In a letter to a fellow Argentine artist living in Paris, León Ferrari wrote, “We produce culture for our ideological enemies, and they gobble everything up, the pretty paintings and the protest paintings alike.” That is the continuing crisis for art that is built...
Chinatown really had it going on this weekend. Saturday saw the inaugural opening of Tieken LA; gorgeous and cinematic paintings that put us on notice about our disappearing natural landscapes at Charlie James; a pleasant and almost creepy installation at The...
“My plan was never to get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn’t even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.”...
Nemesio Antúnez (1918-1993) possessed a remarkable talent for crystallizing the spirit of certain locations and scenarios. In his small but captivating pictorial selection currently on view at Couturier Gallery, the Santiago de Chile-born, Columbia-educated artist...
What do we have when those closest and dearest to us pass away and what do we do with the things that were once theirs? Richard Turner's installation Air Becomes Breath, 2017, takes that question on and has turned the clothing of his recently deceased wife, Sylvia,...
"Still Remains" is a small but provocative installation of twenty contemporary landscape paintings by Cody Norris in which the artist responds to the epic disfigurations and loss of wild nature due to extreme weather. Employing a neo-fumage technique, Norris’ work...
Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky has been transferred to a psychiatric hospital by French authorities after an act of arson against the Bank of France, French media outlet Le Figaro reported Wednesday. The artist was arrested on Monday night in Paris after...
If crowd size at a memorial service is any measure of lifetime impact and influence, then be assured: Greg Escalante (1955–2017) had an outsized impact on the art, culture, and spiritual life of Southern California. More than six hundred surfers, painters, teachers,...
With salmon walls, magenta carpet and eccentric ornament, Ariana Papademetropoulos has transformed Wilding Cran into a life-size dollhouse where you are the doll and everything is slightly off-kilter. Her show's title, "The man who saved a dog from an imaginary fire,"...
Along a lonely stretch of Main Street extending from Union Station to the Brewery Arts Complex, largely defined by seafood warehouses and girded by railroad tracks, sits Werkartz, a co-working pop-up venue and production space aligned with a new gig economy in which...
Karen Finley’s The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery unfolds similarly to a dream that makes complete logical sense when experiencing it, but is difficult to piece together the linear structure upon waking. The one-woman show lasts for an hour and a half (no...
On Saturday, the Pasadena Museum of California Art put on ¡Fiesta Cubana! a benefit to celebrate California art and honor the art and education advocates Reed and Chris Halladay and the artist, Dave Lefner. Along with those folks, LA art-world figures such as...
Monique Prieto's new paintings radiate magnetic simplicity. The abstractions in her elegantly spare show, "Luster," glow as though lit from within. Each of the four diptychs currently on view at Chimento Contemporary features a pair of organic shapes, one on each...
Kajahl's paintings vivify ancient statues, presenting them as dignified, mysterious multicultural personae. Embodying Western clichés from bygone eras, the characters in his current show titled "Unearthed Entities" include alchemists, explorers and conquerors. While...
I have had the opportunity to visit the Venice Biennale on numerous occasions. In reflecting, I realize that what makes one trip stand out over another is the totality of the experience and not the specificity of the art. How can one not love Venice? Navigating...
I began the evening feeling like a time traveler. Gallery 38’s PST LA/LA opening had long been in my Google calendar, but I didn’t confirm their address until the day before. Turns out, it’s right in my old neighborhood. Since then, galleries and eateries have popped...
Linda Vallejo's show titled "Keepin' It Brown" affects an antique store atmosphere. Folksily arranged ceramic figurines stand atop pedestals. Walls are adorned with framed pictures of celebrities and pieces appearing as needlepoint. Embedded in this homey pop-culture...
In “line-of-site,” Joseph Dumbacher and John Dumbacher have crafted an installation about geometry and perception. It is minimal and simultaneously maximal, suggesting expansive possibilities with limited materials. The brothers (who are fraternal twins) have filled...
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