What is to give light must endure burning. —Victor Frankl I had this plan, I was going to spend each issue clarifying an overused, misunderstood and generally obnoxious term or diagnosis. Remember last time when I went on a tirade about ‘triggering’. I planned to do...
TOP 3 SONGS? Strange Fruit (Abel Meeropol) interpreted either by Billie Holiday or Nina Simone, Strawberry Fields (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) interpreted by La Santa Cecilia. I was attracted by the music video. TOP 3 DEAD ARTISTS? Jean-François Millet...
I’ve moved around, a lot. Not kicked around, just trying to find some dirt that was my own, and mebbe some puzzled hands for this jigsaw heart. And in all of that highwaying, i found that, no matter the burg i plopped down in, i could get a job driving a taxi. The...
The Sublime and The Beautiful Revisited Ascending even lower into the empyrean of autonomy, believing one’s own lies, the beauty that should only be seen through somebody else’s eyes. A pointless exercise, no purpose does it serve: tracking one’s moves, getting on...
I’m located at an arts institution (free to the public on Tuesdays). I’m a painting by someone who is better known as a sculptor. I’m older, but not ancient. I live in the permanent collection. I have color, but it’s severely limited (I’m mostly shades of white) I was...
What is art without the asylum (from classical Latin asȳlum: refuge, sanctuary)? In François Pain’s first solo show in the US, three video displays, a mini-bookstore, and a vitrine of pamphlets compete for the viewer's attention. At the center is a 2025 video...
Atom Egoyan’s 2008 film Adoration follows a half-Arab teenager who weaves a fictional story about his father orchestrating a terrorist attack, causing a stir within his suburban community. Adapting it would be a difficult task in any case—not just because of the...
This exhibition features paintings, sketches, and ephemera from the estate of Sawako Goda (1940-2016). Goda's oil paintings immerse the viewer into a strange urban sea in which the body merges with gems the size of appendages. Goda's "story of the eye" shifted when...
Valerie Keane's works on paper are constructed with devotion, resulting in miniature worlds that reflect the viewer back unto herself. These are “flat” images in comparison to Keane’s other work, and yet a close look into the frame reveals parts that appear as though...
Per the exhibition text, “The Monster,” a multi-media group show at Pace Gallery, deals with the abstract creatures from early nightmares rather than the metaphorical “monsters” that haunt our adult existence. Childhood logic filtered through an adult POV often lends...
The damsel in distress; the innocent vindicated. These are relatively common motifs when it comes to trauma and recovery, yet Paz de la Huerta’s beautifully bizarre paintings make them feel new. Women and girls embrace while crowded by angelic creatures and wild...
On this special date—the Monday after Frieze Week LA—I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers. We made it through. I did it all this week, or as close to all of it as I could with merely a press pass. Here are my final stats, which I...
There was a spectre haunting the Frieze Los Angeles Art fair—the spectre of the grandmother’s attic. Musty copper and seashells, old gold and furniture brown, sequins and feathers, paintings and sculpture not literally from an antique store but clearly informed by...
Nadya Tolokonnikova, the exiled Siberian performer and conceptual artist infamous for her Pussy Riot anti-authoritarian protest disruptions in Moscow—whose Putin’s Ashes artworks landed her on Russia’s most wanted list—has found a home away from home at Honor Fraser...
The Queen of Los Angeles will not allow her history to be erased, and neither will Barbara Carrasco’s 1981 mural L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective. Censored swiftly after its completion by the commissioners, the mural collected dust in storage for decades and is...
Vanessa Hérnandez Cruz defied time and space with her sci-fi thriller disguised as a dance, “Rain Glass Vortex.” In the performance, Cruz wrestled with her dance partners: her walker, Pluto, and her leg braces. She moved her arms and core in jerky, robotic movements....
This show is all smoke and mirrors, but in a good way. Prima Sakuntabhai plays with transparencies, reflections, and shadows to recapture their great-grand-uncle’s favorite haunts. The elder relative is Pridi Banomyong, a Thai immigrant who adopted revolutionary ideas...
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