The Moon landing’s 50th anniversary can’t be avoided. Waxing at full, it feels like the last gasp. The defining moment for some in the baby boom generation, what does the Apollo 11 landing obscure? The moon shadow cast by one artist’s timely work points the way....
REICH RICHTER PÄRT
Joy, transformation, transcendence—all lofty goals of early abstract expressionism—are exalted in the present tense at The Shed in the world premiere collaboration of three major 20th-century artists, now in their sunset years. This stellar exhibition is marked by the...
Inheritance
Three immersive films from Africa about political and cultural resistance use tropes of the Imaginary from Fanon to Lacan to challenge inherited postcolonial mindsets. Kudzanai Chiurai presents a gorgeous, disorienting series of seven tableaux dramatizing the agony of...
Lauren Satlowski
Lauren Satlowski’s four new paintings at Odd Ark situate us squarely in our anxious feminist moment. Their landscapes are creepy, with tinges of the natural; their delicious surfaces bounce the gaze around like the mise en scène for Spielberg’s child-android in A.I....
Tomás Saraceno
Two short films in “Solar Rhythms” at Tanya Bonakdar open Tomás Saraceno‘s proposal for thermodynamic collaboration and remaking human relationships to the Earth. The first, taken during Saraceno’s ambitious, record-setting flight in White Sands, New Mexico with his...
GETA BRATESCU
Romanian-born, having lived through the tragic absurdities of communism, Geta Bratescu represents the strongest blending of conceptual rigor and narrative impulses. Her wide-ranging oeuvre encompasses drawing, sculpture, video, performance, collage and animated film....
VIJA CELMINS
Vija Celmins’ work is best when you are caught by surprise—don’t read the manifest, just board the ship. Sublime encounters open quiet pathways to deep consideration of the now-octagenarian artist, her times and her legacy. Celmins’ exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery...
Turning Art Upside Down
Prestidigitator, composer, engineer and conceptual artist Nahum hails from Mexico City, has lived in London for many years after a degree from Goldsmith’s College, but really, he belongs anywhere. Recently he and eight other Mexican artists, along with a Mexican...
The Edge in CalArts Theater Festival
The annual CalArts-sponsored RADAR L.A. festival of contemporary theater had serious offerings this year of works outside the cultural references of the English-language. Some presentations were more successful than others, based purely on the dynamics and politics of...