Articles
A pair of pastel-hued bikini underpants are draped across the wall. Riddled with tiny holes, the thong-thin back resembles the mesh of fishnet hose. A large lavender moth orchid hovers over the genital area, recalling the poetic similarities between labia and the...
Meeting the Los Angeles–and Mexico City–based sculptor, songwriter and curator, Janet Levy, was a gift from one of the many “ifs” of life. Our serendipitous encounter occurred at one of my favorite cafes when I couldn’t help but notice a woman at the adjacent table,...
The paintings in John Currin’s show at Dallas Contemporary, a non-collecting warehouse museum, widely induced a queasy, unsettling tension. A common response to the artist’s work, the visceral repulsion and simultaneous attraction result from an unresolvable friction...
There are plenty of deserts around the world. As President Trump memorably said when he abruptly pulled American troops out of Syria as a favor to the Turkish president Erdogan: “There’s a lot of sand there.” So why is it that Desert X, the organization that has put...
I learned yesterday—along with most of the Los Angeles art world –that John Baldessari had died. (He had actually died Thursday, but the word filtered out only this week-end.) Long before I knew him or what he represented (not only in Los Angeles, but the world),...
Sean Tejaratchi is a taxonomic guerrilla and semiotic hoarder. His social media phenomenon (and book) Liartown generated a tsunami of WTF memes, that have been described as “layered, multivalent detournees of the entire gamut of visual culture from the last century...
The holiday spirit was everywhere in the LA art scene this past weekend, from gallery openings to open studios to fun fundraisers. At Torrance Art Museum, a lively and excitingly interactive opening for Adjacent Adjacent in the main gallery drew a robust crowd. While...
"The most important thing to me was exposure to people who are making things, to other artists,” says Doug Aitken of his education at ArtCenter College of Design. Last Saturday he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from his alma mater, honored along with three...
Nestled on the ground floor of an academic building on Pitzer College’s campus, the Lenzner Family Art Gallery is easy to miss. Its layout is as humble and curiouser still: an L-shaped room is flanked by two alcoves too small to be rooms and too large to be closets;...
Enrique Martínez Celaya is embarking on a new journey, and we are faithfully following in his wake. The masterful Cuban-American painter had his first solo exhibition in LA since 2015, “The Tears of Things,” at Kohn Gallery this September. The artist took full...
jill moniz has been a curator at the California African American Museum (CAAM) and is now principal of her own downtown gallery, Quotidian. She curated the current exhibition “LA Blacksmith” at CAAM. I understand that you have a PhD in cultural anthropology—how and...
“You’ve caught me in a really good mood,” said Jeffrey Poe, as he sidled up to the bar of an upscale West Hollywood restaurant. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I was hoping to play up the ‘lonely at the top’ angle and find a backhanded way of comparing your...
Kristy Edmunds took over the reins of performing arts at UCLA at a time (2010–11) when the kind of avant-garde international theater and festival programming it was famous for seemed to be all but dropping from UCLA’s sightlines. But Edmunds’ purpose and seriousness...
Three of the most storied artists in recent Los Angeles history were the subject of “Disappearing—California c. 1970” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (May 10–Aug 11, 2019), the show’s only venue. Despite the tight focus on just three artists, the exhibition...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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