SIGHTS UNSCENE
Shoptalk: LA Art News Art Fairs, Breakout Artists, and More.
On a Roll LA artist Sandy Rodriguez is having a very good year—her work is currently in a solo show, “Sandy Rodriguez in Isolation” (through April 17), at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, TX, plus she’s part of two major exhibitions in the LA...
CODAworx Takes Over the Desert Extreme Public Art
CODAsummit 2021 was marked by an in-person conference in Scottsdale, AZ which coincided with the dramatic light/art/water event titled Canal Convergence. While there was a COVID-friendly digital component for those not in attendance, the turnout was relatively...
Book Review: STREET ART & SOCCER "The Chosen Few: Aesthetics and Ideology in Football Fan Graffiti and Street Art" By Mitja Velikonja
The Chosen Few: Aesthetics and Ideology in Football Fan Graffiti and Street Art By Mitja Velikonja 176 pages DoppelHouse Press Graffiti and street art are often considered synonymous since they affect the urban environment in similar ways. But graffiti is...
ASK BABS BABY STEPS, BACK TO NORMALCY
Dear Babs, Back in the pre-Covid days, I didn’t mind going to art openings and events; they weren’t my favorite thing, but I knew it was essential to show up and meet people. Now, after a year of not going out, I find these activities next to impossible to endure. I’m...
Poems "The Mind Wanders" By Daniel Crook; "Courtesy of the Artist" By John Tottenham
The Mind Wanders We pass 6th street at eight o’clock. This is not remarkable but sometimes one can do something countless times and remain enchanted. The colors aren’t the same. Once blue, now purple, then red. No two things are alike an hour later but they...
COMICS A Bunch of Sour Grapes
Disassembly Line SPY Projects / Molly’s Garage
Independence. Freedom. Unchecked mobility. We’re quick to attribute these qualities to the automobile: grand, sweeping, all-encompassing statements that turn the machine into an intractable, totalizing force to be glimpsed from the outside-in. We think less about the...
Nancy Lorenz GAVLAK
There is a single painting that dominates this exhibition, a painting—if one can describe it so—of such singularity that it renders the other works as experiments, exercises, considerations. All are lesser and unworthy contenders. Its only and quite distant challenger...
Bernardo Fleming Institute for Art & Olfaction
An art show without images or really even objects, Dreaming in Smell presents a suite of micro-stories that express themselves not in pictures or shapes, but in scents. It includes a smell so cool it’s like a breeze on the skin; a face-crinkling assault of mold and...
Hank Willis Thomas Kayne Griffin
For New York based multi-media artist Hank Willis Thomas, art and politics are intertwined. He draws from history, advertising (he made a series based on the Nike swoosh), and current events to create works that address issues of racial injustice, identity politics,...
Laura Lima Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Diaphanous panels of fabric, suspended from the ceiling appear to float throughout the main gallery, yet upon closer inspection these tulle panels reveal some areas that have been tightly stitched while others are allowed to billow freely. Color is insinuated with a...
Mary Weatherford David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles
Long-fascinated formally by shape, chromatic modulation, and their definition of a place and its contours, Mary Weatherford’s work has evolved into an abstract geography of incident—a geography that continues to become more expansive in every sense. The title of her...
Sanford Biggers California African American Museum
When one enters the massive gallery at California African American Museum occupied by “Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch,” it’s easy to be seduced by the cacophony of bold color, textures and geometric patterns. Power symbols appear and disappear like a nickelodeon on...
Brendan Lott Walter Maciel Gallery
In his new collection of powerful figurative images and mysterious abstract photographs, Brendan Lott proves he is both “Looking In and Looking Out.” The exhibition is curated across two rooms at Walter Maciel, allowing viewers to move between intriguing and intimate...
David S. Rubin California State University Northridge, West Gallery
It has been a while since David Rubin ended his long and distinguished career as an institutional curator, but he continues to write and curate—and continues to produce art as well. Rubin had put aside his youthful artmaking once his curatorial direction took over,...
Ruth Asawa David Zwirner / New York
Curated by former MOCA LA Chief Curator Helen Molesworth, “Ruth Asawa: All is Possible” at David Zwirner, New York expands our understanding of this remarkable artist by presenting a selection of lesser-known pieces together with her iconic sculptures. Asawa’s...
Top 10 Picks of 2021
I resisted compiling this list (the limitations of which are obvious); but then thought: “Wait! In this awkward year of slow emergence from a pandemic that may never really be over, how many really great shows could there actually be?” Until, as I went over the shows...