John Baldessari once said that art should make you stop and look as you’re crossing through a museum. Mark Jenkins’ sculpture-installations certainly break one’s forward momentum. On entering the gallery you’re confronted with a clothed leg and shoed foot growing from...
How often have you found yourself saying, “I would bring my business here, if only they had more generic, mall-safe, focus-group chosen art on the walls?” Surrounded by more museums, galleries, and out-of-work MFAs than in any other city, these SoCal establishments...
Asians make up 10.7% of Angelenos, but you’ll need the combined fortune of all of Chinatown’s good-luck golden cats to find .1% of Asian graffiti. Among the Chinatowns, Little Tokyos, Thai Towns, and Filipino Towns, while the signs are subtitled in Asian characters,...
I often feel the need to escape the insincerity of Los Angeles for the non-ironic nature of the desert. Hollywood’s slapstick tradition seems to have similar desires. A rock, maybe a bit browner than his companions, sits at the bottom of a boulder-pile. We watch the...
Graffiti Since the Beginning of Time As ubiquitous as its namesake trees were the laminated warning signs recently posted around Joshua Tree: “Rattlesnake Canyon Temporarily Closed Due To Vandalism.” In January, a few markings appeared on the massive boulders that...
Heaven’s gate doesn’t separate life and death like the U.S.-Mexican border. And if the rhetoric and rifles weren’t forcibly obvious symbols, the new pedestrian crossing from San Ysidro into Tijuana is unambiguously penal. A cattle stockade. While the debate over the...
My previous column ended with a quote by French graffiti artist Tilt: “The pop culture war is over. America, you won,” along with my wish “Let’s just hope we lose the street art war.” Far from being a Francophile (I don’t love Paris), I harangued against the sameness...
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