Lima, Peru is a city of idiosyncrasies, where modern skyscrapers neighbor aging Spanish baroque mansions and colonial squares, all in varying ages of birth and decay. While Lima is not particularly known for having an overwhelming number of art galleries—there are...
Creative Inferno: Mr. Chow
Before I interview Mr. Chow, he sets my copy of his book on fire. After smashing large Sharpies onto a blank page of the book in a riot of color (“green always goes well with red”), he pours flammable paint thinner on the page and calls for his “darlings” to bring him...
California Dreaming: Go West Gallerists
The Los Angeles art world is far from monolithic, but if there’s one thing you are certain to overhear at every gathering, it’s an expression of wonderment at the onslaught of new galleries opening across the city. And they’re right, it’s a lot. It feels like for...
Legendary Clay: AMOCA
Ceramics is real-world alchemy, where a material mined from the earth is magically transformed by human ingenuity. I love the fact that the result can be rough and reveal the grit and minerals embedded in clay, or it can be highly refined as a smooth white porcelain...
Mindful Parking: 5 Car Garage
5 Car Garage is located in an alleyway in a residential neighborhood in Santa Monica. While it is not far from Bergamot Station, visitors to 5 Car Garage make the trek because the experience is homey and friendly, and the art on view is often engaging in unexpected...
Going the Distance
Los Angeles, being what it is—a big, sprawling desert grid with almost as many art galleries these days as there are Starbucks—can seem overwhelming when it comes to actually hopping in the car and making the point to go and see some art. Let’s face it, we sometimes...
Colorizing the Art World
There is still a sense of shock over racially charged policies out of Washington that feel out of line with the West Coast’s progressive ethos. Los Angeles’ major art institutions are trying to counteract this as best they can by presenting more exhibitions by people...
Hot Summer in the City
Summer festivities abound in the warmer weather. There’s New York’s Shakespeare in the Park, the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, and Cinespia Cemetery Screenings at LA’s own Hollywood Forever. Museums are no exceptions putting on events. LACMA used to host summer...
Man on the Moon
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....
The Living Dead
There’s something undeniably seductive about Andreas Mühe’s spare, yet sumptuous photographs. A superb technician and gifted storyteller, Mühe uses both formal and narrative elements with concentrated, yet restrained intensity to create images of arresting beauty and...
Whitney Biennial: Speaking Softly
A wise person once said that if you want to catch people’s attention, speak softly. The curators of the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, seem to have taken this advice to heart, assembling a show that doesn’t hit you over the head with gimmick...
ON A COUNTRY ROAD: Glenstone
In a short drive into the countryside of Maryland, about half an hour outside Washington, DC, is an exceptional private museum sited on 230 rolling acres, with buildings and outdoor sculpture thoughtfully tucked into the landscape. The Glenstone is the brainchild of...
Bilbao Guggenheim: Fuck the Box
I had wanted to see the Guggenheim Bilbao since it first opened. Ed Moses and I had once met up, completely by accident, in London. He had flown in from San Francisco and I from Los Angeles, arriving within the same hour. Ed invited me to stay with him, saying he had...
APOCALYPSE NOW: Venice Biennale
The malaise of our times is encapsulated and iterated over and over in this year’s Venice Biennale—whether racial conflict, gender redefinition, women’s rights, immigration, environmental threats, or any combination thereof. One begins to wonder, as one wanders...
Mexico City: Bursting with Vitality
On a narrow one-way street in San Miguel Chapultepec, it’s impossible to miss the disparate wood-paneled exterior of Kurimanzutto. Surrounded by modernist apartment buildings in a rich palette of burnt sienna, robin’s-egg blue and royal yellow, the gallery’s presence...
No Vacancy
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to spend a night in a gallery or a small museum, and wished you could walk down a motel hallway and see original murals on your way to the ice machine instead of prints that could have—and possibly did—come from a Walmart...
Paradise Found
“I paint almost every day,” says Rich Untermann, owner of the Spanish Garden Inn in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara. “When I like a painting, I frame it, and hang it someplace in the hotel. I shift them around until they feel comfortable—it is in a constant...
Slide into Decay
There are indeed ghost towns, despite the well-known edict by Daniel Burnham. Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical...