Category: Publisher’s Eye

Featuring two of Kelly Wall’s large, impressive stained-glass sculptures—the first a fusion of two reclining beach chairs and the second an awning—this show becomes an experience with light through the artist’s medium. With “Star” placed across the face of the awning, the word is echoed on the wall in a light yellow, changing throughout the day and evening. Standing under the sculpture, visitors can read both poetic and humorous phrases written into the glass on its inside, such as “just me and my shadow,” “heavy window pain,” and “burnt out,” reminiscent of the scrawled notes on the bottom of a student’s desk, as if the artist etched these phrases while tired during the creation of this labor-intensive work. At first glance, the sculpture of conjoined mass-produced chairs doesn’t look like glass and is somewhat surreal, a testament to the artist’s skill and craft.

New Low
705 South Rampart
Los Angeles, CA 90057

Emanating electric forces almost like lightning, the speckled glowing figures in Didier William’s paintings are studies of both the physical and spiritual body interacting in different environments; they hoist each other up by a stream in the woods, plunge into water, both floating and sinking, and hover over a ground of glowing faces in a cave. The textured cloudlike forms, which William achieved through combining wood carving, paint and ink, are almost psychedelic in nature, both fleshy and ghostly. Several paintings are more narrative, like dreams or memories: in one work, a body topples over the hood of a Honda with a turquoise beam of light wrapping around the accident, a smaller shadow looming behind the car. Up close, the tactile, intricate quality of William’s works add movement to his scenes, and the overall effect is an alluring inaugural exhibition for the gallery’s new LA space.

James Fuentes
5015 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038

Disorienting and mysterious, the stunning works of Tania Franco Klein—both her photographs and her exhibition design—are studies in tension, space and texture. Her photographs of female subjects in mostly domestic settings are suspenseful and cinematic: a woman walks away from a stove with a pan on fire, another sits in a bathtub of water wearing a bra and skirt, about to poke her eye with a metal fork. Alluding to the feeling of being trapped in the home, these photos touch on loneliness and self-destruction while looking at the environments in a new way (in some of them, it’s hard to tell where the photo was taken), and the gallery is similarly transformed. Golden streamers cover several of the walls, highlighting the warmth in many of her images, while the photos vary in size and placement, some overlapping or ascending the walls. The overall effect is moving, both beautiful and uncomfortable, slightly surreal, making the familiar strange.

Tania Franco Klein: “Break in Case of Emergency (Flies, Forks, and Fires)”
ROSEGALLERY
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, B-7, Santa Monica, CA 90404
On view through June 3, 2023

Featuring paintings and sculptures by 10 artists, this show creates a dreamlike atmosphere with the fluidity, delicateness and color palette of the works—the centerpiece is Se Oh’s white porcelain fountain, surrounded by a rug of rocks arranged on the gallery’s concrete floor. Bringing movement into the space, the water’s cycle alludes to the complexities of this earth’s system while also creating an ethereal image. The works interact with each other, some rooted in fantasy or abstraction and others grounded in reality; Michael Norton’s small circular egg-tempera paintings are like intimate portals into another world, while Hella Chitsazan’s dark, hazy paintings portray haunting domestic scenes. Perhaps most similar to the monster of the show’s name, or even the gallery’s name, is Nathaniel Kyung Smith’s portly ceramic sculpture, a mythological hooved figure with rippling limbs standing guard of the show’s reverie.

CHIMERA
la BEAST Gallery
831 Cypress Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90065
On view through June 10, 2023

A native Angeleno, Francisco Palomares captures his version of the city through his paintings of fruit vendors and street views of bright storefronts (such as Merry’s Flowers LLC and Botanica del Indio), adding personal allusions to his childhood through his still lifes. A tribute to his mother, who cleaned houses professionally during Palomares’ childhood, one still life shows brooms with pink bristles and a mop nestled in a vase next to peonies, a rubber glove and sponge to the side, framed in gold. An object from a past performance, a modified fruit cart in the back of the gallery space holds more still lifes—while everything was closed due to the pandemic, the artist wheeled the cart around the streets of LA, making and selling small oil paintings to pedestrians. With the words “Palomares Art Gallery” emblazoned on his cart, Palomares evaluates and redefines the accessibility to art and the gallery space in his work, pulling from both historical painting and scenes from the city.

On view through May 6, 2023
Bermudez Projects
1225 Cypress Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90065

Including videos, computer-generated drawings, screenprints, sculptures and textiles (among many other works), this wide-ranging exhibition presents new ways of thinking about the human relationship with computers by looking at the origins of the computer and digital production. These works from more than 40 years ago map, predict and experiment with the possibilities of the digital age, on view during a time of many heated, topical discussions about the ethics of artificial intelligence and its use in artmaking. Here, the engaging wall texts explaining the artistic processes are more helpful than usual; for example, the accompanying label to Beryl Korot’s Babel 1 and 2 details that the artist wove the fabric by hand and painted an invented, grid-based alphabet to translate the story of the Tower of Babel. Whether handmade, digitally derived, or both, the exquisite, carefully curated works in this show respond to the technological advances of their time with new modes of thought and artistic practice.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Donning big pinstripe suits, ties, hoop earrings and purple velvet boots, the cool, striking women in Coady Brown’s paintings cinematically glow in nightlife and domestic scenes; the artist plays with colored light, texture and proportion, the long limbs and strong hands of the subjects engulfing the canvases. While several still lifes of flower arrangements and handbags (adorned with rhinestone eyes and tears) allude to traditional symbols of femininity, the bold figures—some more androgynous than others—embody its fabulously wide range. With characters that will remind you of both Grace Jones and Weimar-era portraits, Brown has exquisitely depicted women who unabashedly take up space.

Shulamit Nazarian
616 N. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

With weighty shadows and crisp lines, Vardanyan’s large-scale paintings of groups of young students capture the tension between the individual and community—aside from a couple of whispering girls, the teenagers don’t interact with each other, instead staring down at their phones, listening to music, or slouching over on a couch in a dissociative state. The most recognizable details are the classmates’ sneakers and loafers, most of them wearing big brands, emphasizing the influence and social importance of global companies. While the paintings create a sense of the current state of younger generations, the addition of Armenian rugs on the floor allude to a familial past, asking how our identities are based on where we come from and what we wear, listen to, and consume.

Lowell Ryan Projects
4619 W. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016