You find out about Cosey Fanni Tutti’s various bodies of work by rumor or implication—did you know that someone once did this? Did you know it was the same woman who did that? Cosey started out as a little girl named Christine Newby, in Hull, in the U.K., in 1951. She...
Meet Vaginal Davis: Film Scholar
Vaginal Davis is one of the better examples of somebody who mixes life with art. Her activities include performing, curating, composing, painting and writing. From the late 1970s to early aughts she manifested a series of bands, performances, publications, clubs and...
Latin Nights
Half the population of Los Angeles is now Latino, but its signature industry, the film business, fails to include a significant number of Latinos in feature films or deal with stories that may be especially relevant to their lives. This fall the Academy of Motion...
Beyond Escapism
Apocryphal notions, like northern superiority and European “discovery” of land already populated, pervade the Western Hemisphere. Even before Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia, our so-named New World has been a locus for European fantasy projection. Currently on view at...
Richard Turner: Air Becomes Breath
What do we have when those closest and dearest to us pass away and what do we do with the things that were once theirs? Richard Turner's installation Air Becomes Breath, 2017, takes that question on and has turned the clothing of his recently deceased wife, Sylvia,...
Karen Finley at REDCAT
Karen Finley’s The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery unfolds similarly to a dream that makes complete logical sense when experiencing it, but is difficult to piece together the linear structure upon waking. The one-woman show lasts for an hour and a half (no...
The 57th Venice Biennale: Old with the New
I have had the opportunity to visit the Venice Biennale on numerous occasions. In reflecting, I realize that what makes one trip stand out over another is the totality of the experience and not the specificity of the art. How can one not love Venice? Navigating...
Sandra de la Loza’s bookish, spirited activism
In Sandra de la Loza’s art, research—what she calls “the archive”—is central to her process. Treating archival material as mutable; she relies on it to expand narratives about history. She is also involved in community activism. Not everything she does is art, or at...
Ana Serrano Shifts her Latino Neighborhoods
Ana Serrano’s colorful cardboard sculptures of cityscapes and buildings, inspired by Latin American vernacular architecture, will be featured prominently this fall in two PST: LA/LA exhibitions. “The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility” at the Craft...
Guadalajara artist Jose Dávila moves around LA
When I heard the title of Jose Dávila’s recent book, Daylight Found Me with No Answer, it sounded familiar. During the years I was living in Guadalajara, I frequently talked with Dávila and other mutual friends at endless parties that lasted until dawn. But I hadn’t...
The courageous photography of Laura Aguilar
Every morning I wake up and see At Home with the Nortes (1990). In this black-and-white photograph, a family sits in the living room watching television. This could be construed as a typical family activity, but the family is hardly typical in Laura Aguilar’s...
PST: LA/LA Artillery Recommendations
Even more than its predecessor, the first Getty Pacific Standard Time initiative that ignited Los Angeles’ arterati six years ago, PST: LA/LA conjures a kind of Aleph-like quality in its ambition to encapsulate at its widest points the art of an entire continent, an...
Galerías en LA/LA
Mid-Wilshire 1301PE Jorge Mendez Blake 0/9–10/21/17 1301pe.com Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles David Lamelas: “Time as Activity” 9/7–10/21/17 spruethmagers.com The Loft at Liz’s “South of the Border” 10/8: 7–9pm: author Eileen Truax panel discussion 10/17: 7–9pm:...
RECONNOITER
Dr. Lourdes I. Ramos was recently appointed as President and CEO of the Museum of Latin American Art in May. Previously, she served as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico for 12 years. She is the first Latina to hold the position...
The Netherlands
Holland has an illustrious past and rich history in art, from golden age painters Rembrandt and Vermeer through modernist legends van Gogh, Mondrian and the de Stijl group, Cobra Dutch artists and expatriate Willem de Kooning, to enigmatic Conceptualist Bas Jan Ader,...
Conceptual Museum: Cesar Cornejo
Cesar Cornejo sees artists as outsiders. They confront things that other people won’t—or can’t—see, the Peruvian-born artist told me in an interview in May, three days after the opening of “Building As Ever,” OCMA’s 2017 California-Pacific Triennial. His site-specific...
South of the Border Down Tijuana Way
Tijuana’s most famous contribution to art is the painting of zonkeys: combining donkeys with zebras so the pale Equus would stand out in black-and-white photographs. This is a paraphrased version of what I’m told when I mention I’m heading to Baja for cultural...
Off the Beaten Path in Barcelona
I landed in Barcelona a little sweaty, slightly hung over, and very much lost. Much to my surprise, the discount tickets I purchased for $350 round-trip included three meals, unlimited snacks, and all-you-can-drink beverages (including alcohol). By the end of the...