Made in L.A. 2023 The Hammer’s “Made in L.A.” just opened (through Dec. 31), and it is now clearly THE art biennial of SoCal. It’s also the best one yet, I think. This year’s theme, “Acts of Living,” allows for a diverse range of work from 39 artists while giving the...
SHOPTALK: LA ART NEWS
ASK BABS GOBBLEDYGOOK?
Dear Babs, I’m sick of the BS-way people in the art world talk so that most of us can’t understand them. Why can’t they just be okay with calling stuff beautiful and cool? Has the art world always been like this? Is it just to be exclusive, or is there a point I’m...
POEMS "free country" and "STILL THE SAME"
free country your voice on the phone in the dream is disinterested I miss you I say It’s a free country a moth falls through the door drunk on light the same one that flies out of my wallet how have I never seen him I think coming home —Evan Laffer STILL THE SAME...
COMICS Ancient Chinese Ceramics
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Casey Baden La Loma Annex
Titled "Soft Moves," Casey Baden's show of bright and emotive paintings blends figures with abstracted organic backgrounds; her subjects' skin tones range from blues and purples to deep oranges reminiscent of Kirchner, and the plants and nature are reduced to...
Converge 45: Art and Politics Along Portland’s Parallel
The Converge 45 biennial initiative exists to forge a regional, national, and international artistic discourse, and to intentionally center certain aspects of those conversations within the Pacific Northwest arts ecosystem. Showcasing some 50 local, national, and...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Sabrina Che Great Art Space LA
I’ve always found the word “gilded” to be slippery. On a literal level, it refers to the application of paper-thin sheets of gold leaf, a technique that’s been around for millennia. Not only does the process coat and protect ordinary materials like wood or stone, but...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Soumya Netrabile Anat Ebgi
Nobody walks in Los Angeles but ducking out of the overheated concrete jungle and into “Between past and present/ Between appearance and memory,”—Soumya Netrabile’s vivid exhibition of wildlife, texture, line and color at Anat Ebgi—may inspire the urge to lace up your...
OUTSIDE LA: Jesse Mockrin James Cohan
One could see the LA-based artist Jesse Mockrin’s decision to name her first solo exhibition in New York City and at James Cohan—“The Venus Effect,” after the art historical term, motif, and visual effect—as itself a gesture towards acknowledging, even inviting...
GALLERY ROUNDS: “John Waters: Pope of Trash” The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
This September, the Academy Museum opened its John Waters retrospective entitled “John Waters: Pope of Trash,” shortly followed by Waters' induction into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The exhibit includes the glasses Mink Stole wore in Pink Flamingos (1972), costumes by...
REMARKS ON COLOR: Ford Football Brown October's Hue
It’s no secret, Gerald Ford could throw, and his famed football remembers him fondly, so singular and ever so brown, careening across the Michigan sky. He ran the country the way he assembled the field—one play at a time and always with the endgame in mind, but his...
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Rachel Youn Night Gallery
With artificial flowers attached to motorized objects (such as massagers and exercise devices), Rachel Youn’s animated sculptures are hypnotic and strangely erotic, the rhythmic sounds of both the machines and the movements of the plants pulsating throughout the...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Evita Tezeno Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
In Gladys Knight’s version of “The Way We Were” (1974), she sings, “Can it be that it was all so simple then; or has time rewritten every line; if we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we?” Upon viewing “Evita Tezeno: The Moments We Share Are...
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Erica Vincenzi Giovanni's Room
In Erica Vincenzi’s intimate paintings of cropped images, the artist focuses on snippets of everyday life that may feel familiar to us, both in action and setting—two hands open a wine bottle, a blue dish rests on a kitchen counter—yet have a dreamy, mysterious...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Rose Wylie David Zwirner
In the rehearsed simplicity of “CLOSE, not too close” at David Zwirner, artist Rose Wylie grapples with Platonic ideals and the basic tools of semiotics. In both work on paper and oil on canvas, the artist depicts, again and again, important personal symbols....
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Maja Ruznic Karma, Los Angeles
Achieving a rich depth through numerous layers of thinned oil paint, Maja Ruznic creates vibrant, large-scale paintings that are both figurative and geometric, the flattened shapes of her almost patterned compositions reminiscent of Klee. With her subjects spanning...
JOHNNY COME LATELY John Waters Joins the Hollywood Walk of Fame
In the entire time that I’ve lived in Los Angeles, I’ve never been interested in the goofy pomp and circumstance of granting entertainment celebrities a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but this past Monday everything changed. The Pope of Trash, the Prince of Puke,...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Allen Ginsberg Fahey/Klein Gallery
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg often carried a camera with him so that he could memorialize his friendships in a photographic diary. From 1953-63, he spontaneously recorded times spent with an intimate entourage that included literary figures Jack Kerouac, William S....