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  • GALLERY ROUNDS: Vera Lutter Los Angeles County Museum of Art

    GALLERY ROUNDS: Vera Lutter
    Los Angeles County Museum of Art

    One of the most uncanny things about the photographs in Vera Lutter’s exhibition Museum in the Camera, is the fact that many of the galleries depicted, as well as the buildings themselves are no longer there. Lutter shot on site at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from February 2017 – January 2019, before the recent widespread demolition meant to make way for the new museum structure.

    Using both stationary room-sized and portable smaller-scaled pinhole cameras, Lutter created images of both interior and exterior spaces at LACMA, as well as individual works of art. A pinhole camera is a camera without a lens. Light passes through a small hole that functions as an aperture projecting the object or scene in front of the “hole” onto the opposite wall, photographic paper or film. Pinhole cameras usually require long exposure times that results in motion blur as well as the absence of any objects that move continuously in front of the lens. The image created is also a backwards and upside down negative.

    Vera Lutter, Art of the Pacific, II: September 21, 2017–January 5, 2018, 2017–18, unique gelatin silver prints, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through an artist residency supported by Sotheby’s, © Vera Lutter, digital image courtesy of the artist

    Before gravitating to pinhole cameras in the early 1990s, Lutter turned her New York loft into a camera obscura to project large inverted images onto mural sized sheets of photographic paper to create unique large-scale negatives. She later constructed room-sized cameras she could use on location. Working with a crew at LACMA over two years, Lutter was able to fabricate not just one, but four room-sized cameras that she used to capture aspects of the museum, documenting exhibitions, gardens and the various buildings on LACMA’s campus. She also built smaller pinhole cameras to make individual photographs of specific objects of art and paintings. To create the oversized three panel image European Old Masters: December 7, 2018 – January 9, 2019 (2018-19) Lutter hid the camera behind a specially constructed wall and positioned the vantage point, the gallery lights and even the paintings to perfectly recede in space. The resulting photograph is an eerie and ghost-like image of the gallery in which these old master paintings hung. As a black and white negative, the walls are dark and the is ceiling white with black spots where the lights were positioned. The frames surrounding the artworks glow against the dark walls and in relation to the now lightly rendered paintings. The reflective corridor is devoid of people due to the month long exposure.

    Vera Lutter, Art of the Pacific, II: September 21, 2017–January 5, 2018, 2017–18, unique gelatin silver prints, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through an artist residency supported by Sotheby’s, © Vera Lutter, digital image courtesy of the artist

    Art of the Pacific, II: September 21, 2017 – January 5, 2018 (2017-18) is another three panel photograph (97 1/8 x 168 inches) where Lutter positioned objects and artifacts for the camera. Using objects from LACMA’s Pacific Islands collection, Lutter composed the photograph based on aesthetics, rather than factual relationships stating, “I was allowed to pick all my favorite pieces…. I brought all these characters together that aren’t from the same tribe, and aren’t from the same island, and might not really speak the same language, but I wanted them all to talk to one another.” In the resulting photograph, the three-dimensional objects appear flat, their tonalities a surreal group of tones due to the fact that the image is a negative. The arrangement of objects were similarly finessed by Lutter from inside the camera to maximize the compositional balance within the image.

    Installation photograph, Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2020, art © Vera Lutter, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

    Included in the exhibition are pinhole photographs of individual artworks carefully shot on custom made “copy-cameras.” There are pinhole cameras arranged to face easels onto which Lutter placed specific paintings. Though recognizable as paintings, Lutter’s photographs highlight different aspects of the originals as again they are presented as reversed black and white negative images.

    When Lutter first visited LACMA to contemplate the project, she became enamored by the area known as Rodin’s Garden. Not only was it beautiful, but it represented Los Angeles, with its billowing palm trees and traffic just beyond the fence. The plaza was both quasi-urban and a cultural landmark simultaneously. Her image, Rodin Garden, I: February 22, 2017, (2017) exemplifies this experience. Though recognizable, the quality of light and blurriness of the treetops takes one beyond reality into a dream-like environment. It is curious that Lutter includes two versions of this image, one is high contrast, while the other is much darker (over-exposed) with a more muted range of tones.

    Installation photograph, Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2020, art © Vera Lutter, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

    Lutter’s images call certain photographic truths into question. While they were made with a camera, what was placed in front of the aperture (pinhole) changed due to the long exposures (some took several months). These images are single shots that were created not in fractions of a second, but over time and this durational aspect gives the finished photographs an uncanny quality. Although “real” they appear surreal because LACMA no longer has many of the courtyards or galleries Lutter documented and most of the art is in storage. Wandering through her exhibition, one cannot help but reflect on the demolished architecture and memories of the museum. While the works on view in Museum in the Camera serve as a reminder of what LACMA was, more importantly they are intriguing images and new works of art that re-present what is gone in surprising and unusual ways.

     

    Vera Lutter

    Museum in the Camera

    Los Angeles County Museum of Art

    April 1 – September 12, 2021

     

  • In Living Color: Felix LA 2021 Art IRL at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

    In Living Color: Felix LA 2021
    Art IRL at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

    Felix LA, the fair that for two years has run concurrently with Frieze LA, is once again at the Roosevelt from July 29 through August 1. This time it is going up without the auspices of the larger Frieze fair, which first delayed in February, then fully cancelled in July. To keep to the current code, all booths will also be held in the open-air cabanas, or in the downstairs rooms that open up their wide windows to the pool, which has a David Hockney painted on the bottom. Though the gallery lineup has narrowed in scope to a handpicked 29 local Los Angeles galleries (down from 60 last year), several major LA dealers —many of whom were planning to do Frieze—will be showing at Felix for the first time. “After a year of so many challenges, we’re happy to present a strictly LA edition of Felix that celebrates our community’s emergence from pandemic isolation. We hope this edition of Felix will mark a turning point for in-person events in Los Angeles, and serve as a catalyst for a recharged and re-energized art world to emerge,” said Felix LA co-founders Dean Valentine, Al Morán and Mills Morán via Cultural Counsel. Felix fair coincides with the inaugural Gallery Weekend Los Angeles, organized by the fledgling Gallery Association of Los Angeles, which was launched in May 2020 as a support network for galleries during the pandemic shutdowns.

    Gagosian Gallery

    It is the first major art show in Los Angeles in almost 16 months (running simultaneously with LA Art Show at the Convention Center) and despite the poolside chill evoked by the cabana layout, there’s a frenetic energy that speaks to the anxiety of the past year. While certain blue-chip galleries thrived during the pandemic—notably David Zwirner and Rele Gallery both opened spaces in Los Angeles in the past year; Gagosian took over the former Marciano Museum—a report from last March stated that approximately a quarter of galleries had to cut part-time staffers or furlough employees, nearly 89% had a decline in sales, and 46% had in-progress sales canceled. At the time it was projected that a third of the city’s galleries would have to close. Though this weekend is not expected to make up for the loss of Frieze LA, the fair aims to draw in collectors hungry to view, talk about, and purchase art in person after a year of online “viewing rooms.” Gallery owner Mihai Nicodim stated that the fair is “as much about community as it is about commerce,” and press releases from Felix LA have emphasized a primary goal of fostering connoisseurship, collaboration and community.

    The vision of a Los Angeles-wide arts community is rather hard to pin down, however, something that becomes obvious as one walks between the eclectic offerings of the cabanas. Though many galleries chose to highlight pieces by LA-based artists, there’s an enormous range in both the galleries present—which vary from international shakers like Gagosian, to smaller local spaces like Various Small Fires—and the work itself. Many rooms highlight artists from Los Angeles. Though each cabana has essentially the same layout, the different installation tactics undertaken by the galleries lent itself to an effect that was far from uniform.

    Charlie James Gallery

    Galleries that emphasized only one or two artists had a more powerful effect. The cohesion produced by focusing on a more unified body of work made a reprieve from the disorientation of the long hallways and identical doorways, which, more than once, I found myself walking out of in the wrong direction (luckily, the Hollywood Roosevelt’s large framed photographs by Slim Aarons, placed at even intervals down the hallway, would quickly right my path. Aha! I had already seen the portrait of San Vicenzo!). Of particular note: Calvin Marcus at David Kordansky Gallery, whose bright, lush, carnivorous-like “Begonia” series exploded from one large canvas to the next, with thankfully little interruption along the walls; Parker Gallery’s exhibition of painter Thornton Dial’s colorful yet harmonized canvases and “ecstatic form” ceramicist Melvino Garetti; Ishi Glinsky’s pieces at Chris Sharp Gallery, whose luminous sculptures of old cartoon characters such as the Pink Panther and Mickey Mouse comes from jewelry inlay techniques from Indigenous tribes of the US Southwest; Jonathan Wateridge at Nino Mier, whose large portraits depict swimmers and pool-side loungers in the muted, gray-toned heaviness of a humid day; and Sara Issakharian’s oneiric canvases at Tanya Leighton.

    Anat Ebgi gallery

    The hotel-room-as-gallery poses a number of practical challenges. Light and wall space are limited, and an unfortunate number of paintings end up propped up on the mantle, above the minibar, or over the bathroom toilet. Now that the art has left the digital sphere, it gives the impression of appearing willy-nilly, as though it materialized in a cabana room of the Hollywood Roosevelt due to a matrix glitch. Some mysterious shared instinct led many gallerists to place sculptures in the shower of the bathrooms, where they cohabitated with phone chargers and scented candles. It worked surprisingly well for Greg Ito’s The Guardian at Anat Ebgi Gallery, a cast resin sculpture of a peacock whose tail feathers are outlined by pink neon light. It glows against the tile walls before one sees the incongruous light source, like some kind of alien crash landed on earth. The magisterial bird, which is molded less for realism than as a film prop, fits right in with the hotel, as does the neon. Over at Kohn Gallery, a dealer explained that “the diagrams the fair provided gave you a sense of the space but weren’t exact, so we had to do a lot of troubleshooting.” One solution?  Switching out the television to install a Martha Alf painting, which “actually has received a lot of positive attention” in this new location.

    Residency Art Gallery

    Individual pieces did best when they interacted with the aura of the Hollywood Roosevelt, instead of working against it. Though hotels are often touted as bland liminal spaces par excellence, the heightened perception that is brought on by looking at work extends, as well, to the cabana rooms. Nevine Mahmoud’s “Wax Lips Seated” at M+B, a sculpture of bloated, ketchup red lips propped onto a plastic deck chair, fit right in; at Various Small Fires, Glen Wilson’s “Alchemy”—in which a chain link fence was interwoven with a reproduced image of young Black boys splashing in the surf, was completely arresting in the midst of the busy fair. One of the most captivating pieces is part of a phenomenal offering from Roberts Projects, Finding a Peace of Mind by Dominic Chambers. In shades of brilliant red, a woman reads attentively. “Reading is a kind of transportation to a different space, which fits with the setting […] literature can be a kind of escapism,” Chambers said. As the lights switched on in the pool, it began to give off a warm blue glow, while the sky turned blush-colored. California, well known as a haven for painters obsessed with light, seems equally well-suited to pieces that focus on color. Chambers is not from Los Angeles, though his gallery is—he’s staying for the duration of the show at one of the rooms at the Hollywood Roosevelt,  a few floors above the buzz of the cabanas.

    All Photos by Mike Vitelli. Courtesy of Felix LA.

     

     

  • Pick of the Week: Frank Gehry & Nancy Rubins Gagosian

    Pick of the Week: Frank Gehry & Nancy Rubins
    Gagosian

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    The pair of shows on view at Gagosian, Frank Gehry’s “Spinning Tales” and Nancy Rubins’ “Fluid Space,” are as dissimilar as they are masterful. Two artists, whose works are to be found in the halls of major museums and on city skylines, find in their works pinnacles of creative excellence and experience. They approach sculpture from vastly different directions and arrive at dramatically opposed conclusions. From medium to visual experience, “Spinning Tales” and “Fluid Space” are worth visiting if for nothing else than to see the breadth of an entire genre of art from two of the best to have ever done it.

    Frank Gehry, primarily known for his architectural achievements, has been producing sculptures for just as long. In “Spinning Tales,” he returns to a long-time favorite subject: fish. Gehry has been producing smaller scale versions of the creatures for years, but in this show he dramatically increases the scope of his vision. The fish are massive, some four meters long and nearly three meters high, and carry with them a strong sense of motion which is familiar across Gehry’s work. They dominate the space, seeming to create a tide which pulls you through and around them.

    While most are his traditional poly-vinyl with internal lighting, there are also a few constructed of copper, which seem to hold an opposite effect. Instead of producing light, they capture it. The copper scales of the fish glow with an other-worldly aura, at the same time inviting and entrancing. The works in “Spinning Tales” come alive when the viewer is present, else they are frozen in their cosmic dance.

    Nancy Rubins’ works, on the other hand, are far from alive regardless of viewer. In “Fluid Space,” Rubins continues her career-long exploration of the reconstitution and transformation of found objects. For this series, the objects are her own casts from a previous series, “Diversifolia,” which showcased natural forms such as plants and animals. The old casts are spliced open to show seams and folds, open welds and scarred brass. The discrete elements are stitched together with steel wires, appearing like sutured shipwreck salvage.

    Whereas Gehry’s fish dominate and demand, Rubins’ sculptures exist without intervention. They coalesce and support themselves, pulling and pushing their extremities and stretching against themselves. They are phenomenal – as in literally phenomena – much in the same way as an exploding star or earthquake. From moose horn to lion mane, “Fluid Space” will occur with or without us – so we may as well witness it.

    Gagosian
    456 N. Camden Dr.
    Beverly Hills, California 90210
    Thru Aug 6th, 2021

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  • John Knuth’s The Dawn John Knuth and Writer Matt Stromberg talk Horseshoe Crabs, Manet, Realism and Kids in a Vaccinated World

    John Knuth’s The Dawn
    John Knuth and Writer Matt Stromberg talk Horseshoe Crabs, Manet, Realism and Kids in a Vaccinated World

    John Knuth is a Los Angeles-based artist who recently had a solo show with Hollis Taggart Gallery in Southport, CT. His work explores how humanity and material and the natural world intersect and influence each other. “The Dawn” ran from May 15–July 3.

    MATT STROMBERG: From its title, the show has an unmistakably optimistic tone. what makes you hopeful? is it for a return to pre-pandemic life, or the possibility of a new way of living?

    JOHN KNUTH: Yep! The show is conceived around the idea of rebirth. We have been in pupation quarantine for the past year. The vaccines are rolling out and we are emerging like brood X cicadas! I feel it. I think we all feel it.

    I caught covid in August and it hit me harder than I think I realized at the time. I had lingering brain fog for about six months. Something changed in me after the vaccine and I have a renewed engagement, inspiration and outlook.

    “The Dawn” became the theme for the show. All the colors and compositions for the fly paintings were made with the sunrise in mind: Yellow, oranges, reds, blues and metallics. I added ostrich eggs as a symbol of rebirth and an acknowledgement of the spring. I also added gilded horseshoe crab paintings and turned them into icon paintings celebrating the importance they play in our vaccines.

    Installation view “The Dawn.” Photo credit: Ian Byers-Gamber

    There’s an element of sacrifice in your work, whether in the form of the flies who live their whole lives just to make your paintings, or the horseshoe crabs who give their blood to make vaccines. Is that reflective of the kind of religious upbringing you had in Minnesota?

    There are certainly religious themes that are in this show. I gilded horseshoe crab shells with 22 karat gold leaf to turn them into byzantine icon paintings. Horseshoe crabs are instrumental in our vaccine production and most intravenous drugs. Each spring on the east coast, thousands of horseshoe crabs are harvested and milked for their bright blue blood to be used in testing in pharmaceuticals and specifically vaccines. That’s because these animals’ milky-blue blood provides the only known natural source of limulus amebocyte lysate, a substance that detects a contaminant called endotoxin. If even tiny amounts of endotoxin—a type of bacterial toxin—make their way into vaccines, injectable drugs, or other sterile pharmaceuticals such as artificial knees and hips, the results can be deadly. Without putting it too lightly their blood gives us life. I also thought of these paintings as my Warhol Marylin Monroes. Or refocusing the idea of the religious icon painting—Of course the idea of the egg is a symbol for Easter and rebirth.

    I’d say the influences of my childhood are certainly throughlines in this show. I grew up on a creek catching snakes and turtles and going to church with my family. I also grew up reading Warhol books. So it is all a part of the thinking in this work.

    John Knuth, Horseshoe 1. Photo credit: Ian Byers-Gamber

    Where do you get the horseshoe crabs from?

    I originally wanted to paint with horseshoe crab blood, but no one would sell it to me. It costs $16,000 a pint! I was trying to buy even just an ounce but the companies that harvest and sell it to pharmaceutical companies would not sell it to me. (I should note that no horseshoe crabs were harmed in the production of this show. They have exoskeletons and they shed their shells, so people collect them and sell them online.) You can purchase anything online. In the past year I have purchased rattlesnake venom, a million maggots, ostrich eggs, horseshoe crab shells etc… How do you see artists responding to the Covid-19 pandemic? You see much more art than I do. I don’t know if I have really seen any art that is directly about it yet.

    It’s a good question. lots of artists’ recent work has been shaped by the pandemic. You’ve all been alone in your studios, with nothing but your thoughts to keep you company. No students (in person at least), no collectors to schmooze, no fellow artists to connect with. Even if the art is not directly about the pandemic, its about loneliness, alienation, apocalypse. Or engaging with the idea of a reset, that we just go back to “normal” after the pandemic, but we need to actually think about what’s important, how we want to act and live after this cloud lifts. The dawn right? The new dawn, rebirth, the egg. its not about status quo, it’s about a new world.

    Installation view “The Dawn.” Photo credit: Ian Byers-Gamber

    You go and see exhibitions multiple times a week. How has the pandemic and now the vaccine roll out changed your feelings of seeing shows?

    To be honest, i never felt unsafe at galleries, even during the middle of the pandemic. Like they were never really that many people at a gallery in the before times. I felt much more anxious at Costco, with scores of people pressing up on you, chin-masking it. Now I feel downright gleeful to be in a gallery. There’s been a funny thing over the past month or so where I’ll go to a gallery, generally a smaller storefront gallery, with my mask on and the gallerist and I lock eyes, and we both take our masks off, since we’ve both been vaxxinated. Its a small intimacy, a show of confidence, of trust. which is quite rare in the art world.

    Are you looking at art differently in a vaccinated world?

    Taking a break from gallery-going has only made me appreciate seeing art in person so much more. It is a social and physical activity. I rely on instagram and social media to keep me updated, discover new work, share what I like, but it’s not a replacement. Art is a physical thing (unless of course when it’s not), but there’s a smell, a dance you do around objects, even paintings, that doesn’t translate to the screen. Thankfully we had a way to keep us connected and inspired throughout the past year, but as long as artists are picking up a brush, or a lump of clay, or even setting up a fly pen to make work, then we need to see it in person, there’s no alternative.

    Installation view “The Dawn.” Photo credit: Ian Byers-Gamber

    Agreed, it is wonderful to be back in front of the physical objects. I guess my question is more of an emotional or if how you are thinking about art has changed? For instance, I went to the Norton Simon the week it opened back up. It’s a place my wife and I love to visit and it’s our stop to see some masterpieces and have happy hour in the garden. We took our one-and-a-half year old son to see his first art museum. I could tell he was connecting with the paintings. We look at a lot of art books at home together. But when we were in front of Eduard Manet’s Ragpicker, Mateo seemed to connect to the painting. It was quite an emotional experience for me. I think with the incredible homelessness issue in LA and missing a connection to humanity the painting changed for me. I was so touched that Mateo was reaching out and emoting towards the painting. I didn’t expect to be so deeply touched by the experience. Mateo’s reaction and my empathetic experience of that painting in that moment will be a treasured memory.

    Mateo at Norton Smith. Photo credit: John Knuth

    That’s a sweet story about your son, what do you think it was about the Manet that he connected with? Usually when our kids are drawn to figurative work, it’s because the subject looks like someone they know, they can relate it to their own lives. When we’ve taken our kids to the museum, I see them connect more with the physical experience of being there than with the images per se. Like seeing Burden’s Metropolis 2 at LACMA—which is obviously a kid favorite because it’s just a giant race track with dozens of toy cars and trains—it still couldn’t compare to the actual construction going on outside on Wilshire Boulevard) or Nikita Gale’s Private Dancer at CAAM, which is basically a theatrical lighting truss on the ground, with lights flashing and spinning, programmed to coincide with a silent version of Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer.” They couldn’t get enough, running all around it, chasing the lights. What it really drove home for me was the embodied experience of viewing art; these are social spaces where we encounter objects, not just images.

    Stromberg’s kid in front of Metropolis II, Photo by Matt Stromberg

    Which circles back to your work I think, because it’s not just about image creating, but these are objects you’re creating, even the fly paintings have a complex, built-up surface (and a smell!) that doesn’t quite carry through on the screen. And then your decision to incorporate actual horseshoe crabs instead of representations, and the neon plexi which can never quite translate in a photo.

    Another stray thought is that as much hope is embodied in your new work, the horseshoe crab as a symbol of science’s mastery over illness, they’re also a bit of a momento mori. The horsehoe crab has been around for hundreds of millions of years and will likely be around after we’ve made ourselves extinct. Some future alien race will find your gold painted horseshoes in their plastic frames (which will most likely not degrade for hundreds of years), and perhaps think it was a portrait of a notable crab painted by a crab artist, with humans never entering their reconstructed narrative. It’s similar to the Ragpicker in a way, the lowliest of the low, whom we walk by and ignore. But the canvas that Manet is painting on will presumably one day just be another pile of rags for another ragpicker to collect and sell to eek by.


    I think much of this conversation goes back to Manet or Courbet and Realism who Manet certainly comes out of that lineage. Maybe not as a painting style but as way of approaching art or thinking or making. I think of myself as a realist artist meaning I try to engage with the world, and make artwork that is involved in the world not romantic, not escapist, not nostalgic, not art about art. I make art of and about the world. It is important that the horseshoe crab is real and that the gold leaf is real and not gold paint. It is not a representation it is the real thing. In our vaccinated world this impulse to participate and experience is even stronger.

    John Knuth was born in 1978 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He received an MFA from University of Southern California and a BFA from the University of Minnesota. Knuth’s recent solo exhibitions Powerplant at Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; Base Alchemy at 5 Car Garage, Santa Monica, CA; Master Plan at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Elevated Uncertainty at Marie Kirkegaard, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Fading Horizon at Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA. His works has recently been included in group shows at International Print Center, New York, NY; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; MassArt, Boston, MA; Self-Titled, Tilburg, NL; Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, CA; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

    Matt Stromberg is a freelance arts writer based in Los Angeles. He contributes to a range of publications including the Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, The Guardian, The Art Newspaper, KCET Artbound, Terremoto, Artsy, frieze, and Daily Serving.

    Editor’s note: This dialogue took place early July, before the resurgence of COVID19 (again).

     

     

  • OUTSIDE LA: Un/Common Proximity Group Exhibition at James Cohan, NY

    OUTSIDE LA: Un/Common Proximity
    Group Exhibition at James Cohan, NY

    During the last year, proximity became a defining characteristic of our daily lives. Geographic proximity limited our access to family, friends and resources, and ideological proximity determined the news we consumed, the information we shared and the concepts we viewed as true or false. This proximity was disruptive, unprecedented and marked a dramatic shift, the repercussions of which are still evolving. This shift is at the heart of the current show at James Cohan. Presenting the work of the 2020-2021 NXTHVN artist fellows, “Un/Common Proximity” reflects the resilience and growth from the last year, as well as the ongoing need for change.

    NXTHVN’s annual fellowship is awarded to seven artists and two curators. As was common during the pandemic, the fellows—Allana Clarke, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Esteban Ramón Pérez, Jeffrey Meris, Ilana Savdie, and Vincent Valdez—had to adjust to new protocols and formed their own quarantine pod, working and growing together as the world around them changed.

    Allana Clarke, Relentless, 2021, cocoa butter and beeswax. Courtesy James Cohan.

    A clear marker of growth, Meris’ sculpture titled Catch A Stick of Fire (2021) hangs from the ceiling with tendrils bursting like a chandelier. At the end of the arms are spider leaf plants, regenerated by hanging grow lights. Next to Meris’ piece is Relentless (2021) by Clarke that addresses the theme of resilience with the word “relentless” written in three-dimensional cocoa butter and beeswax installed directly onto the wall. The use of cocoa butter alludes to healing and self-preservation and relates to Clarke’s exploration of anti-Black sentiment in Western standards of beauty and the methods and materials used to adhere to them. The work is a testament to the ongoing experience of being Black in a society dominated by white norms.

    Clarke’s sculpture points to a major dichotomy underlying the works in the show. While we’ve overcome many hardships during the pandemic, inequality and racism remain. Bringing this issue to the forefront, Valdez’s Just A Dream (In America) (2021) is a monumental painting of an exhausted boxer sitting in the corner of a ring in front of patriotic banners and two men, coaches or sponsors, dressed to indicate their wealth. The juxtaposition of the boxer, identified in an essay by curator Claire Kim as Chicano, with the presumably white figures in the background highlights the racial and economic inequalities in America. The painting, installed on two concrete blocks and leaning against the wall, is accompanied by an audio piece by Justin Boyd featuring Jimmy Clanton’s song Just a Dream (1968) that mourns lost love. The song plays softly like a quiet, sorrowful elegy to false hopes of the American dream.

    Installation view of Un/Common Proximity with Jeffrey Meris (left) and Vincent Valdez (right). Courtesy James Cohan.

    As Kim notes in her essay, Valdez’s message is both “resolute and heartbreaking,” two words that can be applied throughout the show. Indeed, resolve and heartbreak have been constant companions to all of us over the last year. What is clear from the show is that although proximity very literally brings us closer together, it also uncovers the ways in which we are deeply divided.

     

    Un/Common Proximity

    Group exhibition: NXTHVN Studio Fellowship artists

    James Cohan, New York

    June 12 – August 13, 2021

     

    All photos by Phoebe d’Heurle.

  • GALLERY ROUNDS: Ontario Museum Biennial Ontario Museum of History and Art

    GALLERY ROUNDS: Ontario Museum Biennial
    Ontario Museum of History and Art

    The act of self-disclosure is an intentional revelation of one’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings to another individual; it is part confession and part declaration. The 11th Biennial Ontario Open Art Exhibition at the Ontario Museum of History and Art was an aesthetic self-revelation by established and emerging contemporary artists. The widely varied works were both two and three-dimensional and employed a variety of media and subject matter, from textile to photography to clay and metal. Contemporary portraiture kept company with cat paintings and wide-angle photography was side-by-side with optical abstraction. With Kathy Ervin, Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Cal State San Bernardino as the juror, this show is truly an example of a collective community voice.

    Patricia Jessup-Woodlin, Ancestral Reclamation, 2020

    Of particular interest is Ancestral Reclamation (2020), a photomontage/assemblage by Dr. Patricia Jessup-Woodlin, a retired art education professor. On a narrow wooden panel, a portrait of a woman of color is elegantly rendered in fragments of torn collage. She is crowned with a pyramid of ascending cowrie shells and her mahogany eyes are proudly confrontational and penetrating. This work is suggestive of the recent Black Panther film and the woman portrayed—a fragmented portrait of all African women—appears to be reimagining a Black future. It is no coincidence that using cowrie shells extends the meaning of this work’s title. In Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania dating back to the 14th century, cowrie shells served as currency for goods and services. Ultimately, these shells constituted power and were used by Africans for protection. The significance of this work is twofold. First, it resists erasure the glorious past before African enslavement. Second, it illustrates the message of Haile Gerima’s 1993 film, Sankofa; the lessons learned from past function as a roadmap for actualizing a powerful future.

    Lady Day’s Lyrics (2019) by Annie Toliver, an exhibition prizewinner, puts a fresh spin on the idea that relationships range from the toxic to transformative. In this portrait of Billie Holiday, rendered with fabric and ink embellishments, complementary hues jigsaw a profile. Holiday’s face is centered in the composition, floating above a background of sheet music that makes reading the titles of her greatest hits an irresistible pleasure.

    Rick Cummings, Aluminum Dreams, 2021

    Rick Cummings captures a hurried desperation in his mixed media Aluminum Dreams (2021) where a woman is depicted pushing a shopping cart filled with aluminum cans. Additionally, her yellow star (five pointed, not six) designed shirt alludes to an exploitative, capitalist America limping along economically amid a push to reopen the country immediately after a global pandemic has ravaged the planet.

    This exhibition offers a glance into a talented community of artists. Professionally trained or self-taught their willingness to reveal themselves creatively encourages a reciprocal viewer response—actions that foreshadow a change in one’s thinking, not only about art but about ourselves. In Parable of the Sower (1993) Octavia Butler expressed it best by writing “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”

     

    11th Annual Biennial Open Art Exhibition

    Ontario Museum of History and Art

    225 S. Euclid Ave. Ontario, CA 91762

    May 6-August 15, 2021

  • Sugar Houses at REDCAT Rosanna Gamson/World Wide

    Sugar Houses at REDCAT
    Rosanna Gamson/World Wide

    “Sugar Houses” is another production that was stopped in its tracks last year by COVID, but fortunately REDCAT has managed to stage it as their first live production since the pandemic shutdown, if only for a week (July 8 -11).   This kinetic piece of dance-theater is based loosely around the story of “Hansel and Gretel,” very loosely, and slips about in time and geography.  Through it, choreographer/creator Rosanna Gamson has ambitiously tried to reflect on the complexities of folktales, how they can be very dark stories of dysfunctional families and dysfunctional societies, and sometimes perverted to fuel our prejudices. Take, for example, how the dialogue interchangeably mixes the words “witch” and “Jew,” a reference to German anti-Semitism.

    Kayla Johnson and company, photo Rafael Hernandez

    For those who have been to REDCAT, you know that the theater is a black box, with changing configurations.  This time the audience is seated on three sides, with the fourth side taken over by musicians, technicians, and actors sitting out the scene.  The floor of the ‘stage” is covered with a blackboard-like material, which is important, as at various times the actors write upon it with chalk.  Lighting is provided by small spotlights around the rim of the stage, as well as portable lights held and turned on and off by the actors.  It made for a pretty riveting theatrical experience, though not always a coherent one.

    Emara NeyMour-Jackson, Kayla Johnson, photo Rafael Hernandez AF4A8550

    Six actors/dancers take on all the parts – Hansel and Greta, father and mother, and a lot of other characters.  Indeed, my main criticism is that everything goes by too fast, with many scene changes, and much dialogue, making it difficult to absorb the pathos of one scene before it’s replaced with another.  Yes, it’s sad when children are kicked out from their homes and forced to wander dark forests, and it’s shocking when the witch is sometimes called a Jew, but we’re not really given enough time to feel it.  Perhaps that is why when one of the actors, Kearian Giertz, sings the Irish ballad, “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier,” we are especially moved.  He sings beautifully in falsetto, and we are allowed the time and space to hear him.

     

  • Outside LA: “Ecstatic Draught of Fishes” Ellen Gallagher Hauser & Wirth London

    Outside LA: “Ecstatic Draught of Fishes” Ellen Gallagher
    Hauser & Wirth London

    Ellen Gallagher’s “Ecstatic Draught of Fishes” at Hauser & Wirth London features five new, large scale pieces by the artist known for her multilayered works that merge narratives of water ecosystems, Afrofuturist mythology and music. The selected works allow time for the viewer to be drawn in and familiarize themselves with the universe Gallagher is presenting. Throughout the show, the viewer becomes more adept in Gallagher’s distinct visual language. Her multilayered works encompass oil, watercolor, and collaged paper cut outs. The works exist in the Black Atlantis. Conceived by Drexciya in 1997—a tech duo from Detroit—the Black Atlantis is an underwater world inhabited by the children of enslaved women who were thrown off slave ships during the Middle Passage.


    Ellen Gallagher. Watery Ecstatic, 2021. Watercolour, varnish, egg tempera and cut paper on paper 77 ⅝ x 54 ¾ in. Photo: Tony Nathan. © Ellen Gallagher. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

    Gallagher is known to spend long spans of time on each work, and frequently revisit them. The exhibition features two new works from a continuing series of works Gallagher began in 2001, “Watery Ecstatic.” These immense pieces immediately transport the viewer into the Black Atlantis. Gallagher’s red and pink hues achieve intense dimensionality, despite the watercolor medium, and the layering of cut out paper evokes ocean bed depths. These pieces feel magnetic and beating with life.

    Two works in the show that share the exhibition’s title, one containing a backdrop of notebook paper squares in fleshy and bruised tones. This is layered with palladium leaf figures that ride above an abyss of burnt sienna and orange swirls. The palladium heads in both pieces depict traditional Fang figures from the Bantu people of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Cameroon. Gallagher stated she was thinking about the sex life of coral, and coral spawn when making these.

    Ellen Gallagher. Ecstatic Draught Of Fishes, 2021. Oil, palladium leaf and canvas. 98 x 79 ½ x 1 ⅝ in. Photo: Tony Nathan. © Ellen Gallagher. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

     

    “Ecstatic Draught of Fishes” is an apt title for the monumental, vast world Gallagher creates, full of pain. The artists’ discipline of repetition, with its thoroughness and meditativeness, enables a preliminary transportation to Gallagher’s imagined terrains in this exhibition. However, delving into Gallagher’s influences and symbolic content allows a further appreciation for the complexity of her work.

     

     

     

    Tue – Sat, 10 am – 6 pm
    21 May – 31 Jul 2021

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Pick of the Week: Ernest Withers Fahey/Klein Gallery

    Pick of the Week: Ernest Withers
    Fahey/Klein Gallery

    The gap between memory and history has never been more obvious than since the proliferation of photography. History presents a narrow view of our past: the highest achievements and the lowest atrocities – which can even be the same depending on the historian. What is lost in the extremes of history is the subtlety of everyday life; we do not find the small victories and micro-aggressions which populate the real memory of our lives. The vast majority of us will neither be fortunate nor unfortunate enough to be documented by historians, but we are still important, aren’t we? In a sweeping testament to the power of photography, Ernest Wither’s “I’ll Take You There,” on view at Fahey/Klein Gallery, reveals moments both major and minor.

    Withers, one of the most prominent Black photojournalists throughout the Civil Rights movement, turned his photographic eye to more than just iconic figures like MLK, and worked to capture the intricacy of Black life throughout the period. The first room of photographs in the exhibition show places like dance halls and record stores. A portrait of the king and queen of Cotton Makers Jubilee (1959) is of particular note. The regal robes, the spotlight, and the satisfied smiles are testaments to a moment of brilliance in a tragic era of American history. It shows that joy and ease are as important to document as tragedy and pain.

    That said, there are plenty of examples of the latter in the other half of the exhibition. Withers took photographs of pro-segregation protestors and heinous police violence that are tragically not far from the public imagination. The images of Black protestors wearing sandwich boards with the phrase “I AM A MAN” across from police officers wearing gas masks are especially familiar.

    But there is another familiar sight in these images: the importance of voting. Withers documented dozens of these scenes. A student volunteer registering fellow Black Americans; dozens of Black men and women lining up following the Tent City Drive; a woman proudly holding up her voter ID. These small moments of the Civil Rights movement may not occupy the same space in history books as the March on Washington, but perhaps they should. They are more important to learn from, as they show what we all can do with our own small moments.

    Fahey/Klein Gallery
    148 N. La Brea
    Los Angeles, California 90036
    Thru July 31st, 2021

  • Tribute to L.A. Sculptor Kenzi Shiokava (1938-2021)

    Tribute to L.A. Sculptor Kenzi Shiokava (1938-2021)

    L.A. sculptor Kenzi Shiokava died June 18 at age 82. His passing was announced by the Japanese American National Museum. JANM featured Shiokava’s totemic wood sculptures in the 2017 Pacific Standard Time exhibition “Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo.” The artist was an ideal fit for the show. Born to Japanese immigrant parents in Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, at age 25 he followed his sister to Los Angeles in 1964.  

    The young Shiokava enrolled in the Chouinard Institute (now CalArts) focused on painting. Fulfilling a sculpture requirement his senior year of 1972, he struck upon his life’s work: Carved found wood, arranged vertically in clusters. He went on to earn his MFA from Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in 1974. From small found wood pieces such as railroad ties, he moved up to sections of tree trunks and telephone poles, often several feet above head height. He tapered them and hollowed them out using only hand tools. He appears to have arrived at many a form by carving away sections of burnt wood to reveal the contrasting unburnt wood beneath. The totems seem both ancient and modern. Mixed in with these form-centric works are assemblages–wood pillars with cascades of macramé, electronic wires and found materials both organic and non. The artist was influenced by L.A.’s Black assemblage artists, his contemporaries, including John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy and Betye Saar.  

    Kenzi Shiokava. Installation view, Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only, June 12 – August 28, 2016, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Photo: Brian Forrest.

    Shiokava made a living as a gardener, notably for Marlon Brando, while maintaining a studio practice in Compton,. (Brando acquired one of his sculptures, as did Jack Nicholson.) He showed at such local institutions as the Watts Towers Arts Center and even MOCA but was not widely recognized until he was 78 years old. It was then that the Hammer Museum presented a large installation of his work in the 2016 Made in L.A. biennial. Nothing else in the museum-wide exhibition came close to his singular, fully-realized vision, honed over decades. Opening night found the artist overcome with joy. As new admirers approached to congratulate him–many stooping to meet his eyes, as he stood under five feet tall–he threw his arms around them, the lei at his neck swinging. Visitors voted him best in show via voting stations around the museum, earning him the Mohn Public Recognition Award of $25,000. L.A. Times art reviewer Carolina A. Miranda declared Kenzi Shiokava the biennial’s “breakout star.” In a KPCC Off-Ramp interview during the exhibition’s run, he said, “Now I know my work is going to survive me.” 

  • GALLERY ROUNDS: Lygia Pape Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles

    GALLERY ROUNDS: Lygia Pape
    Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles

    Red is the color of extremes, especially the Cadmium Red Deep of Lygia Pape’s posthumous show “Tupinambá” up at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles. The same red as both Valentine’s Day ornamentation and oxidized blood—red represents birth, seduction, war, death and a myriad of other extremes. In the context of Pape’s Tupinambá sculptures, red represents hunger, passion, memory and the act of devouring. 

     The show is composed of three separate parts which reverberate off of each other. When entering the gallery space, the first work to view is a single-channel film entitled Catiti-Catiti (1974). This black and white film is experimental in nature and acts to connote a setting (Brazil) and set a tone vis-à-vis the act of devouring—which is deeply explored in the following aspects of the show. 

     

     

    The namesake and main feature of the show is Pape’s Tupinambá (2000) series which consists of spheres covered in red feathers. Protruding out of the spheres are recognizably human body-parts such as feet, breasts, hands and bones. This series is indicative of Pape’s Brazilian roots, specifically alluding to the indigenous Tupinambá peoples of the region. In ritualistic and cultural practices, the Tupinambá peoples devoured the flesh of others as a way to physically assimilate the ‘other’ within their own bodies. In one piece, Concerto Tupinambá, there are two chairs jointly covered in red feathers creating a sort of plinth for a green electric guitar. This piece acts to jolt the viewer into asking who’s devouring who? Surely the European settlers enacted a devouring of indigenous peoples and resources when plundering Brazil? 

    Sitting subtly between the overt and inert is the last segment of the show taking the form of the Desenho (Drawing) series, which are “cinematographic studies” bridging gap between Catiti-Catiti and the Tupinambás. Pape collages film stills on gridded paper and adds layers of expressive mark-making seemingly made by colored crayons. The show “Tupinambá” is evocative and harrowing, reifying two disparate worlds and histories as it conjures up the ghosts of a haunted past. 

    Lygia Pape: Tupinambá 

    Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles 

    April 24 — August 1, 2021 

  • Pick of the Week: Off the Charts Royale Projects

    Pick of the Week: Off the Charts
    Royale Projects

    I feel like most people would have a tough time imagining something more ideologically opposed to art than data analytics. Even the phrase sounds unartistic, more at home in investment banking than gallery houses. Art just feels too subjective to be encapsulated by the rigid world of sums and figures. But perhaps that’s the wrong perspective. In the Royale Project’s new group show, “Off the Charts,” we see a collection of artists engaging with how data can be encapsulated by art.

    While numbers are objective, the visualization and illustration of them is far from it, and can take surprising and beautiful turns. Take, for example, the computer generated, two-toned painting from Ken Lum, The Path from Sanity to Madness (2012). A labyrinth, like all puzzles, forces your brain to act in a programmatic way. When you view Lum’s work, you become a computer working your way methodically through a maze from entrance to exit. Just like in life, you must find your way through it – though this maze in particular is much more easy than the maze of life.

    Other works in the show draw not upon computer generation but upon the natural world, attempting to physicalize things we only know through the lens of data. Sway to the Sun: Motion No. 1  (2021) from Luftwerk is one such sculpture. The neon light, twisting and spiraling until shooting upwards like an out of control firework, is a visualization of the growth of a peppermint plant. All plants twist and turn to chase the sun and respond to wind and rain, but their slow development makes it impossible to perceive except through careful measurement. This sculpture freezes in place what is an otherwise invisible dance.

    But others in the show are not so abstractedly related to our experience as dancing plants and computer mazes. The two works from Josh Callaghan, Apocalypto Ticket Sales by Week (2018) and Work Place Injury by Type (2008), are fascinating because of the divide between the minimalist beauty of the work and absurd nature of the subject. Particularly Apocalypto, which juts proudly into the space as steeply inclined graph made of red steel. Their titles being the only insight into their design, they call into question the pure aesthetic qualities of data visualization and the power of artistic context.

    Royale Projects
    432 S. Alameda St.
    Los Angeles, California 90013
    Thru Sep 30th, 2021

  • GALLERY ROUNDS: Desire Encapsulated at Make Room

    GALLERY ROUNDS: Desire Encapsulated
    at Make Room

    Make Room’s new location in Hollywood is a private garden courtyard leading into two exhibition spaces. This space, on a balmy, LA-summer evening, infused with the ethereal charm of director Emilia Yin, leant an alluring hush on opening night and afforded the necessary intimacy to view its inaugural group show “Desire Encapsulated.”
    The show steps in like a fresh dance partner with the eternal dance with desire. Whether desire means hunger, lust, admiration, longing, destruction, transcendence, is irrelevant; the artists featured are comfortable eschewing definitions in favor of holding onto hips, fun-house mirroring its ecstatic moves, and even if to encapsulate seems futile as any lover intuits the preemptive loss that is contained in desire’s dialectic—give me more of what I cannot hold onto-—this invites yet another swoon into jouissance and contemplation.

    Works by Jouen Kim Aatchim and Yanyan Huan
    Installation image of Desire Encapsulated. Photo by Julian Calero. Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles

    Some of the works echo the soft sighs of mono no aware—the Japanese phrase alluding to the gentle impermanence of things. Yifan Jiang’s painting Wheels, captures a single horse rolling on his back down a hill in the wispy stripes of oranges and purples during twilight, and Joeun Kim Aatchim’s The Piggy Back memorializes, in pigment on silk, a pair of ghostly loafers; Yuri Yuan’s deeply-affecting painting Untitled presents two women turned away from the viewer, one at a distance in the arid twilight background, one in the foreground; Yuan’s gentle brushstrokes suggest the woman observing is on verge of dissipation; from the left corner a wide hand reaches from below, disembodied, as if to reach toward is already to be pulled away, pulled apart.

    Works by Lita Albuquerque
    Installation image of Desire Encapsulated. Photo by Julian Calero. Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles

    “Desire Encapsulated” produces an overwhelming ebb and flow of varying emotions and experiences. Guided perhaps by the tidal force of Lita Albuquerque’s Untitled, a sublime, white gold-leaf moon that continued to pull me towards its maternal orb, at one moment considering the cosmos’ mystery, only to fall to my knees to admire Catalina Ouyang’s font VII, a floor installation made from egg yolk, soap stone, horse hair, the earth beneath my feet now oozing up volcanic gestation and sex.

    If Gautama Buddha’s claim that desire is the root of all suffering is true, “Desire Encapsulated” reinforces an idea from Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran, that suffering is also voluptuous.

    Desire Encapsulated
    Make Room
    On view thru July 31st

     

  • SUMMER READING: Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto Reviewed by Pelumi Odubanjo

    SUMMER READING: Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
    Reviewed by Pelumi Odubanjo

    SUMMER READING: July-August 2021
    Digital Special Edition Review
    Subscribe or Order to Get Your Copy Today

    Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto 


    Reviewed by Pelumi Odubanjo

    A ‘glitch’ is often considered to be an error; a malfunction that appears to temporarily cause or indicate fault within a (digital) system or machine. Rarely is a glitch considered to occur beyond the realms of cyber-space. Is it possible for the ‘glitch’ to be embodied? And in such, is it possible for the glitch to be used as radical practice?

    The answer, in short—according to Legacy Russell—is yes. In Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, the rousing debut book by American curator and arts writer Legacy Russell, the glitch is defined as a creative strategy informed by and for queer, trans, nonbinary, and non-white communities that are systematically oppressed by capitalist, heteropatriarchal forces. Using the trope of a political manifesto rather than a long-form essay to bring narratives of marginalised individuals to light, Russell unravels the various ways that liberation can be found within the fissures between race, gender, and technology.


    Legacy Russell. Photo by Mina Alyeshmerni. Image courtesy Verso Books.

    Opening the text through a memoir-like transit, Russell describes what the internet once represented throughout her adolescence as a Black, femme queer woman. Russell, who was born and raised in New York City, spent her formative years roaming the internet. Online, through “storytelling” and “shapeshifting,” Russell “found [her] first connection to the gendered swagger of ascendency, the thirsty drag of aspiration” The internet held Russell’s experiments with queerness, femmeness, and blackness as a space where she was able to become “digital Orlando…shapeshifting, time-traveling, genderfucking as [she] saw fit.”

    Infusing memoir and Black feminist theory, Russell paints an image of a physical world unequivocally entangled by the cyber-realm. Concerned with how race, gender, and sexuality influence and affect the way that our identities are performed, Russell’s glitch is to be understood as a political framework; one which precedes any gendered economy and one which, as it enters and is performed, registers a resistance. Such a strategy provides a necessary resistance for those bodies that have been ignored, side-lined or considered “faulty” by hegemonic culture. As she writes, “a body that pushes back at the application of pronouns, or remains indecipherable within binary assignment, is a body that refuses to perform the score. This non-performance is a glitch. This glitch is a form of refusal.”

    Glitch Feminism recaptures the rallying cry of early cyberfeminism. First theorized by the cultural theorist Sadie Plant in the early 1990s, cyberfeminism was defined as “a movement which sought to re-theorize gender, the body, and identities in relation to technology and power.” Though Russell does not go in-depth in referencing Plant or fellow “cyborg” Donna Haraway, the thread is evident. Central to early cyberfeminist thought were the ways that the digital realm could present a techno-utopian field to enact the aspirations of radical feminism. However, cyberfeminists often failed to register how their liberatory efforts were modelled strictly on their exclusions—those of white, cis womanhood. Russell recognises that as Black and queer people, the digital space can hold varying liberatory practices, acting as a site for collective gathering, a space for interrogating and congregating, and as a place for nightlife and partying. Russell actively chooses to not center the activity of these early cyberfeminist thinkers in Glitch Feminism, but reaffirms this thread through its refusal to be pinned down to a singular context. In doing so, Russell perfectly contends that Glitch Feminism is, in fact, a part of that history.


    Still from Tabita Rezaire, Afro – Cyber Resistance (2014). Image courtesy of the artist.

    Building a strong scaffolding around her manifesto, Russell interweaves various works from multidisciplinary artists, offering a multitude of creative practices that are informed by the glitchy porousness of cyberspace. Including pieces by Ocean Vuong and Sondra Perry, amongst others, each work acts as an interlude for the narrative, aptly breaking up Russell’s train of thought, yet never throwing the reader off. Much like her curatorial practice, Russell creates an artistic landscape that defies chronology and linearity, uniquely rebelling against the patriarchal framing of history.

    Glitch Feminism asks us to interrogate the possibilities of an online world. The glitch is no longer “an error, a mistake, a failure to function.” Rather, the glitch actively decodes, unravels, and ultimately ruptures our notions of the digital realm, revering it as a space where the self is found through constant metamorphosis. Russell throws out several intriguing incitements, and in many cases I found myself wanting Russell to complicate and deepen these ideas. However, Glitch Feminism is at its best in these moments of humming assertion. Russell wields language as an artwork in itself, creating a philosophy grounded by a utopian vision, wherein the glitch stands as the first step towards a freedom built on error and revolt.

     

    Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell
    192 pages / August 2020 / VERSO Books

  • From the Editor July-August, 2021; Volume 15, issue 6

    From the Editor
    July-August, 2021; Volume 15, issue 6

    Dear Reader,

    It is inexcusable to not be well read, mainly because it’s so easy to fix. Just read more! But who has time? Only recently, when a friend asked what book I was reading, I had to admit that all I’d been reading was art copy. He found that unacceptable and told me how he makes it a priority to set aside time to read every afternoon, in addition to nighttime reading, bathtub reading—he probably even reads while he masturbates!

    There are those kind of readers, and then there are readers like me. Then there are the Summer Readers. If I can swing a summer vacation that involves daytime lounging, count me in to catch up on my reading.

    Even the well-read read in the summer. So with that in mind, we bring you our Summer Reading issue, where we put together some selections that include book reviews, interviews with writers, profiles on authors, and some prose offerings.

    We mixed it up a bit too: Local artist moonlights as art detective novelist (or is it the other way around?)! Fiction LA writer/law professor Xyta Maya Murray says “Art Is Everything,” reviewed by Christopher Michno. Natasha Boyd revisits French filmmaker Eric Rohmer and his Catholic ways. LA artist Tom Knechtel treats us to the tiny world of Pat Sweet and her labor-of-love publishing company where miniature handmade books are created. Bunker Visionist Skot Armstrong reviews the new Dali biography, looking past the kitsch and rediscovering the painting. Max King Cap examines Black grief and reviews the posthumous catalog and exhibition from Okwui Enwezor now up at the New Museum in New York. Staying in New York, Sarah Sargent takes us to The Met for the Alice Neel show. LA skid row photographer Suitcase Joe’s new book gets critiqued by photographer (and Artillery photo columnist) Lara Jo Regan. And our excellent lineup of LA reviews includes Ezrha Jean Black’s take on Umar Rashid’s latest show at Transformative Arts.

    Lastly, no worries, we didn’t forget the pandemic. This past year cannot be ignored; we’re all still licking our wounds. Unsurprisingly, as we re-enter the art world, we have noticed a lot of new work that addresses our recent human tragedy. At the same time, there have been rumors that some people are missing the pandemic ways. Regular contributor and poet John Tottenham was one of the first to extol the “pleasures of the plague” in these very pages. In his world, last year was the year that just kept on giving. John takes us on one of his adventures—a jaunt that finds him on an off-track betting and dive-bar excursion. Who knows who might show up sitting beside you in Vegas? We’re always up for a good laugh about the good ‘ole COVID days and glad that Tottenham always delivers.

    Ah, those lazy days of summertime—Hop on a bus to Vegas for the weekend, plan an off-the-grid summer in Maine, swim on the shores of Galveston. It’s good to get away …and get into a book.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Shoptalk Return of Art Fairs, Painting is "In," and What The New Normal Looks Like

    Shoptalk
    Return of Art Fairs, Painting is “In,” and What The New Normal Looks Like

    The New Normal

    We thought the world would end in fire, or possibly in ice. And now we know it can end with a virus. As a child growing up in Taiwan and then later in the US during the Cold War, I often imagined—and literally dreamed—how the world would end. Earthquakes and nuclear holocaust were my usual Apocalyptic scenarios. I did occasionally imagine a strange, contagious disease, but not one quite like COVID-19 where the entire world would be held hostage, so widespread and for so long.

    Now as we slip back into public life, we realize that we have changed, and so has the world we return to. Many people will continue to work from home, in full or in part. Students have gotten trained in online classrooms. As someone who’s been teaching on Zoom, it’s clear that online education can’t match the real-life one, though it can certainly supplement it. Museums and galleries have run virtual exhibitions and presentations, and are now reopening at limited capacity. By the time this is published, they could be at increased or full capacity. However, in the past year programming has undergone a radical shift—with more, deserved attention paid to POC and women artists. The world we return to is not the world we left last March. How could it be? Which changes are to be enduring and systemic remains to be seen.

    “Shattered Glass” show at Deitch Projects

    Painting

    Painting is coming back, and in a big way, but the painters being featured are not the ones highlighted in the past. There was the extraordinarily exciting “Shattered Glass” show at Deitch Projects, curated by Melahn Frierson and AJ Girard, with 40 POC artists, many of them young and emerging and based in California. I went on the closing day, and there were a couple hundred people there—the largest event I’d attended in a while. And what an energy, what a charge as the artists mixed happily with family and friends, old and new, mostly masked but not able to keep distances. Girard was giving tours, there was a fashion show, and lots and lots of photos were sent to Instagram.

    There was also some excellent painting. La Piedra Negra by Vincent Valdez, was one that stopped you in your tracks: a very large painting of the head of a woman, resting sideways on a rock as if listening to something. Her background is a city on fire or perhaps an especially flaming sunset—hauntingly beautiful and not a little unsettling. There were paintings by the Finley brothers: Kohshin Finley’s monochromatically toned Marque and Tiffany shows a young couple in a quiet moment of tenderness, while Delfin Finley’s Rumination portrays the back of a young man with loops of colored ropes slung over his shoulders—a real tour de force of photorealist painting.

    The two-woman show at L.A. Louver with Rebecca Campbell and Heather Gwen Martin was a good pairing, featuring two painters with dramatically divergent aesthetics. I thoroughly enjoyed the first show for Brooklyn-based abstract painter Patricia Treib at Overduin & Co.; her lyrical shapes are part Matisse cut-out and pure whimsy.

    Sister Corita Kent’s studio in Hollywood

    Comings and Goings

    Galleries continue playing musical chairs. Luna Anaïs has moved from a downtown space to Tinflats in Frogtown—and launched with an opening party drawing a lively, multi-generational crowd for a show featuring Gloria Gem Sánchez and Tidawhitney Lek. Owner Anna Bagirov (full disclosure: Bagirov also helps Artillery with its marketing) is very happy with the bigger space, though it’s leased on a temporary basis, so who knows how long they will be there.

    Von Lintel has made another move. They were in Culver City for years, then moved to DTLA, and on May 15 reopened in Bergamot Station with a show by Christiane Feser. “Sadly downtown has suffered immensely from the pandemic,” said Von Lintel via email. “Closed store fronts and countless homeless seem to dominate the scene. I decided that easy access and parking were important for this next post-COVID phase, all of which Bergamot Station in Santa Monica offers.”

    Earlier that month, on May 1, I visited Bergamot for a group show opening at Craig Krull, and it was heartening to see how many people showed up. The reception was out in the parking lot, and it was like homecoming week, with lots of longtime-no-see greetings, and people announcing, “I’m fully vaxxed, too.” Even so, we mostly kept our masks on when not drinking.

    In recent years Bergamot has been gutted by departures and the uncertainly of development. I recall that at one time there were two competing projects, one that included a hotel and other retail, but right now nothing seems to be underway. There are quite a few empty spaces, and it would be great if more galleries could find their way there.

    Hauser & Wirth is adding yet another gallery to its well-feathered cap, with a second LA location. Their current spot in a former flour factory in DTLA is already an art destination, and now they’ve leased a new space at 8980 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood, scheduled to open fall 2022. The 10,800-square-foot space will be designed by Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects, designer of their DTLA location. And yes, there will be a restaurant.

    Something that is not coming or going, but staying, is Sister Corita Kent’s studio in Hollywood, which she used for making her activist art and teaching from 1960 through ’68. It’s now in private hands, and the owners were planning to tear it down for a parking lot. (Hmm, remind you of a certain Joni Mitchell song?) On June 2, the LA City Council voted unanimously to approve the studio as a Historic-Cultural Monument, thus saving it from demolition. Eventually, the Corita Art Center, which started the petition to save the building, hopes that it can be made into a cultural center. It is plain, even drab, in appearance, but it is historical, and a very small percentage of sites related to women or POC have achieved Historic-Cultural Monument status. Kudos to the preservationists!

    LA Art Show—coming soon!

    Art Fairs Return

    And they’re baaack! The LA Art Show had to back out of its usual January slot, but it has rescheduled itself into the LA Convention Center for July 29–August 1. They’re billing a “European Pavilion,” which I’m looking forward to seeing. https://www.laartshow.com/

    The Felix Art Fair is also returning that same weekend, and to their old venue, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This time they’re taking up only the first floor “cabanas” around the pool and focusing on just 29 Los Angeles galleries. Get your tickets early for this one—it’s always crowded. https://felixfair.com/