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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
2025
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MOUNTAIN AS METHOD A Look Inside the Mountain School of Arts, LA's Most Mysterious Art Institution
I missed the party. A party that promised nothing less than to reveal the nature of reality. I wanted to go, but the promised revelation of full reality was curtailed by immediate financial reality—I had to go to a wedding out of town the night before and couldn’t...
RECONTAMINATION
LA-based photographer Gerd Ludwig has been recording the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster for the last two decades. Here, Artillery presents a selection of Ludwig’s most recent images, focusing on the ghost town of Pripyat. The near-classically surreal...
ARTIST TAKEOVER: PETER TOMKA
DUELLING REVIEWS: BRUCE NAUMAN at LACMA
AMONG THE THANATOIDS
He owns a mobile home he drives from place to place, crashing where he can for as long as he can, depending on the language in the local zoning ordinances. He works remote contract data entry jobs on a laptop, always connected to free public WiFi, and accepts all...
REVIEWS
YUVAL PUDIK at NOON Projects
Men in nice suits do not often crawl around on their hands and knees; there’s too great a risk of their shoes getting scuffed, their knees wearing through, or, God forbid, their seams splitting right along their backside. But brave men in suits defied the norms on...
NANCY BUCHANAN The Brick
Desire can make you sick, or it can make you try. Los Angeles-based artist Nancy Buchanan, working steadily since the 1970s, has consistently chosen the latter. Hair Room (1973/2025), a closet-sized chamber where strings of hair caress the top of your head as you walk...
ADAM ALESSI at Hoffman Donahue
“fullmoon” is a bit of a homecoming for Adam Alessi. The artist has been averaging around one solo show a year since his sudden art world ascent about five or six years ago, but with the last two having taken place in Italy and New York, Los Angeles has rarely seen...
FLORIAN KREWER Michael Werner
There’s an easy attractiveness to Florian Krewer’s paintings that obscures the complex formations of desire within them. At times they seem stripped of everything but their earnestness, but then at others, they are scattered with bold and reckless impulses. There is...
IT SMELLS LIKE GIRL at Jeffrey Deitch
“It Smells Like Girl,” at Jeffrey Deitch, in conjunction with Company Gallery, shares its title with a Tala Madani painting depicting a suspiciously phallic object, a lone actor against a cloudless blue sky. Stark and funny, the phallus is the main character, but its...
JASMINE JOHNSON at New Theater Hollywood
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Thus begins the most (and perhaps only) captivating scene from Jasmine Johnson’s film PCH & Heroin, which premiered recently alongside her film Tweakernam at New Theater Hollywood. The line, from...
MARINA WEINER at The Hermitage
In a backyard in Glendale, Marina Weiner’s solo exhibition, “Stripe Machine,” cleverly redefines the term “public art.” The art is not shown in public; the gallery, Hermitage Los Angeles, is a small, beautifully built shed behind a private home. Rather, Weiner’s...
AMERICAN ARTIST at California African American Museum
In a small gallery of the California African American Museum, a wooden table hosting just short of two dozen drawings and a life-size sculptural replica of a chicken coop invoke a perplexing story about institutional partnerships in the contemporary arts. In “Shaper...
DEPTS
IN SEARCH OF A CITY
“Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.” —Dorothy Parker I like to go to parties. If you invite me, I’ll come. I never plan to stay long (“I’m just going to make an appearance,” I tell myself), but once I arrive, I end up having a great time and linger until...
COLLECTING THOUGHTS (print exclusive) Alexis Borges
Why do you collect art? Because I can’t not. Art keeps me awake, thinking, and alive. It’s a rush for me. The emotions it evokes for me are some of the most visceral feelings I have experienced. When a piece stirs something in me, curiosity, joy, or even discomfort,...
DINNER AND A SHOW Fernberger and Cafe Telegrama
Dinner and a Show offers vehicle-bound and spatially-perplexed Angelenos the plan for a complete night out in LA. I go see an exhibition and tell you where to eat within walking distance of the venue, offering a few thoughts on the show and even more on the...
AN ARTIST ANSWERS QUESTIONS Mark Mothersbaugh
Describe yourself as an artist. I find it interesting to capture fragments of contemporary life on planet Earth and document them through sound, vision, and movement. Top 3 songs? “Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones; “Satisfaction” by Devo; “Satisfaction” by Otis...
ART DAMAGED The Higher the Art, The Closer to GOD
STAYING SANE(ish) WITH DR. TRAINWRECK — (print exclusive) Dear Dr. Trainwreck
Dear Dr. Trainwreck, I have a friend with a few mental health diagnoses confirmed by doctors. She has many symptoms, including “rejection sensitive dysphoria”—meaning (as I understand it) she has a hard time accepting any criticism and overreacts to it. I like my...
STAYING SANE(ish) WITH DR. TRAINWRECK — (print exclusive) Remember the Plan?
In no way am I looking forward to writing this particular piece. Truth? I am a little bit afraid to do it at all. Not that the previous columns have been chock full of levity and good times, but this one might piss some people off. Because it is time. We are here. We...
ROLL CALL
GALLERY DOGS
LUDOLOGY
lu·dol·o·gy /l(j)uˈdɑlədʒi/ n A field of cultural studies that examines games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures that surround them. It is also known as game studies or gaming theory. Have you read about art that “investigates transcultural...