Matthew Sweesy’s “Nocturnes” and Jesse Edwards’ “Hot Town,” currently at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, are exercises in nostalgia. The two artists, while working in different mediums and styles, have a strikingly optimistic quality. Whether it’s the pop culture references...
It was a celebratory evening at the Underground Museum benefit auction, My Kid Could Do That, on Friday evening. The benefit was in support of ProjectArt’s mission for arts education for children…and we all know how important that is for human beings, and society in...
Ben Sanders envisions paintings and completes drawings while sitting in church. It sounds as though the pictures yielded by this arrangement would be moralistic, maudlin or mocking; but instead, he transfigures personal and religious narratives into open-ended...
In the dystopian future of Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animation Isle of Dogs, Megasaki City is gripped with the panic over the contagious dog flu. The nefarious Mayor Kobayashi (voiced by Kunichi Nomura) exiles all dogs to Trash Island, a place piled with the detritus...
Kerry Tribe’s film Standardized Patient, which was commissioned by SFMoMA in 2017 and is currently at 1301PE, is a filmic expression of thoughtful storytelling centered on a controlled social environment that is often unexplored within the wooly conceptual arts—the...
Even before pie charts and bar graphs, before we’re plotting curves and breaking down conic sections in algebra and analytic geometry, we become accustomed to the graphic visual representation of every kind of trend, concept, and systematized data or information. It...
From the Valley to the Beach to Downtown LA, a wide range of entertaining art exhibitions opened this past weekend. At the Museum of the San Fernando Valley, artist Jodi Bonassi launched her retrospective, "PUBLIC SETTINGS… Private Conversations." Showing a collection...
Alison Petty Ragguette's sculptures voluptuously incarnate equivocal tensions between nature and artifice. Evincing Ragguette's versatility in ceramics and sculpture, "Visceral Bandwidths" at Launch LA debuts her new "Melanin" series alongside examples from recent...
The sweep and scope of the Laguna Art Museum’s extensive Tony DeLap retrospective encompass several remarkable elements, including the artist’s large hybrid constructions, which feature unusual juxtapositions of shapes and materials, and his curved standing and...
Two painting shows at Lora Schlesinger Gallery register as pensive pictorial journals of events both experienced and imagined. Including still lifes, figures, landscapes, and combinations thereof, the easel-sized scenes in Roberto Gil de Montes' show titled "Moments"...
The Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion has organized a long-overdue posthumous retrospective for Los Angeles artist Jim DeFrance. Grouped largely by artistic series, the exhibition encompasses nearly six decades of his career. Seen altogether, this surprisingly...
It’s been a tumultuous week in Los Angeles; and for a change, we can’t blame it entirely on the Putin-wannabe currently installed in The White House or his cronies and GOP enablers – notwithstanding the fact that he happened to blow into town this same week to pick a...
The legendarily expressive artist Louise Bourgeois said that the goal of her practice was "to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering.” This meaning and shaping are potent at The Museum of Modern Art’s Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait, a...
Coinciding on International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, the opening for "Viva La Vulva" had a seamless approach to welcoming dialogue on the topic of empowering sexual health. Founded by Dr. Cara Quant, Panika Kodali, Jeremy Quant and curated by REN Gallery...
Buenos Aires artist collective Mondongo is a collaborative duo consisting of Juliana Lafitte and Manuel Mendanha. Their work doesn't disappoint curiosity engendered by their mysterious name taken from a stew. Following the rickety elevator ride to the age-old Bendix...
Light and Space Art, one of the few significant movements to originate in Southern California, conflates the forms of Minimalism with the use of light as the actual medium of the artwork. Yet, even with all of the recent interest in the legacy of So Cal art, we have...
It was interesting to walk through the Jasper Johns exhibition, Something Resembling Truth, only a couple of days after my first look at Mark Bradford’s new paintings at Hauser & Wirth. Bradford’s paintings marked something of a departure for him – continuing to...
Liminal: occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. "Liminal Spaces" at Jason Vass gallery, which opened Saturday night, occupies a position of cool, whether the boundary is mixed-media wall art, free-standing sculpture, or something in...