Great Britain is in serious decline. The City has lost its position as Europe’s indispensable financial center, the UK economy is in recession and its vaunted National Health Service is in shambles. The Tories have ruled Britannia for 12 straight years, much of it in...
ART BRIEF
THE DIGITAL Consumer vs. Appreciator
With the current exponential rise in digital, AI-generated art and blockchain verifiable provenance, has the need for showing an original piece of art lost allure? Akin to a natural history museum showing a dinosaur skeleton that is 99% reproduction and 1% actual...
BUNKER VISION That'll Do, Pig
Between 1971 and 1983 Los Angeles hosted an annual film festival called Filmex. The people behind it went on to found the American Cinematheque. In 1975 they received a submission from Belgium that caused the judges to cringe so hard that they planned to reject it....
OFF THE WALL Just Want to See His Face
In early 1972, the Rolling Stones headed out on tour after the No. 1 worldwide release of their 12th album, Exile on Main Street. Also known as the “Stones Touring Party,” the raucous, star-studded and drug-fueled tour featured 48 shows in the US and Canada. The...
ASK BABS Sans Human Touch
Dear Babs, I have been following a lot of the conversations about AI-generated art and I’m concerned that it’s going to be bad for artists. I’m worried it’s going to steal from existing artwork the algorithm vacuums up and make it so people don’t value the skill it...
SIGHTS UNSCENE
SHOPTALK: LA Art News
Arrival: Santa Monica Airport, FRIEZE LA Is there such a thing as too much art? My eyeballs think so, as they began to glaze over Saturday afternoon while browsing the art fare at the Felix art fair at the Roosevelt Hotel. It was Day Four of my marathon. In February...
BOOK REVIEW: Two Artists’ Books on Dystopia
The Earth is parched, its water impure. The air is poisonous, awash with industrial effluvia and alive with toxic organisms. Our culture has been radically and relentlessly artificialized, while we are regimented, consumerized, alienated and terrorized. Fortunately,...
POEMS "Vincent's Blackberries" and "Belated Start, Premature Conclusion"
Vincent's Blackberries Buying blackberries, you held out on me in Hollywood Erewhon. Tonight is Friday, Christmas lives on and on. Vincent was out in Aries eyes and feeling good, wanting to meet people: other people who buy blackberries I was by myself in mascara and...
COMICS
GALLERY ROUNDS: Hayley Barker Night Gallery
Laguna Castle is a domestic show, focused tightly on the objects and spaces of everyday living. The solo exhibition at Night Gallery takes its name from the complex in Echo Park that hosted artist Hayley Barker’s residency in the apartment of the late community...
Remarks on Color: Savage Saffron March's Hue
Savage Saffron is so much more than a condiment to spice up the rice. He is fearless and courageous, bold and unwavering in his resolve, but more importantly, he is truly authentic, a one-of-a-kind maverick whose influence on modern popular culture is quite...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Fran Siegel Wilding Cran Gallery
To meander is not the same as to walk from point to point. Aside from being less direct it also implies a kind of dallying and teasing out of things that marching from place to place simply does not accomplish. All the artworks in Fran Siegel's show "Chronicle,"...
OUTSIDE LA: Mexico City Art Week 2023
The 2023 Mexico City Art Week kicked off its return last week, the entire city humming with visiting creatives eager to take in all that fairs, galleries, museums and performance spaces had to offer. Zona Maco, running February 8-12th, returned to Centro Citibanamex...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Whitney Bedford Vielmetter Los Angeles
Depicting the passage of time and light through the color of a repeated landscape, Whitney Bedford’s “Vedute” immerses viewers in a stunning but haunting forested world. The landscape in each large-scale work depicts the same scene mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Elliott Hundley Regen Projects
Elliott Hundley's creations have always been superabundant. His dense canvases are usually filled with thousands of small cut-outs—shapes, figures, snippets from advertisements—pinned to the surface of the works and extended out at different heights to turn the...
Black Diaspora Emerging Artillery and Glendale Library Panel Discussion
Chance the Rapper, the announced headliner of Artillery’s “Black Diaspora Emerging” forum at Glendale Public Library January 28, was sidelined by a sudden illness, disappointing the organizers and many attendees. But even if the "Black Star Line" failed to dock in...
Remark’s on Color: Denouement Daffodil February's Hue
Denouement Daffodil is a real downer and the first person to leave the party, proffering reasons like “I must go home and feed my guppies,” or “I can’t concentrate because my nose hairs are making me sneeze.” Always quick to wrap things up and never one for a winded...