With all of the recent excitement about the NSA it seemed like a good time to feature the work of The Surveillance Camera Players. Since 1996 this group has been staging plays for security cameras. Their productions have included Waiting for Godot, 1984 and Ubu Roi....
DECODER: The Bouncers Club
Talk about art critics in public enough and they’ll respond—they are, as a people, very fond of electronic communication. And, unlike the other online-overrepresented—unlike xbox fans or strident antiboob activists—what they have to say is always fresh and new...
MEDIA: Books
Forty years after his death, Henry Darger remains one of America’s most polarizing artists. Given that he died unknown and virtually friendless, it is a testament to the power of his work that people are still arguing over what it all means. The very reason we know he...
MEDIA: Books
“The basic premise of Learning from Las Vegas is that the car has significantly shaped the form of the contemporary American city.” This simple statement seems so manifestly obvious: both trivial and unassailable. Yet in the hands of Martino Stierli, it is embedded...
Opera for the Masses
There’s something suggestive of time travel as well as terrestrial travel in The Industry and LA Dance Project’s production of Christopher Cerrone’s Invisible Cities—adapted from Italo Calvino’s poetic masterpiece—as true to the spirit of Calvino’s work as almost...
TOTTENHAM CORNER
A racetrack is being demolished, and guess what, it’s not the Arcadian showpiece nestled beneath the San Gabriel mountains but the track of lakes, flowers and paranoia in the heart of Inglewood, City of Champions. In recent years this inner city workingman’s track has...
Let there be clouds
As the Los Angeles Aqueduct celebrates its 100-year anniversary this month, many art institutions and organizations are showing support in their exhibition programming. Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) in downtown Santa Ana erected a monumental installation in...
Californication
Lately, I've noticed mysterious islands along California freeways. The half circumferences of curving transition ramps from one freeway to the next form their perimeters. Many contain terraces of plants native to this arid region, large rock formations, and gravel...
Freudian Pleasures
In the middle of the sitting there was a knock at the door. A beautiful woman entered the studio. She did not say a word but went straight to the bathroom. The Grand Painter followed the young woman. He would be back in a few minutes. Then, there was the sound of...
Newsha Tavakolian
Since she began her career as a photojournalist at the age of 16, Newsha Tavakolian has been capturing the essence of the modern-day Iranian experience through poignant photographs that challenge Western perceptions of the women of the Islamic Republic, while alluding...
Michael Landy
Michael Landy is hardly the kind of artist you would expect to see named artist in residence at London’s National Gallery. For one thing, he’s a charter member of the Young British Artists made famous by Damien Hirst’s legendary "Freeze" exhibition. Known for their...
High Desert Test Sites 2013
I didn’t know what to expect on my first visit to High Desert Test Sites, a series of art installations and performances out in the desert organized by artist Andrea Zittel, Aurora Tang and their team. The most ambitious edition yet, HDTS 2013 featured some 60...
Eric Nash: Western Noir
“Western Noir,” an exhibition featuring Eric Nash's newest paintings are currently on view at Skidmore Contemporary Art at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. At first glance, his work brings to mind “Old Hollywood” featuring a youthful, yet noir-infused Los Angeles:...
Editor’s Letter
Dear Readers, Cold trickling creeks, running rivers and green woods were my surroundings growing up. That’s where we played as children and partied as teenagers. When I moved to Southern California, the unchanging climate and landscape were a bit unsettling—they still...
FILM: Scott Stark’s Promethean Sparks
In Scott Stark’s The Realist—fresh off premieres at the Toronto and New York film festivals, and screening later this month as part of a REDCAT nano-retrospective of Stark’s three-plus decades of tenacious experimentalism—a gaga pair of drop-dead gorgeous...
Sundry and Complicated
LA’s rise as a major architectural center, chronicled by the Getty Research Institute in Pacific Standard Time’s ongoing and extensive set of shows, is difficult to reconstruct despite the copious evidence. The architectural history of Los Angeles is multifaceted and...
UNDER THE RADAR: Prosthetic Enthusiasms and perverse harnessings
In retrospect, Machine Project—the Echo Park storefront operating for the last decade as a rapid-fire curatorial clearinghouse for founder/director Mark Allen’s tireless curiosity—would seem to have been one of the most influential artistic endeavors of the new...
Escape from LA
Paolo Soleri’s eyes sparkled from under bushy eyebrows, deep-set in a grizzled face; they projected intelligence tinged with a spark of irony. When I met Soleri (who died in April) the first time, back in 2000, he could at times appear weary, like a man called upon to...