f you’re reading this, it’s too late. Summer came and went. Pool parties in the Valley? Over. Midnight drives on Mulholland? Gone. We don’t care that you went to Sicily, that your credit score’s crippled because of it, or that you haven’t k-holed at Marcelino’s since you’ve been back. None of that matters anymore. It’s September now. Reality’s calling—time to pick up.
I, however, can’t (pick up, that is), because I’m not in September yet. I’m coming to you LIVE! from the past. Late July 2025. Right now, our city’s in the throes of its group shows, the same ones that’ve been declared alive, dead, and revived again, year after year after year.
The critic Dave Hickey was known to hate them. He likened group shows to big dinners where you “only [get] the hors d’oeuvres table,” noted that they’re really just fluff for the ego of “some preening curator,” and vowed to ban them altogether if he were ever made president.
Well, Dave Hickey isn’t president; Dave Hickey’s dead. And, though I agree with him on all accounts (and certainly wish him the best down there), the group show lives on, as unstoppable as the blazing sun, even if current market conditions caused some dealers to sit this season out.
Here are the five shows that’ve made the most noise so far this summer. Warning: it hasn’t all been good noise. Much like in showbiz, though, even the worst noise is better than no noise, because no noise is what you hear on the island of irrelevancy. And no one, no matter what they say, likes it there.
“Burn Me!” at The Box
Curating from a place of tremendous loss, but also warranted anger, Mara McCarthy (owner of The Box), her father Paul McCarthy, and Molly Tierney pull together works that survived January’s fires (which took the curators’ Altadena homes and studios) alongside some more explicitly political pieces. The result is heavy, not just thematically, but objectively (there are substantial sculptures by Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, and Sean Townley). Yet, the show maintains a sense of levity, all things considered. For example, despite being one of the McCarthy family’s few surviving pieces from the Eaton Fire, Snail, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother… (2002–4), a collaborative giant snail work by McCarthy and Rhoades, maintains its lick of absurdity and becomes emblematic of resilience with its flame-singed shell. Authoritarianism is a target throughout, making “Burn Me!” doubly current, as the president ordered ICE to significantly escalate operations in LA during the second month of the show, and subsequently called the National Guard and Marines into the city to assist them. A small drawing by Lee Lozano, I got fucked in the ass by ConEdison (1962), too, makes a blunt proclamation on the ties between avarice and disaster, depicting an eyeless face with a phallic, flame-spitting tower that protrudes from its center, and an overzealous, crooked-tooth smile that reaches for its hairline. A cathartic show, in all, and a document of time.
Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, Old Baby / Commercial Street (detail), 2025. Photo: Paul Salveson. Courtesy of the artist and Okey Dokey Konrad Fischer.
“The Immediate Distance” at Okey Dokey Konrad Fischer
“The Immediate Distance” is a quick-witted show, and one that continually nudges us to reorient. That tone is set early, upon entry, by Nicole-Antonia Spagnola’s video work Old Baby / Commercial Street (2025), which repurposes two plastic half-dome drink lids into hologram projection containers using old cell phones as their media source and a found pedestal as support for the whole thing. It’s one of my favorite artworks of the year, its projections flickering faintly enough to give me pause, to prompt me to “find” the images from just the right angle. That piece dovetails nicely with Giovanni Anselmo’s Particolare (1972–2015) on the opposite side of the room, a work completed only once the viewer steps into its projector’s light beam, thus being able to read the word particolare (“detail” in Italian) on their body. Together, the two pieces cue us to subtly reframe our focus, to notice cause and effect through shifts in orientation. Jasper Marsalis’ Dada-ish works Tommo and Steven (both 2023) are also worth a mention here: They sit crudely on the floor, bowling balls skewered with sticks of wood that reach outward, roguish “projections” that double as physical impediments. Not every piece dances successfully on the twin axes of projection and reorientation, though, namely Jan Dibbets’s New Colorstudy 1976/2012 SB2 dark blue (2012), a tightly-cropped photo of a car hood that lacks the play found elsewhere in the show and might better serve a corporate lobby.
“Second Body” at David Kordansky Gallery
“Seconad Body” is a messy show of almost thirty artists that aims to investigate “the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth.” With such an unimaginably Sisyphean concept, the exhibition is bound to futility from the start, and lands in limbo somewhere between biennial tryouts and gallery overstock. Often, this costs the work dearly. On one wall, for example, Carlos Agredano’s Collector (2024)—an incisive commentary on LA’s air quality in communities of color meshed with institutional critique—hangs directly adjacent to Tristan Unrau’s Interval (2025)—a loosely rendered oil painting of tennis players on a clay court. Nearby, Chiffon Thomas’s Untitled (2023)—a cold sculpture that slips between tree trunk, torso armor, and body cast, alluding to gender and hybridity—sits beside Lucy Bull’s 21:24 (2025)—an open-ended, agreeable abstraction in the style that’s fetched her paintings millions at auction. In other words, the gallery chooses to position works critical of industry and normativity alongside paintings that work best when those critiques disappear. This, frankly, doesn’t make sense as a curatorial strategy… unless the gallery is intent on devaluing all the work, altogether, in which case: Bravo. Excessively comprehensive, and overcrowded to boot, “Second Body” fails to make sense of itself.
Tanya Brodsky, Air Vent (installation view & detail), 2023. Bronze, 11″ x 3 ½″ x ¾″. Photo: Simon Klein. Courtesy of Quarters Gallery.
“Gravity Bong” at Quarters (hosted by The Hermitage)
“Gravity Bong” is a less-than-pristine, necessarily lo-fi, eleven-artist show in a Burbank apartment’s laundry room (it’s small, two Maytags and a closet deep). The curation here is clever and swift, as if the last object were placed a few minutes ago, and then, “Oh! No, no!… What about… this?” repositioned at the last moment to make the rhythms just right, just as you walk in. There are also nice threads of misdirection and concealment that weave through the work. Tanya Brodsky’s Air Vent (2023), a bronze replica of a small air vent cover, hides in plain sight, mounted above a breaker box and below some errant piping. It waits—untroubled—to be recognized for what it is (an object) and not overlooked for what it isn’t (an air vent). Across the room, Madeleine Leplae’s Stone (2025) is evasive materially. The sculpture, which sits directly on top of the washing machine and under decent light (so it’s not literally “hiding”), isn’t a readymade stone as it appears, but one made of papier-mâché. Above it hangs Isabelle Adams’s Mary L. (2025), a disarmingly simple, yet still vivid portrait whose subject wears raccoon makeup. And in the corner, all the way in the back, along the floor? If you spot it, Mouse Hole (2025) by Jacob Lenc, a small painting, mainly black, on a mousehole-shaped canvas. Taken together, the show becomes a puzzle with a payoff, a game that rewards a closer look.
Zoe Alameda, Ever Holding the Thought of You. Courtesy of AUTOBODY autobody.
“Small Object Show” at AUTOBODY autobody
“Small Object Show” accomplishes very little, by design. It doesn’t reach for a cohesive theme or discursive link, instead choosing to be exactly as advertised: a show of small objects, mostly installed on shelves that cross through the center of the space. There are so many small objects, in fact—in such great variation, each installed in such tight proximity to the next—that it’s hard for any one to stand out. Asher Gillman’s Old New Snake (2025) does catch my eye—it’s a sharply finished aluminum alarm clock with a rattlesnake bell and hints of medieval inspiration. Zoe Alameda’s Ever Holding the Thought of You (2023–2025), a Big Mac container embedded in silicone and cement, is noticeable, too, because… well… it’s a Big Mac container embedded in silicone and cement. Things, otherwise, blend together, which isn’t to say that Gillman and Alameda’s objects are Best in Show, but simply that my attention span is no match for the small object doomscroll (affectionate) provided here by AUTOBODY autobody. And that’s okay, because, on the night of the opening, the show was memorable for something else: The crowd. Hordes of artists gathered in the backyard and stayed for hours, fueled by a live band in the driveway and frequent runs to the liquor store across La Brea. Drinks, cigarettes, ideas—whatever—jumped from group to group, with noticeably less pretense than your average opening. Dare I call it a clique-buster? Maybe this was intentional, maybe not… Still an accomplishment, right? I mean, isn’t that sort of the point of all this?… Isn’t that summer?
Yes, I think that’s summer.