Having gone through a recent breakup, the theme of Sam Anderson's show, "Lunch Hour," felt all too familiar as the artist examines cyclical narratives of desire and disappointment. At first glance, the show at Tanya Leighton gallery feels like a departure for those...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Sam Anderson
PICK OF THE WEEK: The Tale Their Terror Tells Lyles & King
The enchanting lure of a hole, the tender scuttle of a bug, the mysterious vibrations of the forest, the pungent bloom of a corpse flower, the mutability of our fleshy bodies in decay—these are things that have fascinated and bonded my years of friendship with Geena...
59th International Venice Biennale Milk of Dreams
Figuratively speaking, this year’s Venice Biennale is a “Brick House;” a metaphor for what creative women are capable of achieving when given the opportunity. Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian female curator since the inaugural Biennale in 1895, has included a...
Takashi Murakami The Broad
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is known globally for his colorful, smiling flowers, anime-inspired paintings and sculptures, and collaborations in fashion and music. His new exhibition, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, presents an intimate but powerful display of...
Roy Dowell The Landing
Roy Dowell’s acrylic paintings are abstractions filled with interlocking and overlapping shapes of differing opacities. Though created from the depths of his imagination, Dowell’s many works reference textile designs, floral patterns, Tantric diagrams and mandalas,...
Jovencio de la Paz Chris Sharp Gallery
The work of Jovencio de la Paz exists between the ideal and abstract and what the press release referred to as the “fallibility of physical space.”I don’t think of “physical space” as a “fallible” domain, nor are digitally constructed spaces necessarily ideal. Yet...
Known & Understood Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College
In Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (2012) bell hooks states, “The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it’s to imagine what is possible.” Such words were actualized in “Known & Understood: Selections from the Permanent Collection” on...
Amelia Carley Otra Vox
There are few forces in the world as powerful as memory. Reconjuring the fleeting scents of former lovers and the chattering sounds of childhood, memory evinces that life is composed of so much more than the here and now; it summons impressions that both soothe the...
Alison O’Daniel Commonwealth & Council
Working in a continuous exegesis of an overarching project, pursuing branching pathways to their conclusions then returning to the center and setting off again, Alison O’Daniel transforms elusive ideas and ambiguous experiences into concrete objects—still and moving...
Ei Arakawa Overduin & Co.
The initial apprehension upon entry to Ei Arakawa’s exhibition took a few moments to subside. It was swiftly alleviated upon realizing that it is not an exhibition in the typical sense but more of a journey through a cardboard-constructed maze: a metaphorical...
PICK OF THE WEEK: The Condition of Being Addressable Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
At the ICA Los Angeles, curators Marcelle Joseph and Legacy Russell have assembled 25 artists whose practices engage with the construction of identity and the self as subject –or, as Judith Butler puts it, The Condition of Being Addressable. This international and...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Mika Rottenberg Hauser & Wirth
A grotesque feeling of excitement and misery shivers through me whenever I encounter Mika Rottenberg’s work. Her stories of monstrous mechanisms of hypercapitalism are infused with a queasy comedy that reminds me of Julia Kristeva’s “laughter of the apocalypse”...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Jeffrey Meris Matthew Brown
Cold sheets of perforated metal gnaw quietly at severed plaster limbs inside Matthew Brown’s La Brea gallery. Despite the unsettling horrors this description might conjure, Jeffrey Meris’ exhibition, "be ever wonderful," is deceptively healing and hopeful. A series...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Kiyan Williams Hammer Museum
As my feet touch the terrain of compact, glittering soil that covers the floor of the Hammer Projects space, it feels as if I’m stepping into another realm, another planet even. Kiyan Williams’ solo exhibition, "Between Starshine and Clay," curated by Erin...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Black Kirby UCR Arts, Culver Center for the Arts
The creation of Black superheroes in Marvel Comics during the Silver Age (comics published from 1956–1970) and Bronze Age (comics published from 1970–1984) has consistently been the exception and not the rule. There was Black Panther (1966), Blade (1973) and Monica...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Fawn Rogers Wilding Cran Gallery
Fawn Rogers' exhibition "Your Perfect Plastic Heart" at Wilding Cran Gallery presents a series of paintings depicting oysters and their gooey erotic membranes. At first glance, these works struck me as a cross between Marylin Minter and Chloe Wise–glittery...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Evita Tezeno; Laura Krifka; Nancy Evans
Three fine solo shows of paintings offer personal perspectives as unique as the artists who created them: Laura Krifka, Evita Tezeno, and Nancy Evans. Krifka’s “Still Point,” is a beautiful tribute to light, the human body, and the human heart. With domestic settings...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Kevin Beasley Regen Projects
Vibrant matter dances and pulsates in vortical pools and currents. Artist Kevin Beasley petrifies matter in states of motion, submerging and emerging materials form dynamic topographies that embody personal and collective histories and significations. I remember my...