as well as places (Jamaica, Brooklyn and Puerto Rico), then decorates the surface of the paper with a stippled pattern by...