Comic-book artists are sometimes dismissed as just that—common “drawers” as it were rather than fine artists. This recent retrospective of Jack Kirby’s graphic work currently on view at Cal State Northridge’s Mike Curb Gallery sets the record straight and proves that...

Noah Purifoy made it his life long duty to seek art everywhere in everything, and to do so with tremendous poise and discernment. The retrospective Junk Dada on view at LACMA is breathtakingly inventive and, if nothing else, speaks to the unending seductiveness of the...

Deedee Cheriel’s work feels akin to falling headlong into a rendition of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream while drinking a pint of Buffalo Trace Bourbon on a hot New York summer night in Chelsea. Her mostly small paintings of animals reenacting human activities...

Gertrude Stein once famously wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” and Jose Rodolfo Loaiza Ontiveros, whose exhibition "Wonder Pop," consisting of Disney characters and well-known Pop cultural figures drawn in bright colors and recast with gay themes, might respond...

Entering Joseph Holtzman’s recent Hammer Project feels akin to entering a child’s sacred imaginative landscape, one where all the imaginary friends can not only be seen, but also deeply witnessed on a visceral level. Not all these friends are indeed friendly and some,...

"The Slick & The Sticky," a group show co-curated by Vanessa Place, insists adamantly on its own dystopian themes, wherein the works in the exhibition deliberately obfuscate their own suggested meaning. Working off the premise that all language is inherently...

Not that this hasn’t been done before, the theme of “flatness” explored again and again in all its variations, but in its most recent incarnation at David Kordansky Gallery, artists like Tauba Auerbach transform the static spatial plane that is “flatness” into a...

Mark Bradford’s first solo exhibition "Scorched Earth" at the Hammer Museum is a stunner and not in the typical ways one might expect. These paintings, engendered equally by the 1992 LA uprisings as well as the AIDS epidemic, constitute a visceral visual experience...

Ann Chamberlin approaches painting like an alchemist approaches a vile of life-giving succor—with tremendous reverence and passion. The new paintings on view at Lora Schlesinger Gallery mine some of the same archetypal themes she has visited previously. However these...

Ochi Projects, a new gallery on Washington Boulevard. hit a home run this week with its first group show curated by Brian Wills and Lexi Brown. The horizon line has long been a symbol of infinite possibility, and all of the work in the exhibition speaks to this theme...

Michael Deyermond is an artist’s artist, making stuff that makes him happy, and us too, albeit for the fact that some of the sentiments here are darkly appealing and often self-reflexive. This is not art that begs to be loved at the expense of much needed content, but...

Hugo Crosthwaite’s newest exhibition is powerful and evocative, but more importantly, perhaps, it speaks to our human frailties, specifically, the ways in which we process grief and hope. Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s poem Hymn and the recent abduction and murder of...

Travis Collinson continues his investigation into his signature style of spare and oblique personas in his second exhibition at Maloney Fine Art. Utilizing a sparseness of space, form and gesture simultaneously, Collinson manages to compress, through this highly...

 Every year the Dept of Cultural Affairs grants awards to Los Angeles based artists whose work reflects the ideologies and concerns of its residents. This year’s exhibition is particularly provocative with artists like Jeff Colson, Miyoshi Barosh and Alexandra...

There is a stunning archival pigment print in Charlie Rubin’s new exhibition at Kopeikin Gallery titled All Your Dreams Belong To Us. The image, while simple and elegant, is complex in the very best sense of the word. Could it be a tree bleeding real human blood, or a...

Mineo Mizuno explores the hybridized relationship between the elements as expressed in his uniquely compelling understanding of his materials, both film and ceramics.  The unglazed porcelain vessels (atop a raw wood pedestal) in this exhibition do not so much as...

Altered States at Patrick Painter represents yet another collective representation of irrational modes of being where sometimes the simplest gesture is the most oddly satisfying. Comprised of Justin Bower, Martin Kippenberger, Rinus Van De Velde, Valie Export and Mike...

Enrique Martinez Celaya is a visionary in the very best sense of the word. I would even go so far as to say his recent exhibition, “Lone Star” at LA Louver is a fierce evocation of humanity, despite the fact the show is mostly populated with birds, both painted and...