LA’s rise as a major architectural center, chronicled by the Getty Research Institute in Pacific Standard Time’s ongoing and extensive set of shows, is difficult to reconstruct despite the copious evidence. The architectural history of Los Angeles is multifaceted and...
In retrospect, Machine Project—the Echo Park storefront operating for the last decade as a rapid-fire curatorial clearinghouse for founder/director Mark Allen’s tireless curiosity—would seem to have been one of the most influential artistic endeavors of the new...
Paolo Soleri’s eyes sparkled from under bushy eyebrows, deep-set in a grizzled face; they projected intelligence tinged with a spark of irony. When I met Soleri (who died in April) the first time, back in 2000, he could at times appear weary, like a man called upon to...
Like its Himalayan literary counterpart, Joshua Tree’s Shangrila is a utopian vision; part dream, part tourist destination. Concretely, it’s a one-bedroom residence on Shangrila Lane, overlooking a seemingly endless expanse of undeveloped, government-owned desert....
I often feel the need to escape the insincerity of Los Angeles for the non-ironic nature of the desert. Hollywood’s slapstick tradition seems to have similar desires. A rock, maybe a bit browner than his companions, sits at the bottom of a boulder-pile. We watch the...
Graffiti Since the Beginning of Time As ubiquitous as its namesake trees were the laminated warning signs recently posted around Joshua Tree: “Rattlesnake Canyon Temporarily Closed Due To Vandalism.” In January, a few markings appeared on the massive boulders that...
The Schorrs’ collection and career as collectors are bifurcated by their move to LA in 1989; before that, they were New York collectors, enjoying Soho parties and the tutelage of intellectual dealers such as Leo Castelli, plus the availability of great contemporary...
During a studio visit, Jim Skuldt points out that milk crates around the world don’t come in a single standard size and shape, as one might have thought. He points to a few of his that are filled and stacked beneath a large desk and loaded onto roadie carts that came...
Kim Stringfellow’s photographs of derelict cabins that sit within the high-desert landscape of the Mojave provide a necessarily familiar entry point into “Jackrabbit Homestead: Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape.” This, the artist’s most...
It’s been a productive year for Farrah Karapetian, a participant in “The Black Mirror” group show at the Diane Rosenstein Gallery, L.A. Louver’s 2013 “Rogue Wave” survey, and the 2013 California-Pacific Triennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. She has also been...
The title of Iva Gueorguieva’s show “Spill/Frame” seemed almost a naked admission of its strategies and ambition with a concomitant risk of crashing, careening failure. In almost all of the works on view there was both a willful, self-imposed notion of the edge or,...
Fragmented and contorted bodies in motion span the gallery as if onstage in Bettina Hubby’s exhibition “Pretty Limber.” Large-scale figures made of vinyl decals float across the space, wrapping around corners and emerging from the floor. Composited from numerous...
Through a process of intellectual, historical and geographic research, Alex Slade makes evident, and critiques thereby, the social forces that shape the American landscape. Landscape-oriented American photographers have been preoccupied with this issue since the...
The “Never Built” exhibition at the Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum on Wilshire unearths gems from Southern California’s architectural history. The idea originated in 2009, and its extensive research and carefully curated selection by Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell...
In Irene Hardwicke Olivieri’s Subterranean Family (2013), a large woman crouches, her body sinking into the earth, weighed down by a patchwork of introspective self-images. One curls in a sphinx-like pose, her feline tail circling behind her back, as she clutches a...
“Speaking Tongues (The material of communication)” introduces Duane Paul's considerable talent and ability in the artist's first solo exhibition. The show’s 12 works (all 2013) are divided into three sections or “dialect clusters:” six works on paper, two...
The buzz around San Francisco’s new art hub—near the Design District along a stretch of Utah Street and nearby Potrero—resonates throughout Jack Fischer’s expansive new space. Its inaugural exhibition, “Years of Pretty,” is a mini-retrospective of SF-based Ward...
Witnessing natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, motivated Kevin Yates’ earlier works that employ motifs of reflection and twinning. Doubling continues with uncanny effect in new representations of decaying decorative/architectural elements, inspired by Edgar...
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