With June welcoming gay pride across the country, what better time to display and celebrate the range of LGBTQ, here called “queer,” arts in one of the largest cities in the U.S., Los Angeles. “Queer Biennial II: Yooth: Loss and Found”—whose title plays on the inventiveness and unruliness of youth (here, “yooth”), and how this yooth is engaged with loss (of an entire generation, aesthetics and...
On different occasions I have been told that I am “cold,” “unemotional,” “apathetic” and other adjectives for not giving a shit. I reason that I was born with a hole in my heart or in my limbic system, remedying outbreaks of rogue feelings alone in the privacy of a tear-drenched, blistering hot shower. It turns out it is the stories of strangers—sometimes twisted and kinky, always hurt and...
Artist Ai Weiwei takes himself down a notch before you can with the title of his Haines Gallery show, “Overrated.” The works are largely reiterations or extensions of previous work for which he is already world famous; works in which he subverts the authority of history and of the power establishment. To the left as you enter the newly reconfigured gallery hang the 40 photographs from his...
One of Los Angeles–based artist Audrey Wollen’s Instagram posts features an undated 1890s painting in which a nude woman reclines, examining herself in a mirror she is holding up to her face. Red beads are wrapped around the woman’s neck and ankle, bringing to mind Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (“A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.”). Wollen...
“I’ve been going the wrong way for a long time … it’s sort of a reverse commute.” This is said by Todd Gray at the start of his 2010 performance, Caliban in the Mirror. This seemingly autobiographical, storytelling piece has Gray on stage with a few props—a camera, a large afro wig, a blackboard, a drum set—verbally leading the audience through his discovery of the right way to go with his...
Trinidadian artist Miles Regis searches for hope and meaning in the ugly and chaotic. An astute social commentator drawing from his experience as a Black man who emigrated to America 31 years ago, Regis imbues each canvas with a rich visual narrative dealing with...
Karla Knight is sending us a message. With maps, symbols and UFOs, there are mysteries in every piece. Four decades worth of paintings, tapestries and drawings are on view in Knight’s first institutional solo show, “Navigator,” at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum...
“Let Me Talk” at The Brand Art Center has a lot to say. Curated by artists Ada Pullini Brown and Jill Sykes, the group exhibition’s inspiration comes from a fierce quote by Toni Morrison, stating “In times of dread, artists must never remain silent.” This varied body...
Survival is dependent on adaptability. But at what point will humans be willing (or forced) to become adaptable? Josh Kline's 16mm short film, Adaptation (2019–22), presents a future shaped by human destruction. New York City has become submerged by seawater due to...
Enlivened by the energy of Frieze Week LA, I went to The KNOW Contemporary to view curators Knowledge Bennett and Charles Moore’s group exhibition, “BLACK.” To my surprise, I’d stumbled into the installation’s culminating event, a panel discussion with its artists and...