Long before it was called out as a public nuisance, the phenomenon of manspreading was exhaustively, perhaps definitively, documented by the German feminist artist Marianne Wex (1937–2020) in a wide-ranging collection of images titled “Let’s Take Back Our Space”...
A celebrated episode of the groundbreaking Native television series Reservation Dogs takes a harrowing look at life inside an Indian boarding school, where strict Catholic nuns do their best to indoctrinate Native children into Western culture by punishing them...
Ross Rudel’s art has haunted my consciousness for a few years now. Encountering occasional works of his in group shows throughout Los Angeles, I would find myself consistently drawn in and hypnotized by what felt like a quiet, faraway presence filled with hidden potency. The LA–based artist’s sculptures and performances, carefully crafted and often employing found objects, exude deep mystery and deep purpose. Why does this work—sometimes so slight and minimal as to be barely noticeable in the gallery—have so much resonance? Where does this strange energy come from?
Taryn Simon, widely considered today’s premier conceptual photographer, is essentially an investigative taxonomist. She rose to fame with her series “An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar” (2007), in which she secured access to normally closed-off sites like...
Years of hard work and experimentation by April Street have coalesced in her most recent solo exhibition of four paintings and two sculptural installations titled A Vulgar Proof, after an Elizabethan phrase meaning “a common experience.” Dark, sultry and...
Micol Hebron is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Through photographic works, videos, installations, performance and writing, she has become known for critically engaging the tropes of art history and modernism, with a particular eye toward resurfacing...
Kenneth Tam produces strange and consistently intriguing work. His videos, which are driven by encounters with strangers that the artist has met online, are investigations of the negotiations and power dynamics that occur during uncomfortable social situations....
JJ PEET’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles is a well-installed show that offers a beguiling look at the New York-based artist’s practice. Three sculptural works from the “Floating Heads” series (2012-13) are sparingly placed in the darkened main gallery,...
The moment the elevator of the Vincent Price Art Museum opens onto the second floor, one is immediately confronted with artist Matt MacFarland’s cartoon sandwich boards, part of a body of work called Steakation (2012). The nearest one depicts a heart-shaped steak with...
ELI LANGER'S RECENT SOLO SHOW IS AN ENCHANTING LANDSCAPE of nocturnal emissions and conversations. Seemingly crafted out of countless late nights spent in furtive dialogue with self, nature and others, the show offers suggestions of urban influences and psychological...