Articles

The Activism of Allison Janae Hamilton
Land as Witness of History

Land has been a constant throughout history. We bring to land our personal experiences, and land in turn acts as a witness to the people and events that come and go. For artist Allison Janae Hamilton, land is her most enduring subject. She describes land as a participant in and reflection of histories from the beautiful to the traumatic. Her works are haunting and inspiring, unnerving and...

The Spiritualized Landscapes of Hung Viet Nguyen
DEVOTED TO NATURE

by Genie Davis

“Art is a universal language,” Hung Viet Nguyen says. “And when I came here as an immigrant, my English language was not that great. My strength was in painting. I slowly convinced people that my art is my language.” Nguyen came to the US from Vietnam in 1982, with a background in biology and a lifelong passion for art. After making the move, he decided to make art his livelihood as well. A...

Leila Weefur’s Hymns for Other Voices
Uncomfortable Questions

by Barbara Morris

Explorations of gender identity are central to the work of Oakland-based artist and curator Leila Weefur, how they felt that their identity was suppressed by belonging to the Christian Church is at the crux of their latest project, “Prey†Play.” Presented in two separate and complementary incarnations, both in San Francisco, one is at Minnesota Street Project, as part of their California Black...

Top 10 Picks of 2021

by Ezrha Jean Black

I resisted compiling this list (the limitations of which are obvious); but then thought: “Wait! In this awkward year of slow emergence from a pandemic that may never really be over, how many really great shows could there actually be?” Until, as I went over the shows that had intrigued me enough to write, review, recommend, it was clear there were more than 20 of them. There are a number of...

Top Films of 2021

by Scarlet Cheng

What a year, and what a year for films—many of them delayed in production or distribution due to COVID, but roaring back as the theaters reopened. Below is my list of top theatrically released films of 2021; films I have had a chance to see thus far. I’m struck by how many were directed by women—a group which usually represents less than 10% of directors in the top 250 grossing films in the US,...

Remarks on Color: Cringing Cucumber
December's Hue

by Eve Wood

Cucumber is so much more than a tea-time British delicacy, served on white bread with loads of butter, yet Americans cringe at the thought! Cringing Cucumber, as she is known in the States, decided to open a specialty shop in the heart of Manhattan, serving all manner of crustless delights, aka sandwiches, including fig and pepper, baked wasp with Madagascar honey, watercress and mustard,...

Bennett Roberts
It’s About Time

by Tulsa Kinney

Back in 2006, I approached Bennett Roberts at his gallery on Wilshire Boulevard with a bit of chagrin. The LA art dealer had always been nothing but nice, helpful and accommodating to me as a person and as an arts writer. So my heart was heavy when I had to break it to him—before he could read it in the latest edition of Artillery—that we had panned his Kehinde Wiley show. Roberts, unflinching,...

June Edmonds
Freedom in Abstraction

by Richard Allen May III

The post-pandemic era can offer rewarding challenges, as I found out when engaging in my first Zoom interview. I spoke with painter and educator June Edmonds on the occasion of her current 40-year retrospective at the Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, and a simultaneous solo show at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. Edmonds appeared on screen with a welcoming smile and friendly brown eyes...

Constance Mallinson
Talking Trash: Figuratively and Abstractly

by David DiMichele

Constance Mallinson’s career has spanned the many vicissitudes of the art world, from Minimalism to Pattern and Decoration, through to postmodern conceptual strategies. More recently, she has created a form of realistic painting that draws from Modernist Abstraction rather than the figurative tradition, and which offers an original alternative to the currently popular trend of pictorial and...

Ilona Szwarc
Reclaiming the History of Breasts

by Julie Schulte

Ilona Szwarc is a Polish-American artist based in Los Angeles. Her latest show, “Virgin Soap” at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, introduces sculpture alongside her photography, documenting herself casting a model’s torso in silicone and plaster. Other recent LA exhibitions include the group show “PAPA RAGAZZE!” curated by Olivia Neutron Bomb at Nicodim Gallery in 2020; and the solo show “Unsex Me...

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Reviews

GALLERY ROUNDS: Rodney Graham
Lisson Gallery

Does humor belong in art? The late Canadian multimedia artist Rodney Graham evidently thought it did. But Graham’s humor, on display at the Lisson Gallery through March 23, is of the companionable sort: gentle, slightly self-deprecating, never sarcastic or cutting,...

Griselda Rosas
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

The title of Griselda Rosas’ exhibition, “Donde pasó antes (Where it happened before),” recalls the classic fairy tale preamble, “Once upon a time...,” but also suggests a cautionary sense of place, a reference to location that doesn’t frame so much as foreground the...

Todd Gray
Vielmetter Los Angeles

Photographer Todd Gray is a rule breaker. In this brave new art world he has fashioned for us, gone are the two-dimensional, singular perspective, rectangular photographs that hung on the walls these past 200 years. In their place, Gray presents something entirely...

Joey Terrill
Marc Selwyn Fine Art

The 1980s witnessed the specter of AIDS as it decimated a generation of queer men and many others. Some prevailed—artist Joey Terrill among them, though he wistfully noted in an interview, “Unlike my friends … I’m still here—working....” That sentiment sets a...

Leidy Churchman
Matthew Marks Gallery

At Leidy Churchman’s “Heart Drop,” what unfolds is not rooted in rationality nor the immediate appearance of the paintings. The show features winsome and playful subjects, colors and text, yielding an impression of light-hearted themes that in time reveal pictures...

Alejandro Cardenas
Anat Ebgi

So much more than paintings in bespoke carrying cases—though they certainly are that—the results of Alejandro Cardenas’ collaboration with Case Studyo, a Belgian artist-edition platform, engage the conceptual premise of the project with a thoughtful intentionality...

Dyani White Hawk
Various Small Fires

A celebrated episode of the groundbreaking Native television series Reservation Dogs takes a harrowing look at life inside an Indian boarding school, where strict Catholic nuns do their best to indoctrinate Native children into Western culture by punishing them...

Catherine Opie
REGEN PROJECTS

In a photograph titled Idexa and Denix, 2002 (2002/2024), a woman in a tight black T-shirt, with tattoos poking out from under the sleeves, short coiffed hair and a nose ring, among other piercings, stares with striking blue eyes at the camera. On her lap is an...

John Cage & Leah Ke Yi Zheng
CASTLE

John Cage and Leah Ke Yi Zheng’s joint exhibition, “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy,” presents two aesthetically dissimilar bodies of work with overlapping concerns that entangle them. The I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination tool that uses hexagrams to predict divine...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Nery Gabriel Lemus
Charlie James Gallery

There is something about watercolor that is intimate at any scale. The medium’s unforgiving nature sparks an urgency in its use, creating an immediacy in its organic textures, forcing the artist to build depth from layers and shallow pools that bounce the light around...

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