To get to Tony Cokes' "All About Evil" at Hannah Hoffman, a show displaying 12 selected works from a period of nearly two decades (2006-2022), one must pass a sidewalk sign for the neighboring jewelry boutique Spinelli Kilcollin. Cokes' HD videos feature large white...
Dario Argento’s 1977 film Suspiria left a lasting impression on me. It’s moments of indiscernibility, of looming disquiet, of eyes flashing against a blackened screen have stuck with me long since first watch. It’s an exhilarating study of the ominous, of unease, of...
“Kairos” by Seline Burn at Baert Gallery features 10 large oil paintings on canvas and linen, all completed this year. Blues, yellows, and greens render female figures across landscapes and interior settings that blur the boundaries between inner and outer, self and...
When I look at Fred Lonidier’s show “Vacation Village Trade Show,” at Michael Benevento, my mind naturally goes to Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966). Much like Antonioni, whose film is about a photographer who inadvertently captures a murder, Lonidier is interested in the...
The R.M. Schindler House is unexpectedly quiet. Despite being smack-dab in the middle of West Hollywood, there’s a noticeable lack of noise around the house and grounds, as if the air is somehow thick enough to deaden dog barks and car horns. The silence somehow feels...
Thérésa Tallien, the French Revolution’s ‘it’ girl, knew how to manipulate perception. Once an emblem of revolutionary glamour, she played the game until it turned against her. Even in captivity, awaiting execution, she refused to become a simple object of pity. The...
Sophie Madeline Dess, who has written clever short stories and perceptive pieces on Cormac McCarthy, Eva Hesse, and many other things for many prestigious and worthwhile publications, has produced a novel about Ava and Demetri, a critic and an artist. They are brother...
I came to the screening wearing the outfit compulsory for all such events: a faded and frayed sweater in a neutral color, sexless jeans, and a dirtied canvas tote. I had composed this outfit to signal my status as a true believer—my monkish intent to remain forever...
To prepare for his current show “Noir” at Gagosian, Alex Israel claims to have walked about fifteen thousand steps per day around Los Angeles. This is highly unusual and, honestly, suspect. As the saying goes, no one walks in LA. Yet Israel insists on it and says that...
In an unsurprising, though nonetheless upsetting, move, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has rescinded funding for arts organizations across the United States. The decision follows the Trump administration’s publication of the 2026 Discretionary Budget...
There’s something in the Los Angeles air recently that’s been conjuring the ghost of Charles Manson. He has been coming up in conversation frequently (or maybe I am bringing him up). California’s back on the national stage for its hippie-turned-fascist tendencies....
Tell us who you are in 50 words or less: I live, collect, and breathe art. For the past ten years, I’ve run the La Brea Studio Artist Residency, The Cabin LA (according to ArtNewspaper, “Per square foot, the most influential gallery in LA”), and The Bunker LA. Two...
We recognize the legacy Jacqueline Humphries is working from the moment we set foot in Matthew Marks’ two gallery spaces; yet something throws the viewer slightly off. It’s the echt gestural vocabulary of post-World War II art, but as if viewed through a scrim or...
It’s a matter of complete coincidence that Ramsey Alderson’s show “d’Or” at Tiffany’s—an East Hollywood artist-run garage space programmed by Adam Verdugo—coincides with the 17th anniversary of the notorious Emos vs. Punks Fight held in Mexico City’s Glorieta de Los...
I left Gregg Bordowitz’s recently-closed exhibition at The Brick, “This is Not a Love Song,” thinking the same thing as upon leaving The Brutalist: “I didn’t know it was going to be so Jewish.” In both, the artist’s Jewish identity weaves through a deep consideration...
I went in blind to David Hammons’ Concerto in Black and Blue (on view for the first time since its 2002 debut)—both literally and figuratively. When I pushed back the heavy curtain shrouding the gallery, darkness swallowed me. I couldn’t pull out my phone to navigate...
There is something a little chipper about the art world right now that belies the national mood. Palettes tend toward cheery hues and uncomplicated content. Not that there’s anything wrong with upbeat paintings, it just seems like there are other types of content...