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...
OUTSIDE LA: Jesse Mockrin
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....
PUBLISHER’S EYE: Kelly Wall New Low
Featuring two of Kelly Wall’s large, impressive stained-glass sculptures—the first a fusion of two reclining beach chairs and the second an awning—this show becomes an experience with light through the artist’s medium. With “Star” placed across the face of the awning,...
GALLERY ROUNDS: “Foundations” at Carlye Packer
Passing through the doors of Carlye Packer brings you face-to-face with Nancy Pelosi. Dressed in a bright blue blazer, mask tight across her face and her right hand grasped around a gavel she has thrust in the air, Pelosi—or rather her likeness—is set center within...
REMARKS ON COLOR: Stove Pipe Black September's Hue
Stove Pipe Black has been known to be quite presidential. A lofty, serious shade, yet with an air of whimsy skirting the edges. Jet black is for racing cars and black pearl possesses a hint of green that can sometimes be found on iguanas, but Stove Pipe Black can be...
ON TOP OF THE WORLD Mercedes Dorame Reverses Power Structures With Spirituality
At the Getty Center, Los Angeles’ world-famous “treasure box on the hill” bearing the name of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, a monumental shift is underway. I chatted with Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame, whose art is at the center of it all. “Mercedes Dorame: Woshaa’axre...
COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT "Redaction" by Reginald Dwayne Betts and Titus Kaphar
A powerful indictment of the American legal system, “Redaction,” a collaboration between poet Reginald Dwayne Betts and visual artist Titus Kaphar, began its life as a 2019 exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York. As a follow-up to the show, the artists, who are both...
FUCKING WITH AUTOBIOGRAPHY The Films of Martine Syms
How do we tell our stories? Martine Syms is rewriting the terms. In addition to sculptures, installations and text-based projects, the polymath Angeleno artist has made a string of ambitious films. Her work in FAV extends as far back as her solo show at MoMA in 2017,...
CLIMATE CONSCIOUS Artists Advocate for Carbon Reductions
Art sector efforts to decarbonize have been highly visible over the past three years as galleries and artists have publicly pledged concerted action to reduce exhibition-related emissions: Nonprofit advocacy groups like Gallery Climate Coalition, Art + Climate Action...
MALKA GERMANIA Yael Bartana's Jungian Journey Into the Past and Present
In an age when so much gratuitous violence pervades our screens, the three-channel film Malka Germania presents a gentle Jungian perspective on the effects of the Holocaust on today’s German citizens. The film alludes to collective trauma about war and subjugation,...