The structure is made out of bamboo poles and stakes, secured with palm rope. It stretches from the side door leading out of the museum, crosses the small courtyard, and extends towards the street. The soft beige color of the Moso bamboo underscores the apparent...
Reine Paradis: Surreal Chic
The photographic tableaux of Los Angeles–based Parisian transplant Reine Paradis evoke an ambiguity of place. The central focal point of each is a solo figure, played by Paradis, typically costumed in an A-line mini or similarly chic garment fashioned from...
Hammer’s Made in L.A. Comes of Age
“Made in L.A.” has finally hits its stride—this fourth edition feels fresh with discoveries, both of artists you may know and many you may not. It features 32 artists, from emerging ones with promising talent to the exciting re-emergence of an artist who fell from the...
Gretchen Andrew: Searching for Different Truths
How to describe Gretchen Andrew’s practice? Her website proclaims her a “search engine artist and internet imperialist who programs her paintings to manipulate and dominate search results.” Piggy-backing on the Google phenomenon, Andrew has slyly infiltrated the World...
New Chief for MOCA (Again)
This week’s announcement that Klaus Biesenbach, director of New York’s PS1, the Museum of Modern Art’s satellite in Queens, was chosen to be the new MOCA director was greeted by mixed notices among the LA art community including: “He never smiles.” True if he’s judged...
Editor’s Note
When I learned of the news that Jonathan Gold had passed away, I was at a memorial for a dear friend—what a cruel irony. It came as a shock to me as I had interviewed Jonathan in late May for Artillery’s food issue. Gold’s name is emblazoned in black-and-gold letters...
Pretty in Pink: Christopher Reynolds
Although Christopher Reynolds’ art is full of food imagery, few of his installations and performances traffic in actual foodstuffs. “It’s not really about the food, but the food referencing,” the Northern California-based artist says in a phone interview. There is at...
Ry Rocklen Zooms In On Food
The Food Group, an ongoing project by Ry Rocklen, is a comical exploration into the relationship between mankind and food. Human subjects (friends of Rocklen’s, mostly) dress up in life-sized food costumes à la Fruit of the Loom that are either rented or fabricated by...
Out to the Galleries with Times Foodie Jonathan Gold
On any given Friday, between noon and 2 p.m., you’ll find one of Los Angeles’ best taco trucks parked downtown on 3rd Street in the middle of the Arts District. How do I know this? Because Jonathan Gold says so. “Let’s meet at Guerrilla Tacos,” the LA Times food...
Jason Gottlieb: A Healthier Approach to Cannibalism
Cannibalism is now a regular thing in the art world. I’m not being metaphorical by referring to the cutthroat competition of an art market mirroring the inhumanity of its elite clientele. I’m talking about actual artists eating people. In 1996 the artist Marco...
The Personal and Political Landscapes of Narsiso Martinez
Narsiso Martinez shapes richly detailed images of farm workers in oil, charcoal and ink wash—with discarded produce boxes as his canvas. A simple trip to Costco for pizza proved revelatory for the artist, when he found a purple-and-yellow banana box at the store. When...
Michael’s Restaurant
Known as a pioneer of the farm-to-table dining movement, Michael McCarty founded his first restaurant, Michael’s, in Santa Monica in 1979. Ten years later he would open his second location in Midtown Manhattan. Michael and his wife, the artist Kim McCarty, would...
ARTXFOOD: A Case of Cross-Cultural Indigestion
When is a painting high art, and when is it just nice wallpaper? On May 10, I learned the answer to this question when attending ARTXFOOD’s inaugural art-themed dinner, Hallowed Ground. ARTXFOOD is produced by ArtCubed Los Angeles, which hosted a “part salon, part...
Summer Picnic Spread
Food allures our ocular faculties as much as it gratifies our alimentary and salivary organs. We devour visual stimuli with our eyes just as we ingest edibles through our mouths. It thus seems felicitous that the word “taste” applies to aesthetic predilections as well...
Queer Biennial: “What If Utopia?”
June is LGBT+ Pride month, and it also marks the month of the third annual Los Angeles-based Queer Biennial, founded and curated by Ruben Esparza, which opened on June 1, titled “What if Utopia?" I have to admit that I am disappointed by this queer biennial, unlike...
Judie Bamber: The Place Where Something Happens
It’s an uncharacteristically cool, rainy afternoon when I climb the steps to Judie Bamber’s home and studio in a neighborhood off Sunset. As I enter her studio—a surprisingly spare and self-contained space—a rectangle of golden light seems to float on an easel set up...
Beyond Binary: Thinh Nguyen
Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me. — Claude Cahun Thinh Nguyen is a non-binary artist who calls our attention to the constructed nature of our ideas about race and gender. Nguyen...
Carmen Argote: Riding It Out
When Carmen Argote was 17, her father took off for Guadalajara, Mexico, back to his hometown and his dream of living in a house he had designed for himself and his family. However, his wife felt quite settled in Los Angeles—their two children had grown up here, her...