Saturday night we found ourselves in Chinatown for the opening of Mind Your Mannerisms at Jai & Jai, a gallery tucked discretely along Spring Street north of Cesar Chavez. Highly regarded in Los Angeles’ architectural community, Jai & Jai is known for staging...
As we are posting this, we are informed that Arthur Jafa has not been awarded the Mohn Public Recognition Award; and we can’t help wondering if he might have been at some competitive disadvantage simply because visitors to the Museum were unable to actually flip the...
The collection of portraits by Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth) at Robert Berman Gallery serves as a testament to the idols that the political cartoonist holds dear. While Mr. Fish is best known for tongue-in-cheek cartoons, these meticulously rendered portraits show Mr....
The concept of an artist commemorating a particular time and place is always interesting, specifically in this case the border between Tijuana and the U.S. Here, the creation of images becomes a means by which the artist begins to understand his own deeply personal...
Long before I had a clue about art, or at least modern or contemporary art, my older brother and I would occasionally be dropped off at twin fantasylands on either side of Central Park that, to our five and six year-old brains, were like complementary sides of what...
The dust stirs and rises quickly from its surrounding detritus, particles colliding wildly, glistening in the hard glare of a halogen spotlight. They drift through a crumpled vent and settle atop a pair of white antlers. Dirt sparkles beautifully when it’s...
Nods to the philosophical and an absurdist humor set the tone of this eclectic group show that is never short on substance. An homage of sorts to a late UC Berkeley professor, “Don’t call me when you are rich or famous. Call me only if you are in the gutter.” is a...
Stefano Maderno’s celebrated sculpture of Santa Cecilia—or rather an enlarged archival pigment print of a slide of the work—greets the viewer on the far gallery wall. Mounted on a substantial support and including information recorded on old-fashioned art history...
The idea of a failed utopia is certainly nothing new as those of us who live in any bustling city like Los Angeles will tell you, but the way in which this failure is understood can, and must be, redefined according to the state of disintegration we have become...
I searched the car frantically for her that day; swinging open each door, squeezing my hand in between the seats in case she had slid through like a stray quarter. Rational judgment doesn’t apply when you’ve lost your mother. We had driven into the city together, she...
A tram cable traverses The Project Room, a tiny cube tucked behind the main gallery space of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. LACE, on Hollywood Boulevard, is the perfect location for educating the public about Los Angeles contemporary art. Sheltered from the...
In his Aesthetic Theory, philosopher Theodor W. Adorno wrote of art’s “double character,” that is, the idea that art flourishes when it resists society, and dies if it is swallowed by the capitalist hive-mind. “Art is the social antithesis to society, not directly...
In this modern fairy tale, a daughter struggles to find freedom from her imposing mother, an elderly demented witch, on the mysterious farm of Forevermore Acres, a rundown junk strewn ranch full of aged witches and misfit monsters. The mother's plans to indoctrinate...
Mining the territory of surrealism, juxtaposing everyday objects to create metaphoric meanings; Alexis Smith, in collaboration with poet Amy Gerstler, have created a visual journey that encompasses a wide array of associations—some witty, some violent. Working mostly...
It was pure crickets at last night's Night Comedy XVI. And we mean literal crickets that would not shut up throughout the entire evening creating the best possible irony for a six-person stand-up show. To be honest, this was our first time attending Night Gallery's...
When an extraordinary windstorm on November 30, 2011 in the San Gabriel Valley decimated the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, artists helped replenish its 235 felled trees by auctioning works they created from them. Box Collective, a group of...
Small Green Door located in East LA is a full-service creative studio by day and has for the last couple of months opened up as a space for local artists to interact, create and exhibit their work. This month, Manwell Quiza and Leo Estevez put together a show that is...
Robert Mapplethorpe's recent retrospective at LACMA is stunning in its breadth and cohesiveness. What comes across most profoundly is the artist's sensitivity to his subjects. When looking at these images one senses the artist's own investment in these relationships....
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