At first, Andrew Dadson’s newest exhibition at David Kordansky, “Painting (Organic),” seems to lack cohesion, with medium and mood shifting frequently. There are three very distinct types of works on display: a collection of photographs hung in a grid formation; six...
ON THE COVER
Austin Irving at Wilding Cran
It seems every traveler, on occasion, suffers a collapse of time and space. Careening down a hotel hallway late at night, carrying a suitcase whose weight amplifies the exhaustion from hours of cramped travel, one's head begins to spin. Doors, walls, and expanses of...
The Graduates
Last week I ventured to the Cooper Design Space in Downtown LA’s fashion district to see the “15 CalArts MFA Show.” It is a large inconspicuous building surrounded by cut-rate fabric stores typically used for designer showcases—a somewhat irregular location for an art...
Genocide Centennial
Today is the last day to witness iwitness—a large scale public art installation made up of asymmetrical cubic photographs on display in downtown LA's Grand Park by artists Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian. It immediately recalls graffiti artist JR’s black-and-white...
Best in Show: Frieze Fair
For this year’s Frieze Art Fair at Randall’s Island in New York City, I tried to avoid the usual fair fatigue one can experience at a show of this magnitude and went on a scavenger hunt for the best painting I could find. Location was sometimes important, as...
Editor’s Letter
Dear Readers In this issue we take a look “Inside Art”—what’s inside the art world, other than art. This is a theme that has interested us for some time now, but it really hit home after I interviewed abstract painter James Hayward for our last issue on painting. One...
Building Bridges: Glenn Kaino
After dodging the reporters and cameramen that were shooting footage of Leonard Nimoy’s star for memorial news coverage on Hollywood Boulevard, I was buzzed into Glenn Kaino’s studio and escorted up to the second floor by an assistant. Once face to face with the...
Power to the Artists: Cliff Benjamin
For 11 years, Cliff Benjamin and Erin Kermanikian have co-owned Western Project in Culver City. Together they exhibit work that’s consistently challenging and boundary-breaking, representing artists like Tom of Finland (before he was MOCA-acceptable), Bob Flanagan and...
LA’s Home for Outsiders
“I understand and appreciate clean-made art, but what I’m mostly attracted to is something raw and more guttural. That’s what brought me to the outsider art world. Plus there’s no other gallery in LA that’s showcasing outsider art,” says Paige Wery, erstwhile golfer,...
Auction House MVP
The auction market, and in particular the salerooms of the two major auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, have long been a proving ground for the marketplace maturity of every kind of specialty commodity, including fine art. Auction houses have aggressively...
GUEST LECTURE
Marnie Weber is a Los Angeles multimedia artist who works in photography, sculpture, costume, film and performance. She is also the leader of Spirit Girls, an alt-rock music and performance group. Taken together, her work explores issues of gender and mysticism in...
SHOPTALK
SNEAK PEEKOpen House at The Broad on a Sunday AfternoonI was lucky enough to get in on the one-day preview of The Broad, the new museum in LA that will house the important contemporary art collection of power philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. There was a viewing...
ART BRIEF
The Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills had its annual Oscar week art opening in February with an after-party for its top Los Angeles patrons at nearby Mr. Chow’s. The show this year was a selection of eye-popping oil paintings by John Currin depicting Rubensesque young...
LONDON CALLING
James Lingwood arrives at the Artangel office in a fluorescent yellow cycling jacket, having just ridden across London from another meeting. He looks like an accountant with his neat hair and glasses, though he studied history and art history at Oxford. His world...
UNDER THE RADAR
You wouldn’t know it from such thriving, vibrant publications as Artillery (can I get that raise now boss?) but print is a dying medium. Sure, they still run off enough copies of Divergent and Heaven is for Real to build a paper mache penitentiary the size of an...
RETROSPECT
It is depressing for me to think that most of my favorite art is a cold-hearted attempt at mind control. No, the Egyptians were not thinking only of beauty when they built the pyramids; they were thinking of death, and the power of intimidation. The little servant...
DECODER
In the middle of this issue where we talk all about the movers and the shakers, I think I should drop in a note saying that, in the end, it is all actually epically opaque.This one came from this obscure place, made a fortune in this impenetrable industry by moving...