David Hockney recycles work from one medium into another, reinventing his own methodologies in the process. His versatility is highlighted in his show titled “Something New in Painting (and Photography) [and even Printing]… Continued,” where landscape paintings, digitally manipulated photographic collages, and portrait drawings play off one another in strange ways at LA Louver. The show’s centerpieces are three large-scale digitally derived pictures, which Hockney terms “photographic drawings,” depicting groups of people idly sitting or standing around as though contemplating art or waiting for lectures to begin inside institutional rooms. These works’ mundane realism contrasts with the fantastic nature of colorful abstract landscape paintings adorning nearby walls. Yet the landscape paintings and photographic drawings have more in common than they initially appear: In both sets of artworks, Hockney employs sweeping compositional layouts marked by subtle perspectival distortions; for instance, the central composition of Viewers Looking at a Ready-made with Skull and Mirrors (pictured above; all works 2018) is remarkably similar to that of Three Vases of Flowers in an Interior. Paintings and photographic drawings converge unambiguously in Pictures at an Exhibition, which features likenesses of the landscapes. Among Hockney’s portrayed exhibition spaces, you become acutely aware of your own position within the actual gallery and begin to feel as though you’re in a mirrored funhouse, a meta-setup from which Hockney might derive yet another artwork. Before departing, don’t miss Grow’d (2019), Alison Saar‘s serene, slightly surreal sculpture in the courtyard upstairs.

LA Louver
45 N. Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
Shows run through Mar. 23