It’s hard to pin down joyfulness. It’s a transient emotion that is readily batted away by the complexities and pains of everyday life. One can almost forget what it feels like. Luckily, one of the crucial functions of art is to remind us all that joy does exist. This...
It’s not that difficult to be contemporary. Be it through art, or writing, or simply conversation, we’re almost always discussing what’s right in front of us. It’s another thing all together to create something which takes on an entirely new meaning decades after...
The two shows currently on view at the Night Gallery – Wanda Koop’s “Heartbeat Bots” and Michelle Rawlings’ “In the Garden” – represent opposite ends of the spectrum of contemporary art. The larger show, “Heartbeat Bots,” introduces us to a fantastically vibrant and...
There are many stories that we have told ourselves in order to make our world make sense. These modern myths range from Columbus’ “discovery” of this continent to the very idea of the American Dream. These stories are taught to us from birth, intrinsically attached to...
I’ve always had a deep love for art that dripped with symbolism. Art that encodes stories within their frame or form, all while being aesthetically appealing, draws you into a dialogue with the artist and your fellow viewer. It’s a bit like an inside joke; if you...
You never really know which exhibition is going to make you cry. I certainly didn’t expect it to happen at Heather Day’s “Ricochet” at the Diane Rosenstein Gallery. None of the work was particularly sad and I actually had low expectations based on what I saw online. I...
It is easier than it has ever been to feel distant, from one another and from the world at large. I was seeking to traverse that distance when I visited the Charlie James Gallery, and I found the path through Duke Riley’s new works in "Far Away." In Riley’s glittering...
Exiting the 110 degree heat at the end of a brutal Los Angeles summer and entering into Matter Studio Gallery to view Brian Atchley’s Being Matter, one name immediately jumped to mind: Robert Mapplethorpe. And for those who visit this show who are familiar with...
Rina Banerjee's assemblages are fantastical potpourris of color, texture and cultural references. The title of her 20-year retrospective, "Make Me a Summary of the World," encapsulates her ambition of laying bare the fluid interdependency of ostensibly discrete...
"Los Angeles is a city without a past," urban geographer Michael Dear once declared, referring to the city's penchant for effacing its own history. Yet an enthralling exhibition at the Hilbert Museum attests that LA does, indeed, have a past, one recorded in vibrant...
Fragmentary castoffs and debris from the LA River texturize Jennifer West's current show, "Future Forgetting," whose title was inspired by Norman Klein's 1997 book The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, a treatise on how Los Angeles...
In life (1922-1995), Cameron's art was often overshadowed by her colorful bohemian persona as occultist and wife of Jack Parsons. But one need know nothing about her to appreciate her drawings and paintings, each of which exudes an intense bewitching presence. Some of...
Nicolas Party's imaginary world contains no wilderness, only bright graphic artifice based loosely on nature and historical art. In his depopulated landscapes such as Trees (all works 2020), tree trunks and branches are smooth cylinders whose leaves fall like confetti...
The economy is crashing; coronavirus and panic are spreading like wildfires; and political lines are being drawn in shifting sands. What better time to enjoy the near-apocalyptic visions of Lisa Adams and Kelly McLane? "Unreality," their first joint show, arrives at...
Evoking life's inconstancy, little is certain in Gracie DeVito's paintings, which seem to shift in the blink of an eye from abstraction to representation and back again. Even the edges of her shaped canvases seem to sway, slump, wiggle and distend as though struggling...
Farrah Karapetian's current show, "The Photograph is Always Now," is a touching rumination on the loss of her father, who died of cancer last year. Furthering her ongoing exploration of photography's potential for semi-fictionally recasting bygones into the present,...
Entering Nonaka-Hill feels like stepping outdoors into a Japanese rock garden. Plant matter and sculptures populate a white-pebble substrate. Evoking sky or water, deep blue walls contribute to a sensation of tranquility. The parking lot outside seems a world away....
"Photography is dead," Christopher Russell declares in the statement for his current show, arguing that with the ease and popularity of digital manipulation, "there is no longer a belief that the captured image is anything more than a record of personalized fictions."...
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