Articles
Artist Takeover Emma Webster
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Adrift between lust and sleep, the highway unwinds behind closed eyes, in scratchy sheets and stinging heat. A one-way street on repeat. Cracking the veneer, stripping it away, in the obvious light of day. Coming from nowhere, going nowhere, but never far enough. The...
An Artist Answers Questions with Danny Fox
Top 3 beers? Okay, without a doubt—Guinness. And because I’m in LA, I’m going to say Pacifico. And a can of Stella. Top 3 songs? Dirty Old Town by the Pogues. Sara by Bob Dylan. Chelsea Hotel #2 by Leonard Cohen. Top 3 dead painters? Alfred Wallis. Vincent, of course....
Art Damaged Expansion of the Critic
Staying Sane With Dr. Trainwreck The Introduction
Please allow me to introduce myself... In the UK, we are called ‘Agony Aunts’. But here in the states we are known as advice columnists, or ‘Dear Abby’, as a catchall. This one, however, is a bit different than the manners-focused columns that were once mainstays of...
Staying Sane with Dr. Trainwreck The Conversation
The ‘conversation’ (incidentally the worst possible way to describe anything other than an actual conversation, as in, human beings speaking with one another) around language and words is ongoing and, dare I say, rather boring. That aside, it is vital that we reject...
Race Place
Since 2018, I’ve made a point of catching the Made in L.A biennial at the Hammer Museum, and at times I’ve come away with mixed feelings toward the city’s most ambitious survey exhibition. While it is worth asking — as many critics before me have — whether or not a...
Capturing The Castle LA’s Coolest Apartment Gallery Leaves the Living Room
Harley Wertheimer wears many hats: The native Angeleno is founder and director of CASTLE Gallery, as well as co-owner of Hollywood’s Stir Crazy café, and up until recently he was vice-president of A&R at Columbia Records. While Wertheimer got his professional...
An Indigenous Gaze Towards The Future Wendy Red Star Recontextualizes Native Culture in Outer Space
Growing up on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, Wendy Red Star witnessed the ways her cultural heritage was practiced, performed and integrated into the daily lives of her tribe. These customs seemed deeply disconnected from the displays in history museums...
My Favorite Cézanne The Only Impressionist Painting I Actually Like
Every time I say I don’t like Impressionism people lose their minds—and I get it, people love the stuff, can’t get enough. I admit that I sometimes say it just to freak them out, because you should see the looks. I mean, you’re probably looking at me like that right...
The Suburbs Are Dead? Brad Eberhard Makes Noise with Alto Beta
“Well, there were many creatures in the cave. And some of them had their problems, but all of them, they were my friends....You don’t meet friends like this every day, so I’m staying in the cave.” —Wounded Lion, “Creatures in the Cave” I first met Brad Eberhard...
Excavating Natural History Mark Dion Explores the Sticky Wonders and Legacy of the La Brea Tar Pits
As an urban kid growing up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I adored the American Museum of Natural History. The low-lit museum seemed like a palace of wonders to me. In its inner chambers the glowing dioramas of exotic animals in their native habitats appeared like...
Linda Vallejo A New Exhibition at parrasch heijnen Showcases Five Decades of the Artist’s Work
Linda Vallejo’s career-spanning exhibition at parrasch heijen is a homecoming of sorts. The gallery is ensconced in the center of Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights district, where she was born, and a stone’s throw from the iconic Sears Building — an area where Vallejo spent...
The Appropriated Strike Back Is the Idea of What and Who Is Appropriatable Changing?
While many of the contemporary art world’s basic assumptions have been challenged in recent years, one that has remained remarkably constant since at least the 1960s is the collective verdict on appropriation: It’s fine! Andy did it, so it must be—and too many...
POEMS "Fame" and "In Our Shadow"
Fame There are some people who can barely be tolerated in person but are beloved as fictional characters. One reads about them in a book or watches them on a screen, and one feels special because one recognizes their beauty. But when one meets them in person, one...
Seeing Detroit Through Fresh Eyes Taylor Renee Aldridge Returns to her Hometown to Head Modern Ancient Brown Foundation
Recently I had the opportunity to visit Detroit for the first time in my life. What a magnificently diverse city bustling with bars and restaurants on every corner in the downtown area, with one of the top encyclopedic art museums in the nation where the socialist...
ABOLITION IN ACTION Crenshaw Dairy Mart Cares About People
The artist-of-color-led arts organization and collective in Inglewood, Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM), is continuing a legacy of Black-led art spaces in South Los Angeles. Co-founded by multi-hyphenate artists Patrisse Cullors, alexandre ali reza dorriz and noé olivas, it...
HEAVY WATER Rethinking the LA River for Future Generations
The Los Angeles River is a permanent topic of fascination for artists in this city. In order to establish the city, bureaucrats and businessmen fought to colonize this humble waterway. They tore it away from Indigenous people, encased it in concrete, then rerouted it...
NATURE’S WAY Lucia Monge Collaborates with Her Environment
As a kid, Lucia Monge often gazed at birds through her grandfather’s binoculars, taking in the wonders of nature at an early age. Sometimes the birds looked so extraordinary and colorful that she pondered: Could they be real? Or were they something from a fairy tale?...
THE STARS ARE ALIGNED Lita Albuquerque on Observational Astronomy
A matriarch of the Land Art movement that is closely associated with the American Southwest, Lita Albuquerque has engaged with the surface of Earth from the South Pole to Saudi Arabia, Peru to Paris. But she has always given special attention to the music of the...