Articles

Zak Smith and Making Art for A World That Is Falling Down
An Unburnt Witch: Zak Smith Drawings — Torrance Art Museum - March 25, - May 6, 2023

Full disclosure up-front: I am well-acquainted with Zak Smith as an artist. Before we met (in 2010), I was aware of his work only because of his inclusion in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and not incidentally because his work for that show had (what was for me) an irresistible hook: Pictures of What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow. The Torrance Art Museum will be...

All That Glitters
The Transformative Portraiture of Jamie Vasta

by William Moreno

One of my favorite paintings is a portrait of myself at the age of five or so, composed by my father. Along with my siblings’ pictures and beyond the sentimentality, these portraits have become distinctive family emblems and historical markers, wrought at a time of optimism and possibility. That singular ability to capture transitory moments and ephemeral character is the essence of portraiture,...

Brilliant Veils
Amir H. Fallah Creates Vibrant Artworks That Question Cultural Boundaries

by George Melrod

Entering a room of portraits by Amir H. Fallah, the first thing you’ll notice is that you can’t see their faces: the figures are cloaked. In one, the subject sits draped in a richly patterned blue-and-purple shawl, cradling what looks like a gilded African head in its lap. In another, a figure with purple arms strikes a pose seemingly drawn from ancient Near Eastern art, swathed in a lustrous...

On the Nose
Helen Chung Talks Anatomy

by Ezrha Jean Black

The afternoon we agree to meet for a quick Q&A over drinks, Helen Chung arrives at the restaurant slightly late (though not much later than me)—fittingly enough, from a commissioned portrait sitting. Engaged by the process, conversation and the resulting portrait itself, the subject has kept her somewhat longer than originally anticipated—commissioning a second portrait on the spot. ...

Frames Within Frames
The Photography of Grant Mudford

by Jody Zellen

Grant Mudford is a photographer with an extensive publication and exhibition history. Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1944, he studied architecture at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) and moved to Los Angeles in 1977. Since the 1980s he has functioned as a commercial photographer and became well known for his architectural and editorial work, along with his portrait photography. Last...

Spiritual Healing
Luis Sahagun's Cathartic Family Portraits

by David S. Rubin

As a practitioner of curanderismo, an ancient Meso-American system of folk medicine, Mexican-born, Chicago-based Luis Sahagun regularly performs limpias, traditional cleansing or “soul-retrieving” rituals. As an artist, he has applied this practice to the creation of portraits of people, living or dead, who are the chosen beneficiaries of his healing efforts. For a recent exhibition at Charlie...

Africa Around Town
“Adornment | Artifact,” Curated by jill moniz

by Bianca Collins

The Getty Villa’s exhibition, “Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan,” offers a stunning display of jewelry and items of personal adornment excavated from burials of royalty and aristocratic individuals from a region that spans what is today southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Almost 3000 years of ancient history are presented in exquisite examples of metalwork in silver, bronze and mostly gold,...

Amplifier of Black Art
Nothing Random with Chance the Rapper's Course

by Donnell Alexander

“We outside!” Chance the Rapper exclaims into his microphone. The sky is near black at maybe seven minutes after 8 p.m. in Downtown Los Angeles. Third weeknight of October. Chance had been and would be again, soon, rhyming his way through a song. The Chicago MC had been in the midst of vocalizing about his heart and his God and the shifting tides of life. Chano—as more ardent fans might call...

From Lagos with Love
The Far-Reaching Vision of Adenrele Sonariwo

by Donasia Tillery

The sun is rising over my home in Northeast Los Angeles as I call gallerist and curator Adenrele Sonariwo on Zoom. She answers me from her office in the bustling West African city of Lagos, Nigeria, where her day is already in full swing, crescendoing toward the familiar buzz of a workday afternoon. Dressed in a classic black blouse, she fills the frame of my screen with a steady and warm...

Reframing A Ritual
Allana Clarke Wrestles New Meaning into Hair Bonding Glue

by Annabel Keenan

I’m often asked which artist or artists interest me the most, or some variation of the question. For the last year-and-a-half since I saw her work in “Un/Common Proximity,” a group show at James Cohan in New York, my response has been Allana Clarke. Before this show, the Trinidadian-American artist had already made a name for herself with videos, performance, photography and text-based works...

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Reviews

Markus Lüpertz & Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Michael Werner

There is something inherently contentious about an exhibition juxtaposing the work of a contemporary artist with another whose work has some place within the art-historical canon, more particularly one of the most resonant antecedents of the late 19th- and early...

Bernard Cooper
Gattopardo

If you’ve read any of Bernard Cooper’s books, you know about the care with which he constructs his sentences, how he gives each detail its own breathing room. (If not, Maps to Anywhere [1990] and his 2006 memoir The Bill from My Father are especially recommended.)...

Kyungmi Shin
Craft Contemporary

In The Head in the Tiger’s Mouth (2021), the first composition in Kyungmi Shin’s kaleidoscopic exhibition, my eyes immediately landed on the luminous collection of swirls and stripes suggesting the calligraphic form of a tiger before catching on the colorful tableau...

Chris Eckert
Long Beach Museum of Art

Incessant texts and social-media alerts are inescapable facets of contemporary life, and artist Chris Eckert attempts to make sense of this glut of seemingly endless data. Eckert has successfully melded backgrounds in the fields of mechanical engineering and...

Chiffon Thomas
Michael Kohn Gallery

A church is a grand gesture to the community it serves and sustains. At its best it’s a hub, as well as a display of worship, tradition, sacrament and humility. A chapel by contrast is a modest little space—distinguished from the former by its size more than anything...

Uta Barth
1301PE

As part of her career-spanning 2022–23 survey, “Peripheral Vision” at the Getty, and in honor of the museum’s 20th anniversary, the German-American photographer Uta Barth presented an expansive commission entitled “…from dawn to dusk” (2022). Twice a month for a year,...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Everything But the Kitchen Sink
La Luz De Jesus

California amusement parks like Disneyland are multi-layered entertainment fantasies, offering created environments for escapism and joy-filled distraction. These tourist sites entice visitors with adventurous rides, performances and tantalizing food. Similarly,...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Covey Gong and Monique Mouton
Bel Ami

The meeting of Covey Gong and Monique Mouton at Bel Ami is like watching the contact of two elements transforming one another. While their respective works are satisfying on their own, together, Mouton’s mixed media on paper and Gong’s tactful sculptures, spotlights a...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Christopher Culver
Michael Benevento

If—in the next couple days—you are keen on communing privately with melancholic beauty (or “tough joy,” as the artist might have it), visit Christopher Culver’s latest suite of charcoal and pastel drawings on paper at Michael Benevento Gallery. Never mind the...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Alice Wang
Vincent Price Art Museum

In his journals from his first expeditions in the Sierra Mountains, John Muir wrote, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” The interconnectedness of our world stretches beyond our innate abilities and into...

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