The event invitation to the art performance piqued my interest; after all, who wouldn’t want to see an artist and a porn-star dominatrix in a motel room “presidential debate” smackdown? Plus, there was the added attraction of an older, established “grande daminatrix”...
You probably know Brian Rea’s work even if you’re not familiar with his name. In fact, it’s probable that you do know his name by now because his illustrations seem to be almost everywhere from book jackets and frontispieces to half the magazines you pick up, and even...
There was no need to take drugs last weekend at Desert Daze—a three-day music festival with camping, yoga, and cacao ceremonies—because trust me, you already felt high. Whether you took the yellow acid or not, you were feeling the cosmic vibrations be it the full...
It is almost an existential question – of art, creation, medium – the ‘still point of the turning world … (w)here the dance is,’ to paraphrase Eliot’s “Burnt Norton.” Helen Frankenthaler was already well into her early maturity by 1962, which is where this 25 year...
A long banner of colorful flowers fills the second floor window of 1301PE. Seen from the outside, it functions as a precursor to the works inside the gallery. It is also serves as a memory trace; upon entering the second floor space one is thrown into a quandary—...
As our planet is gradually warmed and transformed into landscapes and environments once conceivable only in nightmare fantasy, we find ourselves preoccupied with our apprehension and perception of a world we’ve effectively made over – so bound up with our physical...
The event was called “Vincent Van Jokes.” Stand-up comedy at an art gallery? This is exactly the kind of grandiose LA narcissism comedians spill jokes about in their sets. What could possibly go down at 101/Exhibit tonight? The irony was the enticement.The crowd was a...
Brian Bress’ amalgam of drawings, paintings, masks, sculpture and videos, brought together for “Make Your Own Friends,” a survey of the last ten years of Bress’ output, elicits a range of feelings, from poignancy and surprise, to disconcertion and compassion. The...
If MOCA’s "Art in the Streets" (2011) exhibition was Disneyland, Jeff Hamilton Studios’ "Street Art Fair" was… not the Vegas Strip… Downtown Vegas? Fremont Street? Whereas the Museum of Contemporary Art’s graffiti and urban art extravaganza felt controlled and safe...
Jibz Cameron, the performance artist and poet of female panic who goes by the moniker Dynasty Handbag, is trying to make more user-friendly work. Cameron has made her name by staging wild and incandescent actions that make you feel excitedly deranged. In her 2015 show...
There are some artists you know are great immediately because they provoke such disparate and conflicting emotions simultaneously that they practically throw you physically off balance. John Altoon is one such artist. The most feral of the Ferus Gallery Cool School,...
Gary Lang's circle paintings, perhaps the most monumental of his oeuvre, might be the most intimate, too. “Rising,” his current exhibition at Ace Gallery Beverly Hills, includes a number of these pieces, as well as other works from the past 10 years, and a group of...
Let me just start by applauding Liz Gordon and her team for the bravado and sheer celebration of mounting a show titled, Guns, in the current political environment. I was about to say ‘contentious’ – but there’s really nothing contentious (or new) about it. Guns are...
The most emblematic of the ‘trophy’ moments in Ry Rocklen’s current show may be the perforated vertical standing locker cabinet, titled Ricky. With its exposed interior copper plating and cross-illuminated by the gallery light, it’s a handsome object that might serve...
During a Cabinet Council meeting three years into her mourning of the death of her husband, the still distraught Queen Victoria “rose from the table declaring that she could come to no decision without consulting with Prince Albert.” That display moved one of her...
As the West Hollywood clubs began to bump, we marched to our first destination of Saturday evening, M+B gallery. Tonight this minimalist gallery featured the digital, Albers-inspired work of Jessica Eaton. Each piece is a headache of colors and circles interrupted by...
In his 2011 book Normal Life, law professor and trans-activist Dean Spade writes of the wide-ranging goals of trans-resistance, a political awakening that fights against such manifold systems of domination that its practitioners cannot focus unilaterally on sex,...
Last Saturday we tackled Round 2 of the fall LA art season openings, starting in Downtown LA. Taking a lesson from our previous weekend in Culver City, this time we arrived earlier than 30 minutes before galleries were closing.The Box showing Barbara T. Smith was...
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