Byline: Alex Garner

With artificial flowers attached to motorized objects (such as massagers and exercise devices), Rachel Youn’s animated sculptures are hypnotic and strangely erotic, the rhythmic sounds of both the machines and the movements of the plants pulsating throughout the gallery space.

Several of the sculptures feature coupled flowers that interact and move with each other—Perfect Lovers, composed of two tall branches of clustered white flowers moved by a baby rocker, is the most sensual, the cheeks of the undulating flowers nestling together. In The Nature of Love, a white dress hangs on the wall with a large leaf fastened at the crotch; moving up and down, the leaf becomes a fanning phallus. In these simple, repeating movements, the flowers become anthropomorphized, and any visitor will naturally make emotional associations with the physicality of the works.

Rachel Youn: “Well Adjusted”
Night Gallery
2276 E 16th St., Los Angeles, CA 90021
On view through October 28, 2023

In Erica Vincenzi’s intimate paintings of cropped images, the artist focuses on snippets of everyday life that may feel familiar to us, both in action and setting—two hands open a wine bottle, a blue dish rests on a kitchen counter—yet have a dreamy, mysterious quality. Her narratives are ambiguous, heightened by her deft color palettes of saturated deep reds and blues and pastels, and also consider art objects and architectural details within mostly domestic spaces. Several of her paintings feature sculptures of different scales, such as a larger painting of a white, neoclassical stone girl being nipped by a wolf, a full moon hanging in the background, and a cute ceramic frog planter lying on its belly. With almost all of her human subjects reduced to their hands and feet, Vincenzi leaves the viewer with questions and a curiosity about the subjects and spaces of her paintings, letting us fill in the gaps ourselves.

Erica Vincenzi: “DUMBSTRUCK, AWEFOUNDED”
Giovanni’s Room
850 S Broadway, Suite 600, Los Angeles, CA 90015
On view through October 28, 2023

Achieving a rich depth through numerous layers of thinned oil paint, Maja Ruznic creates vibrant, large-scale paintings that are both figurative and geometric, the flattened shapes of her almost patterned compositions reminiscent of Klee. With her subjects spanning the height of her canvases, they act as vertical stripes, their body parts sectioned off by her tender sensibility for color—magenta and deep red are accentuated by turquoise and yellows, and cobalt and purple highlight chartreuse. Her figures flood the plane, and some of them are more playful, such as The Force Field’s human-size mouse and bird. Adding to their mystical quality, the size of the works makes each one an experience, swallowing the viewer.

Titled “Landscape,” this exhibition of Frank Bowling’s recent vibrant and expansive paintings highlights the artist’s long-standing experimentation with material and process. Reminiscent of his “Map Paintings” from the late 1960s and early ’70s, the landscapes feature subtle chromatic gradations and horizons, bordered by bright greens, oranges and blacks; dripped and splashed onto the canvases, layers of paint are built up on the surfaces, sometimes collaged with found objects. With their dimensionality appearing like rippling water or sloping land, these works embody Bowling’s expressive use and mastery of paint and material while continuing his embrace of chance in his compositions.

Hauser & Wirth, West Hollywood
8980 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069
On view through August 5, 2023

Displaying four vibrant quilts from the late 1970s and early ’80s, this show of Rosie Lee Tompkins’ work invites the viewer to consider both the front and back of the textiles, with three of them hanging from the ceiling. Intricate and tactile, the quilts incorporate various materials, from the American flag to patterned silk scarves to pieces of other quilts, mostly cut into traditional square or half-square triangle patches; while clusters of dangling yarn give them a three-dimensional texture, her compositions are like geometric paintings held together by colorful thread. Upon close inspection, you can see where her sewing machine started and stopped, what was hand-sewn, and how she pieced everything together. Hanging at more than six feet long, Tompkins’ quilts are full of detail and painstaking dedication, and each one tells its own story.

“Rosie Lee Tompkins (1936-2006)”
GGLA
3407 Verdugo Road
Los Angeles, CA 90065
On view through July 15, 2023

As this country has regressed in women’s rights and the right to abortion, and as the women in Iran are still fighting for freedom and equality, this group exhibition—titled after a lyric in Shervin Hadjipour’s song about the Iranian uprisings after the murder of Mahsa Amini—showcases the solidarity and liberation that female and queer communities across the world have found in dancing and protesting. Focusing on works by LASTESIS, Morehshin Allahyari and Yasmine Nasser Diaz, the show includes both scenes of intimate domesticity and views of protests in the streets. A pink bedroom lovingly decorated with the aesthetic of an adolescent girl, Nasser Diaz’s installation features a television playing archival footage of women’s protests and politicians from the Global South, while videos of recent social media posts of women and nonbinary people dancing are projected above the bed. A collection of restagings of the viral performance of Chilean feminist and art collective LASTESIS (Un violador en tu camino (A rapist in your path)) plays in the front room, with a diagram noting the extensive list of cities their piece has been performed. The list is overwhelming, illustrating the outrageous inequality that women and queer people face around the world and why protests like the ones documented in this exhibition—or in the words of the gallery, “movements that use movement”—are so imperative.

Oxy Arts
4757 York Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90042
On view through July 29th, 2023

Occupying both spaces of Bel Ami, one brightly lit and the other black like a darkroom, this duo show of artists Juliana Halpert and Parker Ito is a celebration of image-making, whether that process is through painting, photography or scanning art catalogs. Reminiscent of a computer desktop or tabs in a web browser, the panoramic works in Ito’s series “Clear Sushi” layer archival images of religious icons with smaller photos in the corners, ranging from a copy of an Ingres painting to a more recent photo of a hummingbird. Capturing moments both planned and spontaneous, Halpert’s sharp images of an orchid competition, which feature the flowers as well as the judges, are paired with a tender black-and-white portrait of a close friend with a tree’s flower at her cheek. As a signifier of a point of convergence in their practices, a Jules Olitski painting from Ito’s possession hangs in between the two artist’s works, the story behind that choice detailed in their statements for the show. Perhaps the most special commonality between Halpert and Ito is that they’re both great writers: So rarely is a press release—this one featuring accounts from both artists’ perspectives on their collaboration and practices—poignant, vulnerable yet funny, and undoubtedly worth the read.

Bel Ami
709 N. Hill St., #103 & #105
Los Angeles, CA 90012
On view through July 8, 2023