Artillery Magazine

Category: z-Past Issues

  • BUNKER VISION Size Matters

    BUNKER VISION
    Size Matters

    The pandemic has brought many issues to the fore, including health care, basic income and housing. Further down the list (but inspiring outsize passion) is how we consume movies. After nearly a year without much production and very few theaters allowed to remain open, prestige projects are headed straight to premium streaming. Films that were made to be seen on giant screens are available as first-run films on your telephone. Theater owners have the biggest stake in the outcome of this. After being forced to re-tool for digital projection, 3D and other expensive amenities, people have had a year to get accustomed to seeing first-run features at home. As televisions get bigger and family entertainment budgets grow tighter, families may start budgeting for the streaming price for a movie, which often entertains a whole family for the price of a theater admission.

    A recent Sudanese movie (streamed during the New York African Film Festival) examines the realities of enticing an audience back into theaters after decades of watching films on their phones, because a repressive government caused all of the theaters to close. Talking About Trees (2019) follows the efforts of a group of filmmakers, unable to work in their home country, to show a movie in a theater. The tone is set for the universal appeal of cinema when one of the directors breaks into a spontaneous imitation of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950). The four filmmakers who spearhead this effort call themselves the Sudanese Film Club. They were all educated outside of Sudan, and their films show such influences as French New Wave and early Russian montage. Most of their films are lost or missing, so much excitement occurs when one of the directors is able to locate his student film from a Soviet film school. Enough of their work survives to offer clips throughout the documentary that display a finely tuned film sensibility. Since the country is under Sharia Law, the only cinemas that operate are in the capital city of Khartoum. These show censored versions of Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters.

    Their efforts start with guerrilla outdoor showings with a small digital projector. It is the first time that many people in the audience have seen a film projected. As they question local residents about what might get them into a theater, they land on the film Django Unchained (2012) as meeting the necessary mix of ingredients. Looking at the challenges of restoring a long-shuttered theater, locating a working projector, finding a time slot that won’t be interrupted by calls to prayer, and facing the risk of arrest, they finally are forced to abandon their plan. One of the film’s conclusions is that people who have fallen out of the habit of watching movies in a theater are not that easily lured back. As we contemplate the future of how we consume movies, there is a lot of food for thought here. Perhaps seeing movies in theaters will be like listening to records on vinyl. People will still do it, but not the majority of them.

  • ASK BABS ART CONSCIOUS

    ASK BABS
    ART CONSCIOUS

    Dear Babs, Desert X is putting their show on in the Coachella Valley this spring, after art-washing the murderous Saudi Arabian regime with a big outdoor show over there. In case you missed it, Saudi leader MBS had Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi killed and cut into pieces—not an accusation, there was overwhelming evidence of the crime and who ordered it. How is Desert X able to do this and continue working in this country with no repercussions? Is the art community in this country really as morally bankrupt as the Republican Party?

    —Sick to my stomach in SoCal

    Dear Sick to My Stomach, In 2019 Desert X partnered with The Royal Commission for AlUla to produce an exhibition of public sculpture in the northwest desert of Saudi Arabia. In doing so, Desert X provided an art-infused PR-makeover to the repressive monarchy, which was facing global condemnation for repeated human rights abuses, including Koshoggi’s murder at the direction of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who also helms the AlUIa Commission. In its defense, Desert X claimed the whole public art exhibition was a successful opportunity for “cross-cultural exchange,” which among other things brought art by and about women to a country not known for its embrace of female representation.

    There were consequences. Shortly after the partnership was announced, three Desert X board members resigned in protest. The LA Times’ Christopher Knight labeled the show “Desert Bonesaw.” More recently, the Palm Springs City Council pulled funding from a 2021 Desert X artwork because of the Saudi connection. More controversy is likely to come.

    My advice is to turn your outrage into action. Create unsanctioned Desert “eXtra” artworks calling attention to the problem of arts organizations cozying up to dangerous benefactors. Co-opt the Desertx hashtag to interject news about the Saudi-led war in Yemen into the avalanche of Instagram selfies the event will generate. Use your voice to get the artists, media sponsors and galleries attached to Desert X to publicly answer some difficult questions.

    Like art institutions that took money from the opioid epidemic-inducing Sackler family, or the museums who tolerate arms dealers on their boards and looted artifacts in their collections, Desert X decided that morally repugnant means justified culturally ambitious ends. But the amorphous “art community” you mention is NOT as morally bankrupt as the Republican party; to equate the two diminishes the real threat the GOP poses to American democracy. Desert X may have nefarious backers, but it’s not the agent of a fascist coup.

  • Obituaries Liz Young; Helen Rae; Van Arno

    Obituaries
    Liz Young; Helen Rae; Van Arno

    An Appreciation: Liz Young (1958–2020)

    LA artist Liz Young passed away in December. I’ve been going to Los Angeles art openings as far back as the late ’80s—and Liz Young was always there. Then one day I was at the Y where I swim downtown, and there she was again. I would go to the lap pool and see the assistants lower her down into the water—always with a big smile beaming from her face as she made eye contact with me. Her art was dark and compelling, but uplifting, which is some feat unto itself. We, in the LA art community, will miss Liz’ spirit and tenacity, and perhaps we can learn a few things from such a brave soul. Here are some shared memories of Liz from LA artists, curators and friends.    —Tulsa Kinney, Editor

    Liz’ last project at LACE was a performance called I Know What Danger Is. It’s What You Run Away From, as part of “Irrational Exhibits 9” in 2016, curated by Deborah Oliver. She was an enduring influence on her students at the LA County HS for the Arts and helped organize a year-end group show of her students’ work for several years at LACE. On a very personal note, my daughter was a student of hers and says, “I would not be the designer or artist I am today without her teachings, and I only wish I could have told her so.”       —Sarah Russin

    When I first met Liz, she was a grad student at Otis in the early ‘80s and we remained close friends until her life ended so unexpectedly. Her work was extraordinary. She could make dark subject matter so accessible and inspiring. Liz was a formidable artist and also a teacher. She became a seamstress, embroiderer, taxidermist, whatever it took to bring her ideas to fruition. Nothing stopped Liz. If you spent anytime with her you realized that what she made seem so easy—having to use a wheelchair to get around—wasn’t easy at all. She truly overcame obstacles daily with finesse and a matter-of-factness, never afraid to ask directly for help to literally get over
    something.  —Joy Silverman

    A few times over the years when I would reach my breaking point with the hectoring negativity of certain people I would ask point blank “How can Liz Young be so bubbly, upbeat and engaging stuck in a wheelchair and you can walk around freely but are such a fucking downer?” I confessed to Liz that I did this and she asked, “Have you ever got a good answer?” and she meant it, she wanted to hear a good comeback to my question, and that is how I will remember her—totally engaged.       —Mat Gleason

    Liz Young had an almost preternatural understanding of mortality and the earth itself, the claim of place upon identity and the existential contest of these elements; and her work reflected their full compass. Yet she engaged that vision—and the rest of the world—straight on, and her community with unstinting generosity, courage, spirit and verve.          —Ezrha Jean Black

    We met in a whirling spree of light, noise and euphoria, one night almost 40 years aback. We were both dancing to the same music, in the same blurry state. I almost landed on her lap. She smiled a smile that froze me midair. Just enough time for her to move to one side. Swept off my feet, I fell… deeply and never really recovered.  —Brett Goldstone

    Liz had an artful life. Making work by “making it work.” Needle and thread, paper and pen, knife and suture. She was clever with words and deeds. She loved life. She was curious and lively, amusing, industrious and resilient. Liz was a force of nature. I will miss her forever.   —Debbie Spinelli

    Four Questions For Liz: Where are you my lovely friend? Who am I going to eat noodles with? I can hear the scratchy echo of your ball point pen in the background when we talk on the phone: Red or black? Missing you, I ask myself a lot these days, “What Would Lizzy Do?”   —Raghubir Kintisch

    Liz’ last installation [at Track 16] was trenchant: a figure floating head-first above a small sea of sewn leather balls. Or maybe the figure is falling. The balls are scattered, possibly left behind. We were just about to de-install the piece when we received the news of her passing. Goodbye, Liz. We miss you so much already.  —Sean Meredith

    Loving, Fierce,Inspirational, Indomitable, Bottomless, Forgiving, Unforgiving, Intuitive, Critical, Industrious, Kind, Aware, Blank, Sly, Collaborative, Singular, Beautiful, Strange, Caring, Nostalgic, Rooted, Prissy, Open, Free, Trapped, Ethereal, Romantic, Country, Longing, Gentle, Rugged, Knowing, Hurt, Transcendent, Unrelenting, Strength, Artist, Maker, Self, Identity. What I Love About Liz.  — Barry Markowitz

    Liz Young was a “bad ass” from the making to the installing of her work. Her joy of artmaking was everpresent and her generosity of spirit was palpable. She made large-scale installation durational performative works that were always incredibly articulate and visually powerful. Her work was inspired, touching and always unexpected. I’m so grateful our paths connected. Rest in Power.  —Deborah Oliver

    Liz. Artist. Beautiful. Forever young. Genius. Graceful. Generous. Strong. Kind. From darkness to light. Lighter still. Brilliant. The Sun. To stare at the Sun. Eyes wide open. You are the Sun. I will always remember you. —Donald Dunham

    For Liz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EIWSeqyneA     —Carol Cetrone

     

     

    Helen Rae at The Good Luck Gallery, 2015

    Helen Rae (1938–2021)

    Self-taught artist Helen Rae passed away on February 18, 2021 at the age of 83. Helen was a trailblazer who broke down the walls of common art theory regarding MFAs, age and disabilities. She started making art at the Tierra del Sol studio arts program the first day they opened in 1990. She worked diligently at her practice in the studio five days a week, finding inspiration from fashion magazines while pushing boundaries of portraiture using ordinary tools such as graphite, colored pencils and paper. LA Times critic David Pagel wrote in his 2016 review: “Rae flattens volumes, collapses space and fractures planes in ways that make Picasso’s Cubism seem amateurish.” Helen inspired everyone who saw her drawings, paving the way for others to follow in her footsteps. Her work is widely collected around the globe, crossing the divide from “outsider” to contemporary artist with works promised to major museums. Rest in peace Helen, and thank you for sharing your voice and spirit with the world.  —Paige Wery, Tierra del Sol Gallery Director

     

     

    Portrait of Van Arno

    Van Arno (1963–2021)

    Art movements are an aggregation of disenfranchised souls that share a theory or practice; by necessity, the identifying ideology is exclusive. But the timing and location of the movement’s genesis can create a vortex that sweeps in non-aligned artists. This was the case with the Los Angeles painter Van Arno, who died January 18th of this year at the age of 57.

    The Low Brow Art movement coalesced in the mid-80s and Van Arno’s paintings had all the technical qualities necessary for his inclusion. Consequently, art critics, dealers and collectors firmly placed him in the Low Brow camp, even though the subject of his narrative paintings had little to do with its cultural influences. In place of American Pop icons like The Munsters, Van studied up Pre-Colombian Central American Art, and instead of Bettie Page, Van chose to paint Popeye’s love, Olive Oyl. His four years at the Otis Art Institute, LACC, and the UCLA Extension Program also separated Van from the self-taught artists with whom he found himself surrounded, so when Van exhibited at the 01 Gallery and the museums that accepted Low Brow, his figurative paintings always stood out.

    Art, for Van, was a vehicle to greater exploration; as he famously said, “I want to paint everything on Earth at least once.” As a result, his paintings are crammed with detailed characters ancillary to the main story. Still, the sum of all these objects added to Van’s prodigious talents at figurative painting put him in the forefront of a new American Regionalism, a place where he excelled at accurately depicting human muscles, not muscle cars. As Van’s talents matured over the years, he became a formidable draftsman; after all, if he wanted to paint everything, he had to draw it first.

    Van exhibited his paintings throughout his life and had a show scheduled in 2021 at Keep Contemporary in Santa Fe. Van’s interest in ancient mythology segued to the overriding theme of his late work: powerful women in action. To this end he hired a variety of female models to pose in his studio, and it was common to see Van at art openings with the most striking woman in the room.

    Van Arno’s last painting

    Van was a skilled teacher and found academia to also be an appropriate arena in which to apply his skills. He was a Figurative Drawing Instructor at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games, and Animation, designed characters for a weekly Flash Cartoon at Hits Magazine, and taught Life Drawing classes at Blue Rooster Art in Hollywood. No stranger to the intricacies of hiring nude models, he soon became known for his genteel approach; as one model revealed, “Every artist I worked for eventually said or did something weird, but not Van.” And even in the clothed world, Van maintained his respect. Perhaps Ron English, the noted Popaganda artist, put it best when he wrote, “Van was a person that was a delight in every possible way, from his art to his ease of being.”  —Anthony Ausgang

  • CODE ORANGE Winner and Finalists for March-April 2021

    CODE ORANGE
    Winner and Finalists for March-April 2021

    Congratulations to our winner Melissa Moore and our finalists. Moore’s photo is seen above and first in our photo gallery in the March/April online issue of Artillery. The following photographs are the finalists. Please see the info below on how to enter for our May/June 2021 online-only photography column Code Orange.

    CODE ORANGE is a recently added Artillery feature; a web-based photography column and opportunity to have your work published in the magazine, curated by LA artist and photographer Laura London. Chosen entries will be published online in Artillery and finalists will appear online. CODE ORANGE is a documentary photography project and outlet for artists to express how they feel about the current state of the world.

    Tumultuous times like ours have historically produced some of the most interesting, captivating, and timeless art; we hope to find and share similar works today. Images submitted should capture how our country and the world are affected by political, environmental change, social, personal, universal, identity issues. Photographs can be produced using a film or digital camera or smartphone. Black-and-white and or color images are accepted.

    Ten photos are selected by London, one winner and eleven finalists. The winner will receive a one-year subscription to Artillery. Their photo will appear on our homepage website for two months and winner and finalists will appear in our weekly Gallery Rounds newsletter, along with our Instagram post.

    Good luck and we look forward to seeing your photographic submission!

    DEADLINE for our May/June issue: April 26, 2021

    Specifications for photo submissions:
    • Only one photo per person
    • FOR WEB: 72 dpi; 600 pixels wide. (hang onto your original large file in case you are selected for publication)
    • Include: Artist Name, Title, Date, Place, and Medium (in that specific order)
    • Email your photograph entry to lauralondon@artillerymag.com

  • Black Art: In the Absence of Light Film Review of HBO documentary

    Black Art: In the Absence of Light
    Film Review of HBO documentary

    Black Art: In the Absence of Light, is a most timely and info-packed HBO documentary, briskly propelled by terrific interviews with artists, curators and educators. It opens by introducing us to a landmark exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” that opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976 and toured the country. The curator was David Driskell, then a professor at Fisk University, and an artist in his own right.

    The doc opens with vintage TV footage of Driskell interviewed about the exhibition by Tom Brokaw on the Today show, then quickly moves to the larger topic: contemporary Black artists in America. The exhibition focused on the period from 1750 to 1950, and in the doc we hear from those who have emerged since then, such as Radcliffe Bailey, Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold and Kara Walker—and also Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, the two artists who painted the official portraits of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, respectively. These are artists who have made it into museum shows and gallery representation, and on their own terms.

    Kerry James Marshall, School of Beauty, School of Culture, 2012, courtesy HBO

    One common thread is the legacy of Black artists and how new generations have been inspired by those who came before. Take Marshall, who studied at the Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art & Design) and took classes with Betye Saar and Charles White. Marshall realized that he not only wanted to be an artist, but one who addresses Black life—the subject of his large tableaux are events and moments of Black life, as we saw at his “Mastry” show at MOCA LA in 2017. Ralph Ellison and his novel Invisible Man have also been an important inspiration, he says, “This condition of being seen and not seen simultaneously.”

    Now and then, the film returns to the “Two Centuries” exhibition history, including mention of a Hilton Kramer review in The New York Times that questioned the quality of art in the show. Driskell says in that long-ago interview that this was to be expected from a mainstream writer, “These persons are not familiar with what we might refer to as the Black experience.” Driskell is also interviewed more recently, and provides more astute observations.

    Amy Sherald, She Had An Inside And An Outside Now And Suddenly She Knew How Not To Mix Them, 2018, courtesy HBO

    I have two bones of contention with this doc, and one is the title. Why is “the absence of light” especially relevant? It is mentioned at the end by one artist, but hardly the leitmotif carried throughout. The other is why it needs to open with Tom Brokaw—literally, his is the first face we see—as if the audience needed the credential of whiteness to validate the subject matter.

    The good news is that this is a good moment for Black artists. They are getting long overdue recognition and even being actively courted by commercial galleries. Sherald sees the current enthusiasm as a kind of “gold rush,” but adds, “I say it’s because we’re making some of the best work, the most relevant work.”

    BLACK ART: IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT

    Directed and produced by Sam Pollard

    Currently airing on HBO

  • John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres Charlie James Gallery

    John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres
    Charlie James Gallery

    “The Bronx Comes to LA” features artworks from the larger body of work set up in Bronx storefronts by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres, dating from 1990 to 2020. The life casting process for making the figures is fairly complicated, but even more importantly, requires a very trusting relationship between the person applying the mold-making alginate and the sitter who must breathe through small straws as the goopy green liquid sets up. Afterward, there still needs to be a plaster external cast made so the person must continue to be patient, staying immobile while it all coalesces. When these molds are finally cast, the artists intervene with paint to build back the person being portrayed.

    One of the figures, Ingrid (1992/2002), is concentrated on a shelf in front of her. Jutting out from the wall, the green squared counter is being scrubbed with a bright blue dishrag while on the left side is a bunch of green bananas and on the other side is a can of jalapeno peppers. There’s something majestic about this simple set of gestures. Its everyday quality is offset in part by the bright colors of the red sweater and yellow glasses, but in the end, there’s something equally monumental and intimate about it.

     

    Top: John Ahearn, Rigoberto Torres, Split Portrait (1997-2000), Courtesy Charlie James Gallery.

    Mounted on the wall above the door leading into the gallery, Ismael (Tire Shop), (2017) leans out with an impact wrench in hand. Observed up close there are clearly marks of sculptural modification on these cast plaster surfaces. Small grooves, crosshatching and careful treatments of the surface emerge and the paint is drawn out of the representational into the expressive. There is a compelling mix of recognizability and abstraction.

    In a smaller back room, the two artists, as well as Ahearn’s wife Juanita and child Carlos, are portrayed. The very disconcerting white eyes of Ahearn and the extremely bright orange T-shirt of Orange Self (2010) is across from the fractured and reconstructed vertical slices of Split Portrait (1997–2000) of Rigoberto. Together, they foreground the emotional engagement of the artists. It is what allows them to make such captivating and individualized portraits.

    What is most compelling about this work overall is not only the social context from which it emerges but the way it documents the inhabitants of the area around where the artists live and work. There is something very discerning yet participatory about making life-size portraits of the people around where they are living and having that portrayal completed in public view.

     

  • Poems "All the Paper in My Life" by Eve Wood; "Holding Pattern" by John Tottenham

    Poems
    “All the Paper in My Life” by Eve Wood; “Holding Pattern” by John Tottenham

    All the Paper
    in My Life

    By Eve Wood

    We are born into paper—

    Our lives bookended in signatures,

    A certificate

    To prove you exist

    And another to prove you

    Do not, each day teeming

    With permits, credentials

    For entry and forms to depart,

    Passports, agendas,

    Records of evidence and

    Evidence of nothing

    But paper, reams of it,

    A million loose leafed sheets

    Let go on the wind, snippets

    From diaries and highly classified

    Lies, love letters and all

    The annulments of love

    Floating suddenly over the embankment

    After the explosion

    That leaves you

    Naked and alive.

     

    Holding Pattern

    By John Tottenham

    She demanded to be held.

    So I held her.

    She collapsed lifelessly into my arms

    and remained there,

    while I lay there, with mind elsewhere,

    wondering how much longer

    I was supposed to hold her for.

    After what seemed like a long time,

    I gently disengaged myself

    and got out of the bed.

    She looked coldly up at me from the pillow.

    She said that she would find somebody else:

    somebody who would want to hold her

    for two hours

    after an act of love

    that lasted two minutes.

  • Fu Site Kylin Gallery

    Fu Site
    Kylin Gallery

    “Fictions in Fragments,” the latest show by Fu Site at Kylin Gallery in Beverly Hills, is an adventure not to be missed. Mixing ghostly characters and cracking lightning with influences stretching from modern architecture to baroque drama, Fu’s paintings alternately look like haunted mansions and dreamlike lands.

    The first painting you encounter is an excellent introduction to Fu’s style, Daydreamer (2018) which features a man in formal attire, back turned to the viewer, as a cloud of blue-gray smoke drifts from his mouth. The figure seems just barely lifted out from the gray fog which dominates the piece, barely visible, yet it is the singular focus. With the slightest tilt of the head, Fu injects a deep sense of contemplation.

    From his time at Tsinghua University in Beijing—one of the most prestigious art schools in Asia—Fu has a considerable capability for portraiture and figuration. This skill shines in the impressionistic figures, where Fu is able to again convey strong emotion through these misty, ethereal characters. Strangers (2016), with the trio of temporally displaced characters in a modern mansion, oozes tension. Three figures, all turned away from one another, feature in the painting which straddles contemporary and classic, indoors and outdoors, reality and memory. They exist together in this space, yet seem estranged from one another, caught up in their own individual neurotic mysteries.

    Fu Site, Daydreamer (2016). Courtesy Kylin Gallery

    This tension is a theme throughout many of the paintings, including the ominous Landscape with two gentlemen (2015). In a thick swamp of muted tan and green reeds, two spectral men wrestle one another as they look off into the horizon. Here again, their faces are hidden from us, and we are left to guess what happened to bring us to this point in the misty marshlands. There is a downward arrow pointing at nothing in particular—or something critically important.

    Earlier works are featured in the back room, but as Fu’s style developed, his need for a firm reality lessened, culminating finally in The revelation of violence (2018). This work is a complete departure from baroque mansions, translucent specters and men in fields. It shows two Greco-Roman gods fighting one another in a Surrealistic expanse, accented by lakes of color. Some grid lines—vestiges from the earlier emphasis on architecture—create a strong sense of depth, as if we are watching from atop Mount Olympus.

    “Fictions in Fragments” is a dazzling display of mystery and magic, and Fu Site’s talent and creative ability is truly not to be missed in a rare showing on the West Coast.

     

  • Karen Carson GAVLAK

    Karen Carson
    GAVLAK

    The title of Karen Carson’s show of new “bas relief” paintings, exhibited alongside some of the zippered canvas works that marked her debut into the Los Angeles art world almost half a century ago, “Middle Ground” is a kind of conundrum, consistent with the kinds of conundrums her work has presented throughout her career. Presenting those earliest works as a reference point, the show toggled between that ‘primary’ conversation and the larger, more encompassing conversation of her evolving body of work.

    This is not the first time her work has incorporated “bas-relief” elements or wood moldings, though she has never exploited the latter technique as variously or virtuosically. Inverting that original ‘primary,’ these prismatic, often kaleidoscopic compositions further deconstruct, dissolve or refract the object into a kind of folding screen, moving forward and back in depth as well as horizontally and vertically.

    Karen Carson Yellow Diamonds (2018). Courtesy GAVLAK

    Although both palette and composition give some evidence of environmental or even bodily inspiration — as in Butterfly (2018), a vulva-like lozenge contained within a trussed rectangle extended outward on either side as if by a camera’s accordion bellows — these are fairly rigorous abstractions, their deliberation underscored by graphic and geometric elements.

    Carson has a fascination with the reflected, repeated image or pattern, symmetries, or their manufactured illusion or inversion — in short, the manipulated appearance or actuality.  A surface projection (in one color palette), e.g., in Pink Pole (2018), may define an area that recedes behind the picture plane; yet this is overlaid with a black-gray-white ‘reflection’ magnifying the central ‘ground’ behind a more vibrantly painted projection in the middle of a tripartite construction.  Whether reflecting or merely referencing physical, atmospheric/environmental, or carnal elements, throughout it is the ‘ground’ itself that is least certain.

    Carson plays with the viewer’s expectations and preconceptions, opening out a space or hollow, only to break it apart or push it forward in another quadrant. This is a collapsible universe. Yellow Diamonds (2018) frustrates the ‘movement’ of its kaleidoscopic fractalization by containing it within the rectangle of its frame/enclosure; yet its visual operations might be extrapolated beyond its virtual perimeter, an infinite expansion and recession, progression and regression. In the meantime, she draws our attention to the painted surfaces, the expressive dimension deliberately restrained as if to underscore the temporal impermanence or entirely conditional aspect of the configuration.

    Carson is also interested in the straightforwardly fractured image or surface, the arbitrary divisions or abrupt discontinuities that stop or turn the eye in another direction entirely. Gray Swirl (2018) and the most recent of her featured works, Red Fracture (2020), are essentially diptychs and remarkably true in their perfectly mirrored reflection/reversals. Again, the painterly element unsettles this perfect symmetry.

    In other words, the painterly imperfection here is a device like any other to challenge the viewer’s assumptions about both surface and structure—which is where this show would have us turn back to the landmark works that constituted Carson’s Los Angeles debut and a direct challenge to the arbitrary terms attached to Minimalism and dominating the discourse of that time, effectively challenging Donald Judd’s “single thing” (also, Morris and LeWitt) with that which might be “open and extended, more or less environmental”—each as playful and brilliant as when they first appeared. 

    Taking an expansive, sophisticated, and painterly approach, Carson here revisits some of her original foundational concerns, leaving it ultimately to the viewer as to what may constitute that ‘middle ground,’ or indeed if there is any middle ground at all.

  • COMICS Flash Matta Conquers the Universe

    COMICS
    Flash Matta Conquers the Universe

  • Hamishi Farah Chateau Shatto

    Hamishi Farah
    Chateau Shatto

    Portraiture is almost certainly the artistic genre in which power and privilege imprint themselves most legibly. To “represent” can mean to depict, but also the right to speak on behalf of a group. The tension between these two meanings is at the heart of Hamishi Farah’s debut solo show at Chateau Shatto. Two distinct groups of portraits make up this conceptually ambitious exhibition: oil paintings of people who have, by one means or another, altered their face, and five self-portraits in charcoal, pastel and acrylic commissioned from Rachel Dolezal. Farah’s approach prioritizes the referential capabilities of portraiture over formal innovation. These paintings point to compelling issues, but their pictorial language is conventional.

    Two of Farah’s paintings depict white men who have drawn on their faces with a black marker. A man with a scruffy beard sports an amateurish version of a batman mask across his forehead, nose and cheeks, while a more youthful guy stares blankly towards the viewer with what looks like half-assed blackface. Both images feel like mugshots, evoking the specter of criminal archetypes. So-called “black” markers actually contain deep purple ink, and these racially-tinged facial alterations come off as unambiguously pathetic. However, these jagged purple lines are the most visually exciting parts of the paintings. Rendered with energetic brushstrokes into wet paint, these passages stand out from the static, at times stiff quality of portraits painted from photographs. Farah’s other paintings depart from this racial binary: a bearded man with entirely purple skin, a sumo wrestler wearing a sheet mask, a woman with her head covered by a stocking, and a closeup of a bee. These portraits add complexity and humor to the theme of self-presentation while sticking to a relatively conservative painterly technique.

    Hamishi Farah, Now Then (2020). Courtesy Chateau Shatto.

    Rachel Dolezal, whose claims of Blackness have been widely rebuked and ridiculed, makes self-portraits that are as strange as you would expect them to be. She deploys clumsy metaphors to emphasize her own victimhood and uses a Jewish cookie to claim bi-racial identity. Black and White Cookie (2020) portrays Dolezal in a black headwrap holding the titular cookie in front of her, having just taken a bite—you guessed it—right down the middle. I spent the most time looking at Banished (2020), a charcoal drawing that reads as a surrealist allegory for depression. It shows a somber Dolezal standing next to a fence with a large hole missing from her abdomen. A black sun the size of her missing section looms ominously above. These amateurish works are ‘interesting’, in that they ask you to look more as a sociologist or psychologist. As with some of Farah’s own portraits, they illustrate how fixated humans can be on visual markers of identity, positing race as a particularly dangerous type of formalism.

  • Reconnoiter: Jonathan Hepfer Interview with the percussionist, conductor, and artistic director

    Reconnoiter: Jonathan Hepfer
    Interview with the percussionist, conductor, and artistic director

    Jonathan Hepfer is a percussionist, conductor, and the artistic director of Monday Evening Concerts, the longest-running classical, avant-garde and experimental music concert series in LA.

    What has it been like reimagining your programming during the pandemic?

    Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure of interviewing Éliane Radigue and conducting Yves Klein’s Monotone Symphony. The work of these artists taught me about the nature of purity of forms, reduction and absence. Radigue’s music is rooted in the tactility of masterfully sculpted sound, which of course, is itself immaterial. Klein’s work convinced me that painting, with all of its historical baggage, can be reduced: a) to single colors (monochromes); b) to a single color (blue); and c) to empty space (the void) while still completely retaining its “sensibilité,” or artistic/spiritual potency.

    James Baldwin said that the artist should be like a lover: If you love somebody, you help them see things they are incapable of seeing themselves. A friend and mentor of mine, Hamza Walker always manages to do this for me. When I first visited him, I looked at Sol LeWitt’s work. But after discussing it with Hamza, I saw it.

    These realizations led me to the conclusion that even if I can’t give concerts while physically sharing the space with other human beings, I want to use my curatorial faculties to help myself and others learn to see in this fashion. My resulting blog, Islands from the Archipelago, is a sort of public chronicle of my research interests. I’m trying to use this involuntary sabbatical to learn about new artists, and to find lesser-known works by well-known artists.

    The blog is about unpredictable synapses firing, both for me and whoever might encounter these posts. When your synapses fire, looking becomes seeing. New ideas emerge in the process. Whether I am giving concerts or not, this has always been my objective.

    Photo by Kacie Tomita.

    One of the things I love about attending MEC is the seamless melding of mediums—music and language being the most potent. How do you think about this relationship?

    Of course, our focus is indeed classical music. But there is something about the atmosphere, or attitude of the world of the visual arts that feels more conducive to the direction I’d like to see MEC go over the next few years. Éliane Radigue is more interesting when you understand her relationship to artists like Arman and Yves Klein. The same is true of Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett, Butch Morris and David Hammons, Iannis Xenakis, and Le Corbusier. Art is more compelling when it speaks across disciplines.

    Photo by Orion Carloto.

    What are you most looking forward to when the world reopens for in-person programming?

    Three things come to mind: seeing friends and loved ones in the lobby, intermission (my favorite part of concerts) and that indescribable haunting daze that sometimes comes after a special performance ends, and you don’t want to applaud or talk to anybody for a few hours—you only want to be alone with your thoughts. That would be my ideal response to every concert we give.

  • Ludovica Gioscia Baert Gallery

    Ludovica Gioscia
    Baert Gallery

    It is difficult not to be taken with Ludovica Gioscia’s exhibition “Arturo And The Vertical Sea.” Upon entry, viewers confront three free-standing wooden structures akin to unfinished walls that criss-cross two gallery spaces at different angles, dividing them into discrete areas. Some of her double-sided works are draped over the wooden supports while others hang from or on them. A few handmade bark shelves span sections of the faux walls and contain collections of small works made of paper-mâché and ceramics. The Arturo of the show’s title is actually Gioscia’s cat who she sees as a collaborator. In an interview with the gallery director, Gioscia talks about the collaboration (consciously for her, unconsciously for the cat), her desire to connect to her cat’s dream world, the soothing impact of the cat’s meowing and purring on her psyche and the inclusion of cat hair as one of many disparate materials.

    Cat imagery appears in the small watercolor Arturo and the Vertical Sea (all works 2020), a charming child-like rendering of undulating blue and green waves filled with disembodied cat heads and personified images of full-bodied cats, as well as in collections that include cat-shaped heads like Making Kin and Arturo.

    However, the majority of works are comprised of colorful floral patterns and geometric abstractions. Small sketches for Gioscia’s Dream Robes and Portals are pinned to the supports, often in close proximity to the much larger finished pieces they envisioned. The Dream Robes are wearable textile artworks that function as magical tools. As Gioscia states, “I see the Dream Robes as catalysts that help me imagine artworks in my dreams, which I then re-create at [the] studio.”

     

    Ludovica Gioscia, Making Kin (2020). Courtesy Baert Gallery.

    Dream Robe 2 is a transparent Kimono-shaped garment draped within the open-framed walls covered with hand-sewn fabrics, in pink, orange and green tones, adorned with cut-out geometric shapes and crisscrossing threads. Similar textures appear in Portal 22, a quasi-transparent plastic window bordered by scallop-shaped, screen-printed fabrics.

    Although the exhibition is filled with myriad backstories, it is not necessary to know them in order to be seduced by the installation. The works are precisely arranged and presented as individual objects, as well as in groups. For example, the ceramic and twine pieces that make up Earth Couture are mounted to a large irregularly-shaped wooden disk. The different pieces work in concert with each other to become a conversation that unfolds as viewers traverse from the front to the back sides of the works and come into contact with surprises along the way.

    Gioscia draws from fashion, theory and the natural world to create these intriguing ensembles. Though derived from personal and emotional relationships, like her bond with Arturo, her installations are also formal investigations into the rubrics of daily life.

     

  • Amanda Wall The Cabin

    Amanda Wall
    The Cabin

    Amanda Wall’s debut solo show, “JUICY” at The Cabin entices us into the intimate gallery. The exhibition space, which is in fact a small cottage-like structure in the backyard of artist and collector Danny First’s residence, immediately evokes a sense of casual closeness between the viewer and the work. One must walk through a side gate into the backyard to access the gallery space, as if visiting a close companion.

    The Cabin sits at one end of a large yard and its strategically opened door draws the eye towards a painting of a larger-than-life female figure encompassed in a neon glow, BABY NEW YEAR (all works 2020). Silver confetti falls around her as she reclines, her feet extended forward and towards the viewer, with one sock on and the other seemingly missing. She remains aloof, feminine and provoking. With a nonchalant demeanor and flexible form, she summons us into the quaint space of the Cabin.

     

    Amanda Wall. BENT, 2020. Courtesy The Cabin.

    In all of the works, Wall utilizes vibrant hues and energetic brushstrokes, giving a sense of enthusiastic urgency. She combines graphic shapes and colors, with aspects of figures remaining only partially defined, engaging and challenging our sense of the figure as certain edges of arms, legs, and faces dissipate, grabbing our attention and then slowing us down with nuanced clarity to inspect further. For example, in BENT, the figure faces away from us, her torso completely folded over a chair while her legs are tangled in an impossible fashion, like that of a twisting barber pole. In Puddle, two figures interact as one stands above the other who has seemingly melted onto the floor, exploring provocative figurative abstraction as forms blur into backgrounds while other sections of the paintings remain crisp. Through this use of mark and subject matter, Wall creates an intriguing push and pull.

    The show is “JUICY” in every sense: in PEACH, the figure sinks her teeth into the fruit, absorbed in its flesh with eyes wide shut, unaware and seemingly unconcerned with anything else. SHOWERER, 2020 depicts a man standing exposed and naked in the center of the composition, yet his form remains blurred.

    Wall’s generously playful images invite us to find comfort in the ability to distort and yet make sense. Her figures, depicted voyeuristically on display, never quite acknowledge us; each holds a mysterious secret—one so juicy it leaves you salivating for more.

     

  • Caroline Kent Kohn Gallery 

    Caroline Kent
    Kohn Gallery 

    Already known for planting her cut-out shapes onto a dense matte black ground, which she has characterized as ‘non-space,’ for this show, Kent challenges viewers straight off with a plunge into a black field already seemingly torn away to reveal both apparent voids alongside ‘cut-out’ figures in white that echo the more prominently placed pigmented shapes, and—further confusing her ‘non-space’—shallow, quasi-illusionistic depths in which undulant and organic segmented forms in gauzy charcoal-grays seemed to emerge from behind the deep-black torn-out surround like protozoa or plant stalks, only to sink again behind interior black shards and stalactites.

    Dead center floats a peachy-pink decagonal U-shaped piece of joinery (or conceivably upswept limbs), echoed by three dead-white digits fluttering above out of the black, seemingly poised to intercept an indigo-blue shuttlecock (or stealth bomber) shape to the left (‘guided’ by interstitially floating blue rays or ‘wands’), all beneath a feathery palm frond shape top center.

    Between ‘U’ and frond, a swag of seven pink ‘pebbles’ floated, echoed by a larger pebble shape at lower left and a torn-out rectangle in pink standing on the right, as if a cat had plunged through to the ‘floor’ beneath.

    The title is Penning one’s insights (all works 2020), which may well constitute an advisory in recondite twin-speak. Kent, an identical twin, has alluded to a secret language/communication she shared with her twin, which I take the liberty here of interpreting as an advisory imperative not to make any assumptions about what lies beneath that black ‘non-space.’

    Caroline Kent, Penning one’s insights (2020). Courtesy Kohn Gallery

    Between the surface markings and less-than-uniform, occasionally interrupted matte-black ground, Kent gives some indication of her process. Some of it is a quasi-directional mapping, useful to the extent we read the paintings as visual poetry. The finality of the works seems tenuous, in that there are frequent superimpositions not simply of subsidiary patterns or textures, but shapes within shapes.

     Some of these are directional, like the horseshoe gray arch with a sequence of linked orangey-red triangles in Musings on how to leave and re-enter (which not incidentally points in the direction of a gray ‘chrysallis-coffin’). Some of these oscillate between geometrics and organic, or even lexicographic, shapes.

     Kent’s orchestration of her imagery encompasses its possible inversions — the pale aqua ‘V’ against the putty-colored ‘animal head;’ the beady textured serpent crawling across the pale sea-foam ‘R.’

    The all-over quality of this kind of patterning is itself a check against a locked-in ‘read’ of the imagery, notwithstanding the relative legibility of the more Matisse-like papier collé forms (e.g., compote and fruit, dog/chair, necklace, etc.) Claw-like ‘fingers’ grasp a Duchampian ‘bride’ shroud in A slow turning of events; but there is far more than an alchemical exorcism going on. The title alone reflects Kent’s insistence on her own willful play not simply with shape, color, and composition, but with time itself.

  • David Hicks Diane Rosenstein Gallery 

    David Hicks
    Diane Rosenstein Gallery 

    Central Valley ceramicist David Hicks doesn’t have a big footprint in Los Angeles. To see his work, you have to drive out to a hospital in Sylmar: a sun-parched, semi-rustic neighborhood at the northernmost tip of Los Angeles. There, above the lobby welcome desk, once stretched a multitudinous terra cotta thicket (stubby branches and succulent buds, fiddleheads and pinecones), glazed in a blithe, eye-popping palette and configured on thin metal armatures. Imagined as a beacon for a sterile setting, Hicks’ Construction (Bloom Field) (2016) has since been moved to an adjacent building, crammed with desks and hospital gurneys. Visitors today can only glimpse it through a side window, a gesture, perhaps, to the existential anguish of the present moment.

    “Seed,” Hicks’ exhibition of sculpture and drawings at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, is more inward-looking, probing the mimetic properties of organic forms we tend to overlook. Inspired by his drives through Visalia, California (the source of much of our food supply), Hicks turns his observations of large-scale mechanized agriculture into raw, personal reflections on time and sacrifice. This theme suffuses the sumptuous masses that Hicks labels “Offerings”: luxuriant heaps of shoots, tendrils, branches and blossoms piled up to four feet in height and lavished with syrupy glaze. While they are steeped in solemn presence, drawing resemblances to burial mounds, Hicks withholds an explanation. Offerings to whom? For what? Are they signs of thanksgiving or penance?

     

    David Hicks, Clipping (White Bloom) (2020). Photo by Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy Diane Rosenstein Gallery

    The Offerings’ commanding, maximalist presence throws smaller, sparer forms into relief––Hicks calls them “Clippings”––presented, altar-like, on self-hewn tables throughout the gallery. While each Clipping depicts what its title promises—a pine cone, a bulb, a coil of leaves—they are scaled, glazed and abstracted to a degree that they share morphological likenesses with organs. Clipping (Red Vine) (2017) represents a morass of scandent vegetation at the end of its flower, draped extravagantly over a fossilized branch. Doused in red glaze, which bleeds messily onto the bone-colored surfaces, the vines resemble tangled intestines.

    Memento mori come to mind, but not in a traditional sense. Firing clay triggers transformations––it desiccates, it hardens, it becomes impervious to the elements––that mirror the aging process. So too does firing glaze, which often becomes the subject matter. The thick white treacle pooling and dribbling off of a red terracotta dish transforms Clipping (White Bloom) (2020), a simple branch, into a well-worn anointing spoon steeped in ambrosial substance. The crusted pigment on Clipping (Blue Green Clusters) (2020), the result of thick application and multiple firings, armors a vegetal form with calloused rhinoceros skin. These colors and textures are timestamps: diaristic records of hours logged alone in the studio at the expense of other activites. They are reminders of the sacrifices made in exchange for shots at uncovering the essential.