Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) is popularly epitomized by her monumental masterwork The Rose (1958-66), whose counterpart, The Jewel (1959), is on permanent display at LACMA. It's rather misleading, for her diverse oeuvre encompasses far more than just those heftily textured...
Three abstract painters converge like an artistic Venn diagram in "Intersecting at the Edge" at the Claremont Museum of Art, where paintings by the late Karl Benjamin, a principal figure of the California Hard-edge painting movement, are displayed alongside...
Rosha Yaghmai’s installation in a sideroom of its own, Slide Samples (Lures, Myths), is immediately visually striking. With the soft low light, the room is quiet with abstract shapes cast from a slide projection filling all the walls. As your eyes adjust to the...
Aftermath of Puerto Rico flooding looms large in the backgrounds of Jonny Negron's psychically charged scenes. Indoors and outdoors, water is everywhere. Resembling graphic novel or zine illustrations, Negron's eleven gouache-on-paper paintings in "A Small Map of...
The practice of selling art presumes severability. To sell a work from the white walls of a studio or gallery promises a degree of independence: this piece will appeal in another room, at another time. In this way a gallery is an anti-ecology. Its elements do not...
Michael Queenland’s installation in Made in L.A. 2018 at the Hammer Museum conjures up images of a post-apocalyptic future, where humans have gathered up their last resources— boxes and boxes of cereal—and rationed them for their imminent escape to outer space....
Watch out! Don't tread on the dead rats; they're part of the show. "Macrosolutions to Megaproblems" is a small but captivating assortment of quirky pieces by Sam Davis and Josh Mannis at M+B. At first, you might be so distracted by Mannis' attention-grabbing paintings...
Wobbly hot pink letters pasted above the threshold of the interior gallery of Walter Maciel spell "Short Stories," the title of Greg Mocilnikar's exhibition. Appearing more like a literary heading than the title of an art exhibition, this seemingly minor gesture sets...
When I walked into OURCHETYPES (2018), an installation by Jade Gordon and Megan Whitmarsh at the Hammer Museum’s biennial exhibition “Made in L.A.,” I felt as though I had entered a bubble. The soft purple carpeted floors, the ambient voices emanating from the video...
Just as sordid episodes leak bit by bit from grand American narratives, a morbid sense of truculence stealthily emerges from Joshua Hagler's bright palette and superficially quaint old-time imagery. His show "The River Lethe" at the Brand Library encompasses two...
Across a series of ethereal vignettes in Sophie von Hellermann’s new series, the petri dish operates as both a quirky formal motif and a sophisticated allegorical framework. Each of the mostly large-scale paintings (all acrylic on canvas, all 2018), display a picture...
Contorting harlequins bow and sprawl over pastel chairs, rugs, walls and potted houseplants in Sara Berman's paintings. Are these mysteriously leotarded people lost in reverie, engaged in awkward stretching exercises, or merely lolling indolently? It's impossible to...
Imagining an art object made entirely without thought and therefore completely physical is a fascinating exercise. On the other hand, trying to imagine as art something that was entirely wrought by thought without a physical trace (and therefore practice) is equally...
Many conceptual artists employ sign painting techniques, but few execute such craftsmanship on their own. That's partly what renders Norm Laich so intriguing. Overlapping shows at ICA LA and AWHRHWAR complement one another to provide insight into Laich's work as...
Fairies, pixies, anthropomorphic animals, porn actors, newspaper ads, strange symbols, beings from outer space, and leering mystics inhabit colorful, dissolute settings in mostly small-scale works on paper and canvas. These mixed media paintings and drawings by E’wao...
Just inside the house comprising the Women's Center for Creative Work is a cozy den that, except for its moody lighting and nostalgic decor, seems to fit right into its residential setting. Though appearing to have long existed in its current furnished state, this...
"Spotlight—Selections from Kehinde Wiley’s The World Stage: Israel" is small, but splendid. The exhibit attracts through its display of exuberant colors, masterful artistic skill, and political relevance. It consists of two large-scale paintings from Wiley’s “World...
However ordinary an entity may seem, Torbjørn Rødland will find a way to pose it, light it and accent it so as to produce, as if by alchemy, an uncanny photo that gradually unhinges you the more you gaze. See, for instance, Voodoo Shoe (2017, pictured above), which...
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