Trying to communicate the plot of Matthew Barney’s recent, nearly six-hour opera, River of Fundament, makes me feel like the SNL character Stefon ...“The movie has everything: Fran Lebowitz, gold-leafed poop, Egyptian gods, Elaine Stritch, classic cars, Maggie Gyllenhaal, a baby bird birthed from a woman’s vagina, Paul Giamatti, two pregnant women playing with an oversized feces dildo... ” The...
Step off the Metro line at Crenshaw and Martin Luther King in 2019, and the first thing you’ll be greeted by is the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, a gray monolith of Macy’s, Sears and Wal-Mart. But look further south down Crenshaw, and you’ll notice an afro rising like a mushroom cloud above the Krispy Kreme bags and Jack-in-the-Box cups.“I needed to transform the energy,” the muralist’s author,...
The opening of NeueHouse Hollywood on the West Coast—their second location—would warrant our attention regardless of any new piece of art attached to it. After all, since its first location opened in Manhattan in 2013, NeueHouse has been a hub for celebrities, artists, and creative types to mingle, brainstorm and collaborate. Expensive and exclusive, it is a marker of the city’s preeminence in...
The term, “mindful awareness,” is a buzz phrase in current therapeutic and meditation circles (and, as I discovered a year or so ago, the institutional art world—or at least the Hammer Museum, by way of its alliance with UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center). But a look back at the teaching practice and art of Corita Kent (1918–1986) almost makes you wonder if she invented it. Given what we...
More than any other MFA programs in Southern California—there are in excess of a dozen—CalArts and UCLA have long been associated with art super-stardom. Whether this perception is accurate or a mere distillation of selective anecdotes, it bolsters the mythology of getting into the right school as a launching pad to a prestigious commercial gallery. Through this looking glass, the notion of a...
After visiting five major art fairs and too many events and special exhibitions to keep track of, it’s safe to say this was an eventful and surprisingly normal Miami Art Week. Like in previous years, the week provided a venue to reconnect with friends and colleagues,...
Betzi Stein celebrates nothing short of love in her solo exhibition now at TAG Gallery, “Art World Friends and Strangers.” Creating brilliantly colorful figurative representations of members of the Los Angeles art community, Stein offers everything from a glowing...
Since moving out of my hometown, I have amassed a small trove of Polaroid photos documenting the clutter in all my living spaces. I’d always liked the idea of keeping pocket-sized time capsules of the things I used to own and person I used to be in those places....
Football is considered the greatest American pastime by many of its fans. It is played in intense heat, rain or snow, with diehard followers who prioritize the game above many aspects of normal life. In his exhibition Fumbly Punts, Rob Thom humorously critiques...
Few grasp the power of language to be visually enthralling while expanding our consciousnesses as well as Lindsay August-Salazar, whose solo show at Lowell Ryan Projects, “There’s No Place Like No Place” brings these questions to the forefront. Employing vibrant color...