Inter Milan, an Italian football powerhouse, recently endured another racial incident. It is common for Italian fans, and other football teams’ supporters, to throw bananas at Black players on opposing teams. This latest insult, however, came not from fans but an...
Murals Paint the Way in Lima
Lima, Peru is a city of idiosyncrasies, where modern skyscrapers neighbor aging Spanish baroque mansions and colonial squares, all in varying ages of birth and decay. While Lima is not particularly known for having an overwhelming number of art galleries—there are...
Katja Seib
What we take as concrete reality often seems as changeable as a hologram: a door appearing orange in the morning looks yellow in afternoon light; former familiars refashion their characters beyond recognition. Inklings of such slipperiness with regard to perception...
Radiant Space: Laurie Shapiro
In her installation Alchemy Tunnel, now at Radiant Space, artist Laurie Shapiro has created a literal and figurative cave of wonders. Using fabric, foil, sequins, and water-based paint, Shaprio’s inventive fantasy environment glitters and beckons. A distinct floral...
Babies and Borders
Murmurs began making waves on my radar this Summer, initially with their strong group exhibition featuring Genevieve Belleveau, Joel Dean, Lesley Jackson, Jenine Marsh, Jack Schneider and Alison Veit, and since with their astute and integrated programming (most...
Lights, Action, Party
There was plenty to see – and nosh on - at galleries in mid-city this past weekend, from new solo shows to lively group outings. At George Billis on La Cienega, three terrific solo shows offered a wide range of work. Audra Weaser’s Gathering Light created a moody,...
Sayre Gomez
Sayre Gomez extracts strangeness and cultural significance from prosaic architectural facets of Southern California. The life-size paintings in his current show evoke banal intersections between commerce, fantasy and nostalgia: strip mall facades are romantically...
DENK Gallery: Andrew Schoultz
In his installation Vessels, Andrew Schoultz has transformed the gallery space into a fantastical and playful environment. He presents sculptures, paintings and works on paper in his signature style, using an array of concentric lines that define shapes and objects...
Kenny Scharf
Few artists crisscross high-low categories as deftly as Kenny Scharf, whose whimsical work inhabits a gallery as strikingly as it does a street. Just down the road from his tire-shop mural, the exterior of Honor Fraser is currently festooned in a tacky crown of...
Full Moon Fantasies
Guided by the energy of the growing full moon, we began our gallery excursion this weekend on Friday evening at the opening of Dark Fantasy, at UTA Artist Space. Located in the heart of Beverly Hills and established in 2016, the hyped exhibition space is one I have...
Mixografia: Analia Saban
Analia Saban’s overall practice enacts recurring variations on a kind of populist materiality, in which she invents ways to explore the physical qualities of commonplace stuff like concrete, wet paint, plastics, and the entropic effects of time. She both demystifies...
Gagosian: Nathaniel Mary Quinn
At first glance and from afar, Nathaniel Mary Quinn's imagery appears to be photo-collage, but upon close viewing, the works are actually painted. What immediately comes to mind is the work of Francis Bacon, Romaire Bearden, Deborah Roberts, and the Surrealist parlor...
Dona Nelson
Like unruly creatures, Dona Nelson's double-sided paintings defy convention; they stand free, hang from ceilings and incorporate quotidian materials in bizarre ways. Titled "Painting the Magic Mountain" in wry reference to Thomas Mann's 1924 novel, this show contains...
Immersive October
Installations and immersive experiences were everywhere this weekend, with the opening of CA 101 2019 starting things out on Friday. Yes, beautiful paintings, photographs and sculptural pieces were present too as gallerygoers took in the bright orange sunset at the...
Nicodim Gallery : Moffat Takadiwa
Moffat Takadiwa mines Zimbabwe's landfills for materials. These landfills contain boundless amounts of plastic trash which Takadiwa collects, cleans, sorts and then uses in the creation of his magnificent assemblages. Prominent in his woven wall-based works are bottle...
Naudline Pierre
Informed by her religious upbringing and her love of Renaissance painting, Naudline Pierre re-interprets devotional painting traditions with maverick imaginativeness, devising phantasmagoric scenes where humanoid figures radiate colorful nimbi and commune with winged...
Early Birds Catch the Free Cocktails
“Hey, I thought this thing started at 6 o'clock?” Yeah, so did everyone else. As the time neared 6:20, variations of this conversation could be heard throughout the main foyer of the Hammer where many eager (read impatient) gallerygoers and who’s who stood around...
Los Angeles Paints Itself
An artist’s artist is one who has garnered respect and notoriety not only from curators, collectors, dealers but also their fellow artist. And I could not but use this particular phrase repetitiously in the lead up to the opening of Sayre Gomez’s solo exhibition at...