A trio of sepia-toned photographs, displayed at the entrance of the Leila Heller Gallery, documenting four naked men followed by Western soldiers in a rundown village instantly evokes the horrors of Abu Ghraib. The jarring scene—American soldiers humiliating local...
Julia von Eichel’s wall sculptures (all 2014) are oddly unsettling, with innards that seem to strain against their outer skin and an overall configuration suggesting movement or attenuated growth. It’s tempting to see naturally occurring phenomenon like spores,...
At first, Andrew Dadson’s newest exhibition at David Kordansky, “Painting (Organic),” seems to lack cohesion, with medium and mood shifting frequently. There are three very distinct types of works on display: a collection of photographs hung in a grid formation; six...
It seems every traveler, on occasion, suffers a collapse of time and space. Careening down a hotel hallway late at night, carrying a suitcase whose weight amplifies the exhaustion from hours of cramped travel, one's head begins to spin. Doors, walls, and expanses of...
Ann Chamberlin approaches painting like an alchemist approaches a vile of life-giving succor—with tremendous reverence and passion. The new paintings on view at Lora Schlesinger Gallery mine some of the same archetypal themes she has visited previously. However these...
Last week I ventured to the Cooper Design Space in Downtown LA’s fashion district to see the “15 CalArts MFA Show.” It is a large inconspicuous building surrounded by cut-rate fabric stores typically used for designer showcases—a somewhat irregular location for an art...
Ochi Projects, a new gallery on Washington Boulevard. hit a home run this week with its first group show curated by Brian Wills and Lexi Brown. The horizon line has long been a symbol of infinite possibility, and all of the work in the exhibition speaks to this theme...
Michael Deyermond is an artist’s artist, making stuff that makes him happy, and us too, albeit for the fact that some of the sentiments here are darkly appealing and often self-reflexive. This is not art that begs to be loved at the expense of much needed content, but...
Hugo Crosthwaite’s newest exhibition is powerful and evocative, but more importantly, perhaps, it speaks to our human frailties, specifically, the ways in which we process grief and hope. Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s poem Hymn and the recent abduction and murder of...
Travis Collinson continues his investigation into his signature style of spare and oblique personas in his second exhibition at Maloney Fine Art. Utilizing a sparseness of space, form and gesture simultaneously, Collinson manages to compress, through this highly...
Every year the Dept of Cultural Affairs grants awards to Los Angeles based artists whose work reflects the ideologies and concerns of its residents. This year’s exhibition is particularly provocative with artists like Jeff Colson, Miyoshi Barosh and Alexandra...
“Straight from Cuba” at Lois Lambert Gallery, is an unexpectedly compelling exhibition. To subsist as a contemporary artist in present-day Cuba is no small feat. With little to no resources at their disposal in the way of art materials and economic support, and...
The philosophy of the sublime was first manifested in art through 19th century Romantic painters’ vast and awe-inspiring landscapes that emphasized mankind’s diminutiveness in the face of God’s treacherously beautiful creation. It was updated in the mid-20th century...
There is a stunning archival pigment print in Charlie Rubin’s new exhibition at Kopeikin Gallery titled All Your Dreams Belong To Us. The image, while simple and elegant, is complex in the very best sense of the word. Could it be a tree bleeding real human blood, or a...
Mineo Mizuno explores the hybridized relationship between the elements as expressed in his uniquely compelling understanding of his materials, both film and ceramics. The unglazed porcelain vessels (atop a raw wood pedestal) in this exhibition do not so much as...
The Riot Grrrl movement, which emerged in reaction to the male-dominance and sexism that infused West Coast punk scenes in the 1990s, spawned a subcultural movement in art, publishing, and performance. Even in the resolutely anti-establishment punk rock scene, many...
Eric Wesley loves to kid around and unbalance the viewer. In this survey or rearrangement and reworking of objects from his production dating back a decade, he checks in with a wide variety of works distributed in a clock pattern throughout the spacious warehouse...
Our clothes are, as Virginia Woolf reminds us, more than “vain trifles” serving “to merely keep us warm.” Instead, as Woolf asserts, “They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.” Art that turns our attention to our clothes illuminates how we see each...
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