Upon entering Stephen Neidich’s solo show, “five more minutes please,” everything is stock still, until the clattering begins. It immediately becomes clear that one’s movements cause the Venetian blinds—hanging from the ceiling or against the gallery walls—to raise or...
Stephen Neidich
Amy Sherald Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles
Painter Amy Sherald became a household name in 2018 when her portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art. Sherald’s unique approach to studio portraiture and practice of universally rendering Black skin in grisaille (an...
Lucy Bull David Kordansky Gallery
There almost certainly are figures both human and animal, as well as a plenitude of botanical, arboreal, avian and possibly extraterrestrial apparitions inhabiting and defining the landscape-like spaces of Lucy Bull’s paintings. But closer contemplation makes it...
Loosely Stated ROSEGALLERY
With a large grouping of esteemed photographers—Jo Ann Callis, Tania Franco Klein, Kennedi Carter, Graciela Iturbide, Katsumi Watanabe and others— it’s the curator, not the artists, who moderates the conversation. In a world defined by schisms and polarities, and a...
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman Murmurs
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman’s solo exhibition “Sighs and Leers and Crocodile Tears,” at first seems to be a curious series of clichés, but a story begins to unfold—through Silverman’s attention to detail—about the history of power, erasure, hierarchy and otherness that...
Johanna Breiding Ochi Projects
Johanna Breiding’s show of photography and ceramics at Ochi Projects defied singular characterization in favor of an enveloping tsunami of empathic correspondence—a tidal progression of images both intimate yet nothing less than oceanic. The exhibition’s slightly coy...
Tarik Garrett Hunter Shaw Fine Art
Tarik Garrett’s compelling show addresses how the past intersects with the present. This minimal, mixed-media installation brings together appropriated documents, Polaroid photographs, junked wood, metal fragments, a partial tree trunk equipped with speakers and a...
Vonn Sumner and Holly Elander KP Projects
Artists Vonn Sumner and Holly Elander each offer astonishing exhibitions of intensely personal artworks, that coupled with intimacy also present a prescient commentary on current socio-political times. Sumner’s solo show, “Burning Down the House,” features oil...
Pick of the Week: Paco Pomet Richard Heller Gallery
“Beginnings,” the new show from Spanish artist Paco Pomet, is funny. Hard-hitting criticism, I know, but humor can be a rarity in the world of contemporary art. Most art that one could even remotely consider funny is usually of the ironic, intellectual variety, like...
OUTSIDE LA: Remy Jungerman Fridman Gallery, NYC
“Jungerman’s materials and reference points present a postcolonial approach to the minimalist form: he visits visual references the viewer may associate with famed 20th century minimalist painters and reconsiders these forms with his own reference points. His geometric lines refer to grids seen in his childhood printed on Maroon tribal clothing, and in books of Western art that he consumed. The syncopated rhythm of the Agida Drum—a 2.5m long drum played in Maroon tribes’ rituals—are felt in the works, palpable in the rhythmic and fragmented movements of the lines.”
OUTSIDE LA: Tim Simonds Cathouse Proper, New York
Tim Simonds explores the whimsical and political dimensions of pedagogy in his sparse installation of sculptures and drawings at Cathouse Proper. With large trays of bleached-out collard greens on top of semicircular children’s tables, the main room of the gallery...
Pick of the Week: Anna Weyant, Alexander Tovborg, & Asuka Anastacia Ogawa Blum & Poe
Belief – whether you call it religion, spirituality, or anything else – is as vital to our lives as shelter or sustenance. Myth-making is how lessons are passed down, how mysteries are explored, and how home is remembered. These...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Stanley Whitney Matthew Marks Gallery
Stanley Whitney’s first major solo exhibition in Los Angeles, "How Black is That Blue," reads like poetry. Utilizing his consistent style of painting “top to bottom,” Whitney’s colorful square works reveal several paintings within each piece. Favoring the...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Hana Ward Ochi Projects
Ochi Projects’ current exhibition, “an exit from this room and others like it,” features the latest painting and ceramic work of artist Hana Ward. In this show (all works 2021) both objects and paintings reflect on themes of time and isolation; feelings we are all too...
OUTSIDE LA: Katya Grokhovsky Smack Mellon, New York
Katya Grokhovsky is an artist and curator who explores the expectations of the American dream and the lived experiences of immigration to the US. Originally from Ukraine, Grokhovsky founded The Immigrant Artist Biennial, which launched last year despite many...
Pick of the Week: Ana Serrano Bermudez Projects
Our city’s beauty is often overlooked. This is a subject I’ve touched on in the past, and it’s an unfair generalization that Los Angeles is an “ugly” city. Maybe it’s because our city is difficult to walk through, and so you don’t notice the beauty. Maybe it’s only...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Ishi Glinsky Chris Sharp Gallery
Ishi Glinsky’s exhibition explores monuments of survival that honor the sacred practices of his tribe, the Tohono O’odham Nation, native to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Upon entering Chris Sharp Gallery I am instantly subsumed by Glinsky’s monolithically scaled...
OUTSIDE LA: Izzy Barber James Fuentes, New York
Izzy Barber’s exhibition, “Maspeth Moon,” at James Fuentes brings together new plein air paintings that capture daily life in New York. Petite in size (the smallest 4” x 4” and others around 10” x 9”) Barber’s paintings are snapshots of quiet scenes that are at once...