"What's with the God look?” I had thought to ask him at one point over the course of a rambling interview conducted in the lead-up to LACMA’s opening of his retrospective—provocatively, ironically titled, “Pure Beauty.” A slightly exaggerated (to say nothing of irreverent) take on a persona which is, after all, pretty familiar to most people who frequent Los Angeles art galleries, and indeed...
This interview took place December, 2009, at the restaurant in Los Feliz at Fred 62. Zak ordered the spaghetti. Find this article in our Jan/Feb 2010 issue; Artillery's first Biennial Sex Issue...(time for another!) https://artillerymag.com/product/janfeb-2010/ ARTILLERY: Do you believe in God? ZAK SMITH: No. (Pauses, then smirks). Okay, you can’t scientifically disprove it, so maybe...
IT'S true of the digital times that libido drives technology, but according to my friend Sergio Messina, porn is not only the engine of the Internet but the bona fide locus of art. And he's on a mission to prove it: "At the very least it's the perfect metaphor for the potential of digital media and a new paradigm of content production, a great example of how the world should be," he says, with...
It was two years ago when I first saw Susan Anderson’s photographs at an art fair in New York. They were images of little girls all dolled up, seemingly for one of those kiddie beauty pageants. I was struck by the pictures for several reasons: The photographs displayed composition, skillful technique, over-the-top glamour and saturated color; the little-girl beauty pageants are fascinating for...
Tracking down George Legrady for an interview can be tricky. A man who juggles art and science for a living has a lot of demands on his time. Hence, I found myself at a panel discussion on Database Aesthetics at the convention center in Los Angeles early one Saturday morning. The room was packed and I had to sit on the floor. Legrady was one of the panelists whose area of expertise is Data...
In a suite of charcoal, acrylic and 24K leaf paintings on canvas, Ferrari Sheppard blends compositional citations from the Western art historical canon with an affecting, humanistic narrative of diasporic Black life. Across the mostly large-scale works, Sheppard...
In her solo show “Your Words in My Mouth,” Camilla Taylor has created a body of work which, beautiful as it is, aches with bitterness and sorrow. While the sculptural works are ebony, white and gray standouts, the exhibit’s opening salvo includes a series of 10 x 8”...
In the world of appointment-only gallery visits, many have bemoaned the more restricted experience, and galleries themselves have completely reinvented the way that they conduct themselves. They are no longer able to attract visitors off the street nor draw large...
Colleen Hargaden’s latest exhibition at Hunter Shaw Fine Art is many things: a tool kit to survivalism and self-reliance in reaction to the ever-intensifying symptoms of a dying planet, and a prompt to question what the future of art-making may look like by combining...
Hometown Proud, the debut documentary by Tyler Stallings and Naida Osline, speaks volumes to our current political and cultural environment. The project grew out of their interest in exploring social issues through their individual practices, for Stallings, as a...