To see the work of Francisco de Goya in present-day Los Angeles is disturbingly pertinent, echoing the turbulent anxieties of our time with a wickedly sadistic smile. “Saw It: Francisco de Goya, Printmaker” at the Norton Simon Museum marks the first comprehensive...
For naïve or semi-initiated Los Angeles art-goers such as myself, a visit to “Soundings,” Sea View’s summer exhibition, might elicit two questions. Who is Bruce Richards? And why does the show’s concurrence with the Ed Ruscha retrospective at the Los Angeles County...
In 1987, Cindy Sherman interviewed Gretchen Bender for BOMB Magazine, discussing the influence of her work on mass media. Bender denied the relationship between the two and instead described media as a ‘cannibalistic river without a conscience,’ invoking the image of...
One of the most durable traditions in Modernism, organic form sculpture emerged in the first part of the 20th century in the work of Constantine Brancusi, Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti and others. Particularly associated with Surrealism, the organic form was a kind of...
When I stepped into Jim Isermann’s spectacular show “Wrapture” presented by the Miles McEnery Gallery and the Pacific Design Center, my first thought was, “It’s 1967 again,” — and I don’t mean in a self-conscious, retro-chic way. Isermann’s super-saturated bright...
“Before You Now” features work by 56 artists who employ photography, prints, drawings, installations and video to depict themselves, their identities and, especially, their artistic perspectives. Rather than creating traditional self-portraits, these symbolic,...
Karla Diaz has been drawing since she was a child. The title of her current exhibition, “Wait 'til Your Mother Gets Home,” is something her aunt would say to her when she would draw on the walls of the family home. Consisting of 37 paintings and works on paper that,...
Suzan Woodruff’s new body of ethereal, abstract paintings and undulating wall sculptures came at a price—one as much physical as psychological. Diagnosed with virulent cancer amid a national pandemic, she endured multiple surgeries and radiological treatments, which...
At Night Gallery’s newly debuted kunsthalle-inspired space, Sidecar, "What Will You Give?" features numerous large-scale paintings by up-and-coming artists Tidawhitney Lek and Veronica Fernandez. Lek and Fernandez present pieces of work that showcase both the...
“Groove,” an exhibition of approximately 100 intaglio prints currently on view at the Hammer Museum, has something for everyone, and a bit of everything (save for works in other media), but it will appeal most to those with an unrestricted appetite for aesthetic...
In the arresting painting On Your Side (2024), a person and their cat canoodle in twinned profiles that make it seem like they share an eye—and that’s not even the strangest thing about it. The main figure, shirtless and with glowing minty-pistachio skin, has glossy,...
The point of departure for Pat Steir's exhibition “Painted Rain” at Hauser & Wirth is an exploration of blue, a color omnipresent in Los Angeles. When first visiting the city over fifty years ago to teach at CalArts, Steir was struck by the quality of light and...
The precarious balance of society and nature, and man’s place within the magnetism of both is the central theme of Stephen Seemayer’s “Dark Side of Paradise” at Bermudez Projects. The collection of 26 paintings and nine studies are an ode to the shadow self and the...
The Marilyn Nance exhibition at Roberts Projects beautifully demonstrates the phenomenon known as six degrees of separation—the idea that all people are six or fewer connections away from each other. Nance was 21 when she was chosen to be the United States’ official...
Carolyn Castaño's “Otros Seres” (Other Beings) exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery is an exhilarating eyeful of stealth environmental disaster. Castaño, of Colombian-American heritage, is well-known for her early extravagant and provocative Garden Heads...
Feathers, fur, gills, horns, tails (spiked and scaled), claws, talons, hooves, and forked tongues are some of the characteristics that adorn Evangeline AdaLioryn's strange amalgamations. The locust of the exhibition, "Her Labyrinth," presents an assemblage of...
Now known as the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing , written by James Weldon Johnson and composed by his younger brother, J. Rosamond Johnson iterates the definition of resilience by stating: Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught...
Blood is unsightly in the flesh. Witnessing a bleeding person, one might turn away—or worse, be overcome with nausea and faint. For a substance essential to our functioning, to life itself, its image provokes extreme distress. If we were to trust our physiological...
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