Articles
Trulee Hall Femininity in Phantasmagoria
On a blessedly moderate summer Sunday, I am driving over to Trulee Hall’s studio in the industrial backside of LA to participate in the filming of her newest project, Ladies’ Lair Lake, by getting nude and air-brushed green from head to toe. This project will be the...
Poems "March 2nd, 2021" By Steve Anwyll; "The Great Wall" By John Tottenham
March 2nd, 2021 I step off but don’t move. The bus pulls away in a roar. I remove my mask. The air I breathe feels like bliss. I stand on the muddy sidewalk looking up at the sky. If I were a man of faith now would be the time to start speaking in tongues....
COMICS Future Features for Creative Creatures
Drip Dry: Our Relationship with Water
Beatriz Jaramillo has had water on her mind ever since she can remember. The Colombian-born Los Angeles–based artist spent her childhood in what sounds like an idyllic wonderland—wandering around the tropical rainforest that surrounded her family’s home. She remembers...
An Interview with T.J. Demos Climate Breakdown and Capitalism
T.J. Demos is Professor in Art History and Visual Culture as well as Founder and Director of the Center for Creative Ecologies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Last year, he published Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing a book exploring...
A REAL HORROR SHOW Ecological Dystopia in Contemporary Art
Our apocalypse is self-inflicted. We gouge at our wounds in acts of self-harm. Our collective anxiety festers as disaster takes hold, yet we remain paralyzed by fear, unable to face our reality. Implausible flames dance on the ocean’s surface; acres of California...
Hugo Hopping and The Winter Office Nature As Infrastructure
I became aware of LA artist Hugo Hopping in 2009, when his conceptual work appeared in the exhibition “Post American L.A.,” curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas for the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. Since then his trajectory has taken him to base his practice...
Zaria Forman: Fear and Awe Showcasing Beauty and Fragility
Climate change is a crisis that we must all recognize and work together to mitigate. For artists engaging with climate content, their activism manifests in many different ways. Some choose to showcase the devastating evidence of global warming, while...
Ron Athey at the ICA Los Angeles “Queer Communion”
I’m on the freeway traveling through the San Fernando Valley to see the Ron Athey exhibition of art, documentation and ephemera called “Queer Communion” at the ICA in downtown Los Angeles. All of the LA tropes are in place: It’s a sunny and clear June day, the hills...
Poems "Dostoevsky Takes a Selfie" By Clint Margrave; "Take It Easy" By John Tottenham
Dostoevsky Takes a Selfie By Clint Margrave I’m not surprised to find him in the underground, but I am surprised to find him in L.A. He sits across from me on the metro in shorts and tennis shoes, taking a selfie. I want to ask him what he’s doing here. Too...
COMICS Concerned Creative Artists Against Climate Change
GONE TO THE DOGS
“Ride on the street, man.” With difficulty, I attempted to maneuver my way around a young couple who, with their three dogs, were hogging the entire sidewalk. “I beg your pardon,” I said, as I cleared these five figures, who had only made the most minimal effort to...
Remarks on Color: Lachrymose Lemon August's Hue
Lachrymose Lemon cannot stop weeping. She sobs uncontrollably at everything all the time: the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, softball games, dinosaur conventions, the day her favorite chicken finally laid an egg. From the moment the sun rises to the last...
Matt Warren Makes Movie Posters For Your Consideration
As any Angeleno knows, every awards season, from about September - February Hollywood studios buy up billboards to promote their films as award-worthy works of art; it’s like LA’s version of leaves changing color in Fall. Unlike normal ads for new releases, each of...
In Living Color: Felix LA 2021 Art IRL at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
Felix LA, the fair that for two years has run concurrently with Frieze LA, is once again at the Roosevelt from July 29 through August 1. This time it is going up without the auspices of the larger Frieze fair, which first delayed in February, then fully cancelled in...
John Knuth’s The Dawn John Knuth and Writer Matt Stromberg talk Horseshoe Crabs, Manet, Realism and Kids in a Vaccinated World
John Knuth is a Los Angeles-based artist who recently had a solo show with Hollis Taggart Gallery in Southport, CT. His work explores how humanity and material and the natural world intersect and influence each other. “The Dawn” ran from May 15–July 3. MATT STROMBERG:...
Tribute to L.A. Sculptor Kenzi Shiokava (1938-2021)
L.A. sculptor Kenzi Shiokava died June 18 at age 82. His passing was announced by the Japanese American National Museum. JANM featured Shiokava's totemic wood sculptures in the 2017 Pacific Standard Time exhibition "Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese...
THE PERSISTENCE OF DALI "The Dali Legacy" By Christopher Heath Brown and Jean-Pierre Isbouts
Salvador Dali has always had a troubled relationship with the Art World. His work embraced figurative representation during a century where deconstruction and reinvention were the mode du jour. His theatrics often upstaged his considerable talent. The amount of energy...
Black Grief Examined at New Museum, NY "Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America" By Okwui Enwezor
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, 2020 By Okwui Enwezor 264 pages Phaidon/New Museum, New York In a pivotal scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather a Mafia don grieves over the body of his dead son. “Look how they massacred my boy,”...
Eric Rohmer’s Beach Readers The Catholic Way
No one ever “works” in Eric Rohmer’s movies—but they do read. By necessity, Rohmer’s setting is one of leisure, whether it’s the beaches of Biarritz or the shores of the French Riviera. His characters need ample time to read and to daydream, and for ennui, disturbed...