Felix LA, the fair that for two years has run concurrently with Frieze LA, is once again at the Roosevelt from July 29 through August 1. This time it is going up without the auspices of the larger Frieze fair, which first delayed in February, then fully cancelled in...
John Knuth is a Los Angeles-based artist who recently had a solo show with Hollis Taggart Gallery in Southport, CT. His work explores how humanity and material and the natural world intersect and influence each other. “The Dawn” ran from May 15–July 3. MATT STROMBERG:...
L.A. sculptor Kenzi Shiokava died June 18 at age 82. His passing was announced by the Japanese American National Museum. JANM featured Shiokava's totemic wood sculptures in the 2017 Pacific Standard Time exhibition "Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese...
Salvador Dali has always had a troubled relationship with the Art World. His work embraced figurative representation during a century where deconstruction and reinvention were the mode du jour. His theatrics often upstaged his considerable talent. The amount of energy...
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, 2020 By Okwui Enwezor 264 pages Phaidon/New Museum, New York In a pivotal scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather a Mafia don grieves over the body of his dead son. “Look how they massacred my boy,”...
No one ever “works” in Eric Rohmer’s movies—but they do read. By necessity, Rohmer’s setting is one of leisure, whether it’s the beaches of Biarritz or the shores of the French Riviera. His characters need ample time to read and to daydream, and for ennui, disturbed...
Rooting through used bookstores in Berlin in 2006, I discovered the minibuchs published in East Germany during the ’70s and ’80s. These tiny volumes, with their exquisite bindings and photos of happy children giving floral bouquets to returning cosmonauts, launched me...
The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance By Ross King 496 pages Atlantic Monthly Press “All evil is born from ignorance. Yet writers have illuminated the world, chasing away the darkness.” —Vespasiano da Bisticci...
Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, 2021 Ed. Elle Shushan; essays by Graham C. Boettcher, Stephen Lloyd, and Elle Shushan. Photography by Nik Layman. 280 pages Giles Ltd. Lover’s Eyes, a new catalog on eye miniatures, lets us peer at one of the...
I met Mark Chamberlain in March 2003, a few days after the onset of the Iraq War. I visited a gallery in Laguna Beach to write a review of his recent work chronicling the potential horrors of that war. Mark had been mounting politically charged installations for...
NoLab By Richard Roth 232 pages Owl Canyon Press Being a voracious reader of contemporary fiction with a particular interest in mystery novels, thrillers and mysteries about artists and art thefts, I was excited to happen upon Richard Roth’s novel NoLab (2019) earlier...
Sidewalk Champions By Suitcase Joe Burn Barrel Press In the wake of the unprecedented court decree issued in April by a federal judge ordering the city of Los Angeles to provide shelter for the 4,600 souls currently living in downtown skid row by this October, the...
Master Architects of Southern California 1920–1940 by Marc Appleton, Stephen Gee and Bret Parsons 208 pages Angel City Press Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View by Janna Ireland 224 pages Angel City Press When Paul Revere Williams...
Post York Story and Art by James Romberger with additional material by Crosby Romberger 112 pages Dark Horse Comics/Berger Books “They somehow set fire to what was left of the East Side.” —POST YORK, p.86. The city had been ceded to climate change. It was...
The artistic legacies of Mexican Muralism remain imprinted on LA’s urban landscape, in faded residues on cracked concrete structures and sometimes peeking out from peeling layers of whitewash anti-graffiti paint. Throughout the 1970s, many artists in Southern...
The digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million in cyptocurrency at Christie’s auction in March, 2021. The media treated this grotesque sale as if it revolutionized the art world, but if we separate reality from the hysterical hype, it clearly has not....
In the midst of the Revolution of 1917, fiery Bolshevik Leon Trotsky warned members of the Menshevik party that their moderate methods in the revolutionary world would relegate them to history’s “dustbin.” In an ironic appropriation six decades later, Ronald Reagan...
To incarnate is to become embodied in form, and form follows function. From the outset of the year 2020, leadership at the Women’s Center for Creative Work began the task of expanding its physical form because they had had the good fortune of having outgrown their...
Subscribe to our weekly Gallery Rounds Newsletter for new Reviews, Art opps, Art Events, & More every week!
