Art Damaged
Gallery Dogs "Le Dogs"
Staying Sane With Dr. Trainwreck The Introduction
Please allow me to introduce myself... In the UK, we are called ‘Agony Aunts’. But here in the states we are known as advice columnists, or ‘Dear Abby’, as a catchall. This one, however, is a bit different than the manners-focused columns that were once mainstays of...
Staying Sane with Dr. Trainwreck The Conversation
The ‘conversation’ (incidentally the worst possible way to describe anything other than an actual conversation, as in, human beings speaking with one another) around language and words is ongoing and, dare I say, rather boring. That aside, it is vital that we reject...
Tim Presley at SADE
I know when it’s time to eat my words and admit that, perhaps, I was wrong. A few years ago, I proclaimed (often) that I hated portraiture. In my defense, this was a period of overabundance, when Chloe Wise reigned supreme, and I was sick of seeing beautiful, posed...
Richard Hawkins at GAGA & Reena Spaulings
In typical Richard Hawkins fashion, his videos “Blood Everywhere” feature unclad male celebrities (Timothée Chalamet and Bill Skarsgård) slowly starting to rot, eyes blackening and blood gushing. Chalamet undergoes a literal “twink death,” while skipping over the...
Math Bass at Vielmetter
Reminiscent of the visual languages of midcentury graphic design, children’s book illustrations, and corporate branding, Math Bass’s paintings are unnervingly poppy. The language consists of cartoonishly pared-down symbols (alligator, cloud, speech bubble, to name a...
Chase Hall at David Kordansky
There is just something about Chase Hall’s mark-making. He covers the faces of his subjects in stylized patterns that resemble African masks before staining the cotton with coffee. The artist’s marks make a lifeguard’s flotation device resemble an African shield....
Haunting House at Departure Lounge
The last time Jamison Edgar curated Matthew McGaughey was at Honor Fraser, where I had VR sex with the Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines. I wore goggles with Chip’s POV and had an unforgettable sexual experience with a creepily uncanny version of Joanna through...
Shiva Ahmadi at Shoshana Wayne
A welcome break from hordes of contemporary painters retreading 60’s rear-guard aesthetics, Shiva Ahmadi is instead reminiscent of her near-contemporary Wangechi Mutu. Here are the same flowing watercolor lines radiating thick tendrils of hair, the same cosmic mother...
Sabine Moritz at Gagosian
Staggeringly reactionary paintings for a staggeringly reactionary world, Sabine Moritz serves up “lyrical abstractions” (this is a genre, not an assessment) with the warm Crayola-explosion palette of early Jasper Johns and the paint handling of a tamer and more...
Elise Rasmussen at Night Gallery
The history of photographers capturing the West is as storied as the mythos of manifest destiny. Elise Rasmussen steps knowingly into this lineage and subtly pushes the contemporary momentum of turning towards the sculptural, beginning to break photography’s physical...
“Actions” at Sarah Brook Gallery
While the connection between the works in Actions is as ambiguous as its title, the exhibition braids together three artists worth examining individually. Laurel Nakadate’s installation serves as a wall-sized shrine for bridging time and absence, with altered...
Beatrice Arraes at Sea View
The song Kukukaya, which partly inspired Beatrice Arraes’s solo exhibition, speaks of a game meant for four, but “Jogo de Mesa (Table Game)” feels purposely solitary, quiet—a slow reckoning with time, where winning was never the point. Her paintings, saturated in deep...
Rocky Morton Shatto Gallery
These paintings feature drip-like tendrils of paint, blown by a leaf-blower and sprawled across the canvas at all angles. Areas of the surface are covered at random but, more or less, evenly, like static. The process-based stochasticism is all too predictable. This...
J. Parker Valentine at Bel Ami
The one large abstract drawing here, wedged precisely in between the ceiling and floor, explores a relationship between geometric form and explorative mark-making. The light touch is enticing, but the sketchy linework feels too beholden to the diagonal lines and ovals...
Alexander Reben at Charlie James Gallery
The central piece here is four split-flap displays showing AI-generated text and a large HD TV displaying images based on those texts. The problem is that AI images are already familiar enough to be corny. The upscale production values do not help, and the jokey...
Race Place
Since 2018, I’ve made a point of catching the Made in L.A biennial at the Hammer Museum, and at times I’ve come away with mixed feelings toward the city’s most ambitious survey exhibition. While it is worth asking — as many critics before me have — whether or not a...
