As with most endings, there exists introspection. The show is done, the crates have been shipped, the pieces have been sold—or not. Regardless of the success or accolades, regardless of the critic’s opinions, reality is now filled with days of waking up sans deadline....
A Moment for Synthetic Self-Reflection
PEER REVIEW Ishi Glinsky on Kristopher Raos
A standout artist in 2023’s “Made in L.A.” biennial, Ishi Glinsky often plays with scale in his sculptures, paintings and drawings that reflect the customs of his tribe, the Tohono O’odham Nation. Fusing the past with the present, Glinsky examines pieces from his...
SHOPTALK: LA ART NEWS L.A. Fairs in the New Year, The Artful Lunacy of Luna Luna, Over at the Huntington, Movies and Endings
L.A. FAIRS IN THE NEW YEAR The fairs are coming again, and the leader of the pack is, of course, Frieze Los Angeles (Feb. 29–March 3, 2024), returning once more to the Santa Monica Airport. There will be more than 95 exhibitors, with about half from the greater LA...
LOOKING AT TOMORROW David Byrne Takes On the Housing Crisis in the Northwest
One wouldn’t expect the prelude to a screening of David Byrne’s American Utopia to be a conversation—facilitated by the polymath—on affordable housing, but that’s what happened this past November at the Tomorrow Theater in Portland, Oregon. For one hour Byrne, joined...
ASK BABS ACCESSIBLE ART?
Dear Babs, Dear Babs, How do you feel about an artist selling prints of an original artwork that hasn’t been shown or sold yet? Since it’s a print, the cost will be more affordable to the average buyer. Do you think this lowers the value of owning the actual piece of...
POEMS "Stealing Life" and "The Lugubrious Game"
Stealing Life Closer and closer to fifty, years turn months, weeks, days, and I have trouble staying asleep. Around two I get up to read in the living room, then lie down, this time on the couch, turning the transistor radio to KGO, distracting myself, returning, life...
COMICS Community Standard
GALLERY ROUNDS: Claudia Keep Parker Gallery
As with many works of contemporary art, Claudia Keep’s compact paintings first entered my field of vision on social media, where her imagery retains its appeal, even as her textured, varicolored and economical brushstrokes are flattened out. Keep often makes blunt...
PERFORMANCE: X’ene’s Witness Justen LeRoy's Contemporary Opera
As our rushing descent into global environmental catastrophe continues, we are inundated with images of our planet's suffering. We’ve all seen the snapshots—a man up to his neck in water pushing children on a downed satellite dish during the 2022 flooding of...
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Sonya Sombreuil, Come Tees Jeffrey Deitch
I first encountered Sombreuil’s work about 10 years ago—the coolest woman I had met in New York was wearing a pair of Come Tees screen-printed jeans, the legs bleached from the hip down, covered with bold drawings of red and blue faces and text reading, “The whole...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Ann Weber Wönzimer Gallery
Spectacular and sinuous, Ann Weber’s large-scale sculptures create a mythic world, one that viewers step within and explore as if moving through a strange and lovely forest of anthropomorphic shapes. Created entirely from cardboard strips, the sculptures are woven...
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Atavism for the Future Ehrlich Steinberg
The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, this group show of ten artists considers the tenderness of objects through various materials and scales, balancing between historical and futuristic sensibilities, as the exhibition title suggests. Spanning two floors and multiple...
GALLERY ROUNDS: “A Space Between Us” Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art
Global pandemics democratize pain, suffering and loss. Therefore, who does one turn to when inquiring about world-reshaping events that impact the interpersonal and economic fabric of society? The answer is artists as they function as visual ethnographic historians....
REMARKS ON COLOR: Mamie’s Baby Blues December's Hue
They say, “The eyes have it,” and what the “it” is exactly in this sentiment is debatable, yet no one can argue that Mamie Eisenhower’s baby blues rivaled the Atlantic and set more than a few hearts ablaze. The blue of her eyes was practically iconic and the tell-tale...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Phranc Craig Krull Gallery
“Phranc: The Butch Closet” at the Craig Krull Gallery is a joyous celebration of a Los Angeles icon. The ambitious exhibit, which includes work and documentation from the past forty years, illuminates how Phranc and her music—she identifies herself as the...
OUTSIDE LA: Atlanta Art Week
When Donovan Johnson and his new partnership cohort stepped in to renovate and relaunch the once-venerable Bill Lowe Gallery—transforming it into the buzzy and ambitious Johnson Lowe Gallery of today—it signaled more than a changing of the guard at one of Atlanta’s...
GALLERY ROUNDS: “DEL CIELO” ROSEGALLERY
Birds in the trees: all is right in the world unless it’s three in the morning and their birdsong is interrupting your sleep. Birds on a telephone wire: a testament to adaptation in one’s habitat; I hope it doesn’t ruin your connectivity. Birds on the beach: better...
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Gillian Wearing Regen Projects
Including photography, painting and video, Gillian Wearing’s show, titled “reflections,” rethinks portraiture and perception, as the artist is well known to do, with many of the works directly referencing artists from the past and their compositions. In a striking...