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...
Although it was once relatively straightforward, the relationship between what we refer to as “Nature” and its inverted mirror-image “Culture” has become complicated and problematic. Indeed, the “default position” in the argument as to their reciprocal relationship is...
It is always a thrill to see the Annual City of LA (COLA) exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG). The exhibition is a celebration of a year-long unrestricted fellowship awarded by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to a small group of...
The aesthetics and content of we still here, there (2018), Lauren Halsey’s current installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, are deeply rooted in Afrofuturism—a cultural philosophy that merges magical realism, science fiction and technoculture to...
Eileen Cowin’s work has been loosely categorized as mise-en-scène photography. But overall it is far more self-reflexive, deeply deconstructed and concerned with the relations of language to the apprehension and (re-)construction of reality. More recent work has...
A vague yet piercing look of confrontational horror animates the face of a woman, zaftig and underdressed, with piercing blue eyes, an exaggerated frown, and the upswept hair and ruddy complexion of a latter-day Vermeer milkmaid. Because of art history, and especially...
What does it mean for the life of an artwork when it can be experienced in dramatically different contexts, as a constellation rather than a point on a map? What happens when the legibility of a work is radically challenged by a shift in viewing conditions; do those...
There’s a fabulous tabula-rasa quality present in “The Shape of Cloth.” Leveraging her experience as a masterful furniture designer, Irish-expat Mary Little presents eight existing unbleached canvas sculptures and a single site-specific piece for her exhibition at...
The intimate scale of John O’Reilly’s photomontages belies the broadly ranging ambition and scope of his concerns. The 40-year survey of his work at Zevitas Marcus reveals a consistency of approach spanning the entirety of O’Reilly’s production. The artist, whose work...
Windows often appear in art, sometimes as framing devices, sometimes as apertures to other worlds. In her new photographic series “The In Between,” Alexandra Hedison has come upon a way to do both, using ready-made vignettes. While exploring the streets of Paris, a...
“Dark Landscapes for a White House,” Deborah Oropallo’s solo exhibition at Catharine Clark, presents a moody, dysfunctional picture of contemporary society in nine large-scale works in photomontage, pigment print, and paint on paper, complemented by a quartet of...
Two short films in “Solar Rhythms” at Tanya Bonakdar open Tomás Saraceno‘s proposal for thermodynamic collaboration and remaking human relationships to the Earth. The first, taken during Saraceno’s ambitious, record-setting flight in White Sands, New Mexico with his...
Promise of the past rudely collides with dread of the future in Alexa Gilweit's nostalgic Americana scenes viewed through dystopic lenses. Satirically titled "Big Winners," Gilweit's show at AM Gallery consists of paintings inspired by mid-century ads depicting...