Category: Pick of the Week

Craig Krull Gallery seems larger than usual for the quantity of intriguing work in its current trio of tandem solo shows. Pierre Picot, Stan Edmondson and Lou Beach each work in different mediums but overlap in their surrealistic sensibilities rooted in prior eras. With somber palettes and playful compositions, Picot’s paintings seem indebted to olden European painters including El Greco, de Chirico, Savinio and Dali. He jumbles landscapes and mundane items in strange, whimsical ways, educing from them a subtle bleak creepiness. Beyond a dismal smokestack in the right-hand corner of Untitled (4-16-17) (2017, pictured above), a meandering river transgresses tempestuous gray sky, overturning spatial reason. The black vase pouring into a mysterious hole portrayed in Picot’s Untitled (9-15-18) (2018) appears nearly identical to an actual vessel in Stan Edmondson’s nearby ceramic installation featuring an eclectic assortment of sculptures and paintings. Edmondson’s untitled clay pieces appear as painterly free-form reinterpretations of classical motifs, animals, and ceramic history. The influence of his father, abstract surrealist Leonard Edmondson, is palpable in his primal shapes. Lou Beach also portrays chimera and employs totemic forms in works such as Vortex (2019) and Lucky Bird in Magic Town (2018); but in contrast with Edmondson’s relatively roughhewn aesthetic, his ephemera collages appear so seamless that at first glance, one is liable to mistake them for drawings. Cartoonish faces and vagarious details spring from Beach’s intricate scenes with grotesque, sardonic humor recalling that of Dada and Art Brut.

Craig Krull Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave., Building B-3
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Shows run through Apr. 6

With crafty charm belying provocative content, Lara Schnitger‘s textile collages strike a unique balance between daintiness and mordancy. One of the first pictures you’ll find in her show, “Victory Garden” at Grice Bench, is a portrait titled Judith (all works 2019), which portrays a smartly bedecked woman resting her hands primly on a grimacing severed head, presumably that of Holofernes. This picture’s blocky construction of patterned fabric only enhances its creepy effect. In order to access most of the show, you must pass through White Widow, an eerie spiderweb lattice of stockings stretching from floor to ceiling. Beyond this barrier lies a lair of looming 3D creatures cobbled together of wood, fabric and undergarments. Many of these recall Schnitger’s “Slut-stick” series of sculptures in “Suffragette City,” a feminist performance art parade she has spearheaded in numerous cities over the past few years. In this show, the sculptures seem as faceless, bodiless she-monster puppets about to move at any moment. In pieces such as I Am Evil, sticks act as skeletons for grotesquely overstretched lingerie underneath which no vestige of skin may be found, making a mockery of contradictory notions that shape popular societal conceptions of women. In humorous contrast with the sculptures’ rakish clunkiness, velvet pictures such as Last Night sport trim, elegant silhouettes. Brimming with cheeky connotations, Schnitger’s diverse forms and motley fabrics coalesce into a compellingly complex picture of femininity.

Grice Bench
3423 Casitas Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90039
Show runs through Mar. 31

Jewel-like translucency and vibrant hues set off the disturbing nature of sculptures by Rona Pondick at Zevitas Marcus, where luminous human heads are frozen in resin blocks or attached to freakish creatural bodies. Several pieces, such as Encased Yellow Green (2017-2018) and Magenta Swimming in Yellow (2015-2017), evoke cryonic corpses’ disembodied pates. Marked by anguished stillness, the somber miens are Pondick’s own. She acutely renders facial features, yet the cloudy rectangular solids that base or encase them recall Minimalist sculptures. Perhaps this tension between figuration and abstraction encapsulates a keen mind’s consternation inside an ailing body. Pondick once had worked primarily in stainless steel, but chronic pain necessitated a less taxing medium; she now employs resin, acrylic and modeling compound to striking effect. The artist was diagnosed with cervical spondylotic myelopathy in 2006, a debilitating disease that has affected not only her materials, but also the spirit of her work, whose fantasticality has been honed to a bleak essence. Self-portraits become commentaries on the human condition with all its maladies and existential dread. In Standing Blue (2015-2017, pictured above), a tiny headless anuran body rears on its hind legs as though struggling in vain to find Frankensteinan completeness with a human head, lying across a cobalt pool, that it can’t quite reach. With desolate beauty, such sculptures testify to Pondick’s resoluteness in overcoming obstacles to continue pursuing her artistic vision—a pursuit at which she continues to excel.

Zevitas Marcus Gallery
2754 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Show runs through Mar. 30

David Hockney recycles work from one medium into another, reinventing his own methodologies in the process. His versatility is highlighted in his show titled “Something New in Painting (and Photography) [and even Printing]… Continued,” where landscape paintings, digitally manipulated photographic collages, and portrait drawings play off one another in strange ways at LA Louver. The show’s centerpieces are three large-scale digitally derived pictures, which Hockney terms “photographic drawings,” depicting groups of people idly sitting or standing around as though contemplating art or waiting for lectures to begin inside institutional rooms. These works’ mundane realism contrasts with the fantastic nature of colorful abstract landscape paintings adorning nearby walls. Yet the landscape paintings and photographic drawings have more in common than they initially appear: In both sets of artworks, Hockney employs sweeping compositional layouts marked by subtle perspectival distortions; for instance, the central composition of Viewers Looking at a Ready-made with Skull and Mirrors (pictured above; all works 2018) is remarkably similar to that of Three Vases of Flowers in an Interior. Paintings and photographic drawings converge unambiguously in Pictures at an Exhibition, which features likenesses of the landscapes. Among Hockney’s portrayed exhibition spaces, you become acutely aware of your own position within the actual gallery and begin to feel as though you’re in a mirrored funhouse, a meta-setup from which Hockney might derive yet another artwork. Before departing, don’t miss Grow’d (2019), Alison Saar‘s serene, slightly surreal sculpture in the courtyard upstairs.

LA Louver
45 N. Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
Shows run through Mar. 23

Beverly Pepper‘s renown for large-scale outdoor sculptures makes her lesser-known small works seem particularly fresh and intimate. “New Particles from the Sun” features 25 modestly-sized indoor sculptures, mostly on pedestals, and a larger one in the courtyard at Kayne Griffin Corcoran. With aluminum, brass and steel assuming lively appearances of pliancy, these underscore the skill with which Pepper has manipulated metal since the dawn of her career. Having had no formal training in sculpture, she forged her own education by apprenticing in Italian metal mills—an intrepid undertaking as the only woman working in those factories. Early works in this show were produced while she developed her personal voice shortly after having learned to weld. Marked by experimental flair, pieces from 1952-1965 feature sweeping metal strips forming 3D line drawings midair. In Inner eye (1962), delicate ovals of steel and aluminum interlace as though dancing together in space. A later 1965 series intriguingly incorporates boxy shapes, bright lacquer and torch-lacerated textures. Passage of Night (1965, pictured above) resembles a sword inside a case; red paint and dripping splanchnic blobs piercingly evoke pain, blood and internal organs. Torch (1965) anachronistically resembles a deconstructed desktop computer screen. Several sculptures’ architectural feel presages the more expansive works for which Pepper later has come to be known. Throughout the show, steel appears sliced like bread, curled as ribbon, and ruffled into frothy sea foam, contorting into visual poetry shaped by Pepper’s skilled hands and strong will.

Kayne Griffin Corcoran
1201 South La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Show runs through Mar. 9

One transparent parabolic-lens sculpture by Fred Eversley offers a dynamic experience. Ten offer something closer to awe. Individually, they call forth orbicular celestial bodies; en masse, they encompass a galaxy of evocations. Each of his untitled resin sculptures in “Chromospheres” at David Kordansky maintains a unique identity: one evokes sunrise over the beach, another channels the striated pearlescence of a bowling ball, yet another appears to harbor a spiral nebula, and still another recalls afternoon sun rippling on the ocean’s surface seen from underwater. The artist refers to his works as kinetic sculptures, for on circumambulating each, the color, form, and character change in strange ways. Furthermore, individual sculptures’ dynamic qualities are intensified by the reflections and refractions of the others playing on one another and the architecture of the room. Spied through a blue lens, a doorway becomes the pupil of a giant’s icy eye. As one approaches an orange disk, the appearance of a solar corona gives way to the feeling of looking through lurid glasses at the sun over sea. I could have spent hours meditating on these sculptures that somehow seem so timeless yet contemporary, but was drawn away by a curious odor emanating from 28 Incense Sticks (2018, pictured above), a fragrantly spined loopy steel configuration in “Outdoor Sculpture,” Evan Holloway‘s neighboring show whose five quirkily embellished constituents reward inquisitive viewers with unexpected details and clever existential humor.

David Kordansky Gallery
5130 W. Edgewood Pl.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Shows run through Mar. 2

A mood of musing remembrance pervades “Rearranging My Furniture,” Farnaz Shadravan‘s show presenting sculptural reconfigurations of household items. In Shadravan’s hands, parts of once-utilitarian objects such as chairs and doors become meditative totems of hopefulness. Works from several different series all seem part of her larger personal quest to find peace or meaning within unfamiliar situations. The Iran-born, Bay Area based artist was trained as a Koran manuscript illuminator and currently works as a dentist. In her “Dürer Bathtubs” lined up as solemn monuments in Tag Gallery‘s expansive window, Shadravan used her dental drill to engrave ornate vignettes, after Albrecht Dürer’s “Apocalypse,” into old bathtubs in commemoration of hardships faced by Afghan refugee children she had once met in Tehran. Another body of work features refrigerator doors dotted with symbolic magnets and carved with Christian imagery. A note affixed to one alludes to her looking to Christian religious iconography as a way to reconnect with her own Muslim faith, which she lost after moving to the U.S. Imbued with less literal spirituality than those earlier works, her most interesting series is that for which her show is titled. To cope with sadness at the termination of a 10-year relationship, she began deconstructing, and imaginatively refashioning furnishings she had once shared with her partner. Works such as Common Cross (2017) and Things That Break at Night (no date given, pictured above) strike affecting balances between delicacy and bulkiness, deterioration and decoration. You can almost feel Shadravan finding catharsis in the salvage of household wreckage.

Tag Gallery
5458 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Show runs through Feb. 16

Helen Lundeberg (1908-1999) wrote in 1942 that her aim was “to calculate, and reconsider, every element in a painting with regard to its function in the whole organization.” The renowned Post-Surrealist’s precision of shape, color and composition is amply displayed in “Helen Lundeberg: Interiors” at Louis Stern Fine Arts, which includes 15 scenes she painted between 1943-1980. These enigmatic interiors seem as absorbing as if they had just departed her easel. Spaces appear perplexing in unexpected ways: windows and doorways open into no-man’s-lands of flat luminous color; corners seem to pop forward and backward; walls inexplicably open to reveal peekaboo snatches of scenery. Each scene’s arcaneness gives way to an overall feeling of contemplative serenity. Paradoxically, the portrayed expanse of Inner/Outer Space (1943) seems wider, almost limitless, by virtue of the long narrow painting’s diminutive scale as a purple room at the panel’s far left opens into a pitchy landscape presided over by the full moon that, in turn, leads into desolate mountains at the other end of the painting. Lundeberg’s soft, naturalistic realism in paintings such as this and Enigma of Reality (1955, pictured above) eventually led to compositions of sharply delineated color blocks that share their starkness with hard-edge abstraction while maintaining representational palpability. Despite their unreality, The Mirror (1952-1969) and Studio Interior (1980) radiate the uncanny impression that one could slip inside either painting as though it were magic, like the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and get lost in a vast realm between flat pastel planes.

Louis Stern Fine Arts
9002 Melrose Ave.
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Show runs through Mar. 2