I’ll admit that before attending a press walkthrough for Nate Lowman’s “Parking” at David Zwirner a few weeks ago, I wasn’t familiar with Lowman’s oeuvre. The paintings first appeared to me thumbnail-size, attached to my iPhone invitation. I noted glowing, riparian...
Recently I had the opportunity to visit Detroit for the first time in my life. What a magnificently diverse city bustling with bars and restaurants on every corner in the downtown area, with one of the top encyclopedic art museums in the nation where the socialist...
To experience lack is to be reminded of the boundaries of the self, of others. Lacking realizes the unassailable distance between you and everything you don’t and won’t ever have. Therein to lack enlivens desire, or does desire require a lack of something? Kang’s...
Butler’s threadbare saffron works-on-silk line the perimeter of the back gallery, floating forward and back, filling and falling as if breathing. Suspended by invisible supports and backlit, the delicate veils with their enigmatic marks and hand-drawn symbols...
Houshiary's mesmeric abstract canvases depose our human perception of scope and scale, engaging the macro and microscopic; they connect a single breath to the breadth of the sea, carbon's molecular structure to the structural integrity of a star. The intricate pencil...
Grouping art by medium is always too obvious, even when the medium in question has the pizzazz of electric light. This exhibition focuses on the years 1964-1970 but does not, otherwise, establish a clear throughline. Experiments with electric light were, indeed,...
Most figurative painting is terrible but these are surprisingly good. Brisco’s restrained brushwork produces a flat clarity that recalls Alex Katz but with harsh moody colors and lonesome figures which echo Edward Hopper’s sadsacks. Suburban homes appear as...
These paintings have a slight hamfistedness, which suggests distance from their alternately whimsical, mystical, Modernist, and Premodern sources. The allusions and references here—like Lipke’s interpolation of Neolithic-era petroglyphs into Kandinsky-esque painting –...
With scraped knees, tangled sheets, and yesterday’s discarded clothes strewn across the floor, Larry Madrigal’s new evocative paintings at Nicodim showcase the artist at his strongest. In moments where his fluid and textured style strives to move beyond the sexual...
I never feel hotter or more detached (indeed, more American) than in a car, windows down in the August heat. It’s an exercise in movement, longing on an unremarkable plane of asphalt. Each lane is a pulse, where everyone seeks a false salvation. Jane Dickson’s new...
Looking at Darya Diamond’s limp latex sculpture, In Every Dream Home a Heartache (2024), I think of bruised skin, frail shoulders: a tired body collapsed on the floor — phallic, deflated, stamped with marks like a trampled body bag. Throughout “Sugartown,” intimacy...
Curated to pose as a mirror to society’s collapse, "Scupper"’s artists address a spectrum of social ills from preservatives in food to inadequate healthcare. The six-page press release does a better job than some of the works themselves at justifying their presence in...
A mechanical broom wielded by a robotic arm sweeps across the floor under the corner of a custom-made carpet shaped like India. In an adjoining room, an enormous inflatable Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man lies face-down adjacent to a neon sign which reads “DIASPORA.” A...
Don’t let the cute animals fool you; these paintings are not so innocent. A vague sense of foreboding permeates these otherwise joyful works. In Iadevaia’s last show, climate apocalypse hovered in his portentous smokey-pink...
Not all pop art is created equal. Gabriel Madan’s literally pops off the wall: As in, a colorful macaw plushie is affixed to one of his paintings, a heart-shaped tag reading “I’m a puppet.” I want to stick my hand up its rear and make it talk. Vulgar, yes, but...
Melrose Botanical Garden is not actually a garden, but it might as well be. Tucked between thrift shops and piercing parlors on the avenue, the narrow gallery feels like an oasis. “a field once more,” a group show drawing upon Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of...
Michael E. Smith’s unassuming, poetic sculptures are late capitalist Zen koans: riddles with no answer but which nevertheless spark a moment of satori. For instance, a milk carton covered in mirrors seems to suggest that we are all the lost children. But is this a...
Oscar Tuazon’s activist art project LAWS: Los Angeles Water School combines high concept with a rigorous materiality. Machined folds and facets shape The Evening Redness in the West (2024) a C-print printed on an aluminum sheet that mimics the way coated analog photo...
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