Mike Kelley was a ruthless investigator, of everything from Mother Mary, to rainbow afro wigs to stuffed toys to the complex mechanism, which was his own mind. The works that comprise this retrospective are alternately humorous and aggressive, quietly lurking and...
Nathan Mabry at Cherry And Martin
Nathan MabryI can think of nothing as “fiercely alluring” (literally) as the open-mouthed skull of a T-Rex, and one with a luscious bronze patina to boot! Nathan Mabry delivers another provocative and mythologically charged visual opus at the Cherry Martin Gallery....
Martin Mull. No, Seriously.
Martin Mull has certainly earned his place in the canon of exceptional narrative painters, those for whom painting is a delicate and complicated process by which the artist quantifies his/her relationship to the world around them. Mull’s assessments are usually dark,...
John Mills At Rosamund Felsen Gallery
John MillsJohn Mills’ recent exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery is compositionally complex and visually challenging. As the title suggests, High On Signs represents the artist’s love affair with line and shape and more importantly perhaps, the iconographic...
John Tottenham at Maloney Fine Art
John TottenhamJohn Tottenham, who regularly graces Artillery’s pages with his near orgasmic wit and verbal subterfuge, is a fantastic artist, though in typical self-deprecating style, he might in fact tell you otherwise. “The Indifferent Sublime” is, well, truly...
Koi No Yokan II at 101 Exhibit
Koi No Yokan IIImagine meeting someone, and knowing that you will one day fall madly in love with that person, and you have mastered the Japanese concept of Koi No Yokan. Love is not immediately activated, as in the American sense of “love at first sight,” but becomes...
Luke Butler at Charlie James Gallery
Luke ButlerI can see Luke Butler hanging out with Montgomery Clift and Liz Taylor, sipping daiquiris by the lake-house with not a care in the world, but then all great movies must come to “an end.” Butler specializes in these two powerfully evocative little words...
Materially Defined at CMay Gallery
Materially Defined All art has corporeal form, and must be “made” of something, and in the case of “Materially Defined,” at CMay Gallery, the literal materials themselves dictate the greater metaphorical meaning of the individual works in the exhibition. Macha...
Rachel Kastor: Ambitious Implements
Rachel Kastor: Ambitious ImplementsRachel Kaster creates startlingly effective visual conversations between seemingly disparate objects including glass, found wood and bronze. Many of Kastor’s visual relationships depend on tangible visceral associations; glass is so...
Rachel Lauren Kaster at Gallery 825
Rachel Lauren KasterRachel Kaster creates startlingly effective visual conversations between seemingly disparate objects including glass, found wood and bronze. Many of Kaster’s visual relationships depend on tangible visceral associations; glass is so fragile, yet...
Night Terrors And Day Dreams at The Loft at Liz’s
Night Terrors And Day Dreams Edgar Allen Poe, the undisputed master of darkness once said, “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night,” suggesting that the light can be a necessary benediction just as the dark...
Mary Weatherford at David Kordansky Gallery
Mary Weatherford Mary Weatherford’s first exhibition at David Kordansky finds its roots in the powerful gestural mark making of artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell. These powerful large-scale paintings conflate the loose semi autonomic gestural...
Maura Bendett at Edward Cella Art + Architecture
Maura Bendettat Edward Cella Art + Architecture In this her newest exhibition at Edward Cella, aptly titled “Vespid Empire,” Maura Bendett has hit the ball not only out of the park but well into the stratosphere. In nature, vespids are colonial nesting wasps, and...
Julia Dault at China Art Objects
Julia Daultat China Art ObjectsJulia Dault’s recent exhibition “Rhythm Nation,” at China Art Objects feels like a trip down memory lane, or more specifically, a journey back through 1980’s color field abstraction where artists like Jack Whitten and David Reed were...
Matt Saunders at Blum & Poe
Matt Saunders at Blum & PoeIn the Hindu language of Sandskrit the word shanti means the perfect calm. Matt Saunders' images bring this kind of quietude to mind, and despite the highly involved technical process by which he makes these evocative and sometimes...
Christopher Russell at Mark Moore Gallery
Christopher Russell at Mark Moore GalleryAs the poet William Butler Yeats wrote in his seminal poem, The Second Coming, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Christopher Russell understands this concept better than most. His recent exhibition, “GRFALWKV”...
Mike Vegas at West LA College Art Gallery
Mike Vegas at West LA College Art Gallery Simplicity and elegance in form is sometimes difficult to achieve on a large scale, yet Mike Vegas does just that in his new solo show at West LA College art gallery. Working with very basic materials including untreated...
Emily Adams at CB1 Gallery
Emily Adamsat CB1 GalleryThere are some works of art that produce a palpable physical sensation when considered, like scraping your knees along a seemingly never-ending dirt road, or worse, a gravel pit. Emily Adams first exhibition at cb1 succeeds masterfully with...