Articles

Publication in the Age of Negation, Part IV
Wasted Words

One sends out this precious, all too precious, closely guarded work to complete strangers: they might initially take an interest, but after being presented with the entire manuscript, they can’t be bothered to get back to you at all, not even with a brief cordial rejection note. It makes one doubt the quality of the work. I started to re-read the work that has been the cause of all this...

Beautyful Migrations
The Diaspora According to Njideka Akunyili Crosby

by Annabel Keenan

Njideka Akunyili Crosby is having quite the year. Her figurative paintings are on the walls of esteemed museums and institutions across the country, often featuring portraits of herself, friends and family. Akunyili Crosby’s unique style consists of painted, drawn and collaged elements that she blends with a distinctive photo-transfer technique. She uses imagery sourced from magazines, catalogs...

Racial Reckoning
Mark Steven Greenfield Illuminates the Black Experience

by Clayton Campbell

In 2020, Mark Steven Greenfield unveiled a new body of work, “Black Madonna,” followed by “HALO” in 2022, both at the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica. Gallery owner William Turner told me in an email that the “Black Madonna” show was a natural progression of Greenfield’s career of investigations into race and racial identity. “It was a sensation when we opened it in the fall of 2020,”...

Let There Be Light
Daniel Hawkins’ Desert Lighthouse Turns Five

by Doug Harvey

“It looks like the unlicensed pot farms have ceased operations.” Daniel Hawkins is surveying the Mojave Desert landscape surrounding the hill on which he built a fully functioning 50-foot solar-powered lighthouse in 2017. Below us, an elaborate compound of white tents has begun to disintegrate. “There’s another over that hill, but it’s gone too. Maybe the sheriff came by.” It’s a relief on...

Layering Subjectivity
Q&A with Zoe Walsh

by Olivia Fishman

Zoe Walsh is a Los Angeles–based painter originally from Washington D.C. They received their BA from Occidental College and Masters from Yale University. Represented by M+B Gallery, Walsh has exhibited their work in group shows around the world. In 2019, they were nominated for the prestigious Emerging Artist Grant from Rema Hort Mann Foundation and were the Al Held Foundation Affiliated Fellow...

CHEECH MARIN’S NEXT MOVE
An Explosion of Chicano Art in Riverside

by William Moreno

How apt that the new Cheech Marin Museum for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California should open in a repurposed public library. Libraries are historically accessible spaces for learning and intellectual research. Museums, on the other hand, still struggle to make themselves approachable—not to mention equitable. Not so with The Cheech, as it’s affectionately known. “I first learned...

FALL 2022 PREVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

by Artillery Staff

Get ready for the big 2022 Fall art season. This is traditionally the biggest show of any other time in the art world where most galleries put their best foot forward with their September and October exhibitions. We’ve selected a few highlights coming this Fall in Southern California. The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA Judith F. Baca: World Wall September 9, 2022–February 19,...

Tara Thomas ( 1966 –2022)
Chef to the LA Arts Dies

by Gordy Grundy and Tulsa Kinney

Artillery is sad to report that Los Angeles Chef Tara Thomas passed away on August 11, 2022. Tara was an enthusiastic supporter and early adopter of the Los Angeles art magazine. “I consider Tara a friend,” said Editor-in-Chief Tulsa Kinney, “She was generous with her Traxx Restaurant. My husband and I held our wedding reception on that beautiful Union Station patio. She always supported the...

Publication In The Age of Negation, Part III
Compassion and Contempt

by John Tottenham

Let the disgust pour through me. Let it seethe. Let it sink in and settle. I wasn’t capable of doing anything more than lying on the sofa, stewing in bitterness and resentment. One likes to think that one’s work will be well-received by these commercial middlemen—because one has seen the crap that’s out there, because it meets one’s own hyper-self-critical standards, and because the few people...

Publication In The Age of Negation, Part II
Pillorying the Pillars

by John Tottenham

Four weeks passed. I was about to resign myself to not hearing from Charles Wersing, a top New York literary agent, when I checked my inbox one afternoon. “Good to hear from you,” he wrote, and apologized for taking a month to get back to me. He complimented me on my “intriguing” synopsis, and suggested that the novel would require the services of an agent who wasn’t “overly concerned about...

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Reviews

Anne Austin Pearce: Her Blue Period
River Deep–Mountain High at Founders Gallery at Soka University, Aliso Viejo

What is a colorist painter? In the 19th century, the painter and critic Eugène Fromentin assessed that the work of colorist artists engage hues that are “rare, tender, or powerful, but resolutely [achieved by] a man skillful in feeling distinctions, or in rendering...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Jordan Nassar
Anat Ebgi

Intertwining tradition, identity and memory, Jordan Nassar’s exhibition, “Surge,” turns large-scale Levantine embroidery and mosaics into sites of tactile continuity, connection and solace. These works serve as a means through which to understand his transnational...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Suzan Woodruff
Billis Williams

Suzan Woodruff’s new body of ethereal, abstract paintings and undulating wall sculptures came at a price—one as much physical as psychological. Diagnosed with virulent cancer amid a national pandemic, she endured multiple surgeries and radiological treatments, which...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Tidawhitney Lek and Veronica Fernandez
Sidecar Gallery

At Night Gallery’s newly debuted kunsthalle-inspired space, Sidecar, "What Will You Give?" features numerous large-scale paintings by up-and-coming artists Tidawhitney Lek and Veronica Fernandez. Lek and Fernandez present pieces of work that showcase both the...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Groove
The Hammer Museum

“Groove,” an exhibition of approximately 100 intaglio prints currently on view at the Hammer Museum, has something for everyone, and a bit of everything (save for works in other media), but it will appeal most to those with an unrestricted appetite for aesthetic...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Rhea Dillon
Soft Opening at Paul Soto

There’s no trick of the moonlight at Rhea Dillon’s show, “Gestural Poetics.” Inside and out, each work happens twice. Dillon’s drawings, nestled in sapele mahogany boxes within the white cube gallery, enact two histories at once. While the moniker "sapele" hails from...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Aly Helyer
Vielmetter

In the arresting painting On Your Side (2024), a person and their cat canoodle in twinned profiles that make it seem like they share an eye—and that’s not even the strangest thing about it. The main figure, shirtless and with glowing minty-pistachio skin, has glossy,...

Brad Kronz
Gaylord Apartments

For his untitled exhibition at Gaylord Apartments, Brad Kronz created what looked like a kind of deinstallation—the last few items left in an apartment before moving out, things you don’t know whether to leave or to stack on top of an already packed car: an auxiliary...

Nora Turato
Sprüth Magers

“Self is source. Self is pure positive energy. Self is worthy. Self is full of vitality. Self is healthy. Self is eager about life. Self is amazing.” One might imagine this incantation spoken in a low, meditative tone, as though by uttering the words with enough...

Se Oh
Stroll Garden

As a Korean-born queer person who was adopted at nine months by a conservative white Christian family in the Tennessee Bible Belt, Se Oh struggled for years with the trauma of rejection, including from their adoptive parents who believed that homosexuals don’t make it...

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