We are in the midst of the information age, with archives and libraries overflowing, and records piling up like plastic in the ocean. How does personal value translate to cultural value, or is it the same thing? Who decides what is worth preserving? How should...
Kenny Price’s objects are modest in size and endless in meaning, which is another way of saying they make you think and feel instead of just impressing you. At a recent career survey at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery’s inaugural LA show, the first piece you are confronted...
Urban art is the great equalizer. With the rise of spray-painting and wheatpostering, the public is no longer forced to visit museums and see what rich white males call art. But one of the few mediums urban art cannot annex is sculpture; like museums, the field is...
During my last visit to my old drinking hole in San Francisco, the Gangway—right before I moved back to LA—I was having a few beers with one of the bar’s many characters I had befriended: Guy was his name. He had told me a few times about how he was a metal sculptor...
OLDIE BUT NOT GOODIEDear Babs, Why are gallerists and curators so obsessed with seeing artists' very newest works? I like some of the work I've done in the past three or four years, but it seems this is considered too old. Why does something that's supposed to be...
When a sculpture takes on the character of a national monument, it is easy for the name of the artist who made it to get lost. Making a documentary of recognizable landmarks of the flatter parts of the United States? Don’t forget that row of old Cadillacs half buried...
LA ART FAIR ROUNDUPMore fairs, Au Revoir PARIS PHOTOArt fairs, and yet more art fairs in January. There was the usual roundup—photo l.a. (Jan. 22–24), L. A. Art Show with all its components (Jan. 27–31), and Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC, Jan. 28–31)—plus...
Buddy and Buffy, Art Los Angeles Contemporary Fair, Santa Monica, 2016. Lara Jo Regan's SIGHTS UNSCENE featured in Artillery.
It is impossible to do justice to a show of the scope, ambition and sheer beauty of James Welling’s current exhibition of recent work at Regen Projects in a single blog post. But it would be no less impossible and even irresponsible to let it go without some...
We don’t ordinarily think of pastel colors as carrying the power or intensity of the deepest, most vibrant primaries, especially red; or for that matter a dense black or sharp black-and-white contrast. But pastels can have great associative and mnemonic power, in many...
I think we can all agree that there are too many art fairs. We could almost stretch that to say there are too many fairs, period. We generate too many products – most of them of an astonishingly brief life-span, and worth still less of anyone’s attention; and consume...
“We like dancing and we look divine.”David Bowie, “Rebel Rebel”from Diamond Dogs, 1974Finally – Bowie. Forever Bowie. “Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep….” I want to quote Mick Jagger (to be very specific about it) quoting Shelley (from Adonais –...
Something kind of hit me todayI looked at you and wondered if you saw things my way. . . We're taking it hard all the timeWhy don't we pass it by? David Bowie, “We Are the Dead”from Diamond Dogs, 1974 The first part of this post promised a superfecta; and I’m...
“If we can sparkle, he may land tonight….”David Bowie, “Starman”(from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972)Those readers who have followed this blog since it launched in 2007 may recall that it was originally a somewhat diaristic...
Ten years ago, when I learned of the existence of a film called Trona, shot in the desert hellhole of the same name, I feared the worst, especially when I learned that it was a thesis film by a CalArts graduate. It was hard to imagine anybody associated with that...
The sculptures and videos in Same Rock are based on a “little Switzerland” in Appalachia, founded on the promise of its similarity to the Alps, and explore myths of universality, aesthetic deception, and the politics and economics of mountains. Please Enjoy… offers...
Last year I was invited to view a controversial painting that the owner claimed to be a genuine Rothko he bought at a small LA auction many years ago. The painting was not officially included in the Rothko catalogue raisonné despite the fact that the owner discovered...
Archiving cultural ephemera is a tricky business. Anyone who’s followed my writing for even a brief time will have encountered some kind of rant about how the institutional canonization of cultural insurrections like Punk, zine culture, hippies, beats, etc.,—or...
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