Articles

Trulee Hall
Femininity in Phantasmagoria

On a blessedly moderate summer Sunday, I am driving over to Trulee Hall’s studio in the industrial backside of LA to participate in the filming of her newest project, Ladies’ Lair Lake, by getting nude and air-brushed green from head to toe. This project will be the latest of Hall’s phantasmagoric videos that combine live action, claymation and CGI to create a provocative world in which Hall’s...

Drip Dry: Our Relationship with Water

by Leanna Robinson

Beatriz Jaramillo has had water on her mind ever since she can remember. The Colombian-born Los Angeles–based artist spent her childhood in what sounds like an idyllic wonderland—wandering around the tropical rainforest that surrounded her family’s home. She remembers playing in the water: “It was magical.” There was a deep connection that came from her family—she has memories of her...

An Interview with T.J. Demos
Climate Breakdown and Capitalism

by Eli Ståhl

T.J. Demos is Professor in Art History and Visual Culture as well as Founder and Director of the Center for Creative Ecologies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Last year, he published Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing a book exploring the radical world-making potential of contemporary art and activism in relation to changing climates. I met with Demos over the...

A REAL HORROR SHOW
Ecological Dystopia in Contemporary Art

by Geena Brown, Lauren Guilford

Our apocalypse is self-inflicted. We gouge at our wounds in acts of self-harm. Our collective anxiety festers as disaster takes hold, yet we remain paralyzed by fear, unable to face our reality. Implausible flames dance on the ocean’s surface; acres of California mountains are scorched black; storms terrorize and devastate our cities. The environmental crisis is no longer looming overhead, it is...

Hugo Hopping and The Winter Office
Nature As Infrastructure

by Clayton Campbell

I became aware of LA artist Hugo Hopping in 2009, when his conceptual work appeared in the exhibition “Post American L.A.,” curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas for the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. Since then his trajectory has taken him to base his practice between Los Angeles and Copenhagen, where he co-founded The Winter Office (TWO) with Johanna Ferrer Guldager. TWO is an experimental...

Zaria Forman: Fear and Awe
Showcasing Beauty and Fragility

by Annabel Keenan

Climate change is a crisis that we must all recognize and work together to mitigate. For artists engaging with climate content, their activism manifests in many different ways. Some choose to showcase the devastating evidence of global warming, while others highlight the beauty of the natural world. Part of the latter group, Brooklyn-based Zaria Forman has been engaging with the...

Ron Athey at the ICA Los Angeles
“Queer Communion”

by Jamie McMurry

I’m on the freeway traveling through the San Fernando Valley to see the Ron Athey exhibition of art, documentation and ephemera called “Queer Communion” at the ICA in downtown Los Angeles. All of the LA tropes are in place: It’s a sunny and clear June day, the hills of Griffith Park are dry and brown, the plentiful commuters spawning upstream on the 5 all slow to see a majestic Honda engulfed in...

GONE TO THE DOGS

by John Tottenham

“Ride on the street, man.” With difficulty, I attempted to maneuver my way around a young couple who, with their three dogs, were hogging the entire sidewalk. “I beg your pardon,” I said, as I cleared these five figures, who had only made the most minimal effort to make room for me. “What did you just say?” “I said ride on the street, man,” said the man in a lower voice. The speaker of these...

Remarks on Color: Lachrymose Lemon
August's Hue

by Eve Wood

Lachrymose Lemon cannot stop weeping. She sobs uncontrollably at everything all the time: the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, softball games, dinosaur conventions, the day her favorite chicken finally laid an egg. From the moment the sun rises to the last feeble rays of the day, Lachrymose Lemon greets the world through her tears. She’s what’s called an “indiscriminate crier,” “a...

Matt Warren Makes Movie Posters For Your Consideration

by Tucker Neel

As any Angeleno knows, every awards season, from about September - February Hollywood studios buy up billboards to promote their films as award-worthy works of art; it’s like LA’s version of leaves changing color in Fall. Unlike normal ads for new releases, each of these billboards reminds its viewers that the film is available “for your consideration” as a potential award nominee or winner....

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Reviews

PICK OF THE WEEK: Ozzie Juarez
Charlie James Gallery

Stepping into the realm of Ozzie Juarez’s paintings at his exhibition, “OXI-DIOS,” is akin to entering a bustling industrial cityscape, where citizens are invited to gather around modern homages to the illustrious tradition of Mexican murals. Juarez, a torchbearer...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Paul Pfeiffer
The Museum of Contemporary Art

“Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom” culminates in over thirty multimedia works of artist Paul Pfeiffer. The title of the exhibition references one of the works in the show which shows a video of director Cecil B. DeMille on loop exiting and...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Material Recovery
Angel's Gate Cultural Center

"Material Recovery" combines printmaking with assemblage, collage and sculpture to illustrate the iconography of the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, along with images suggesting the waste left there by the shipping industry. The exhibition of 81 pieces by 31...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Jairo Sosa
Room 3557

Step into Jairo Sosa’s installation, “Be True to the Game” and it feels as though you’ve stumbled upon the conclusion of a journey, an archaeological site or a moment of collective surrender. Room 3557, a small and mighty artist project space, is brimming with eight...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Louise Lawler
Sprüth Magers

Since the early 1980s, Louise Lawler has been making photographic works that focus on the collection and presentation of fine art, and the various meanings of “in-situ.” Her early images were straightforward, black-and-white photographs that documented artworks in...

OUTSIDE LA: “The Shape of Time: Korean Art After 1989”
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Viewing art is often followed by epiphanies—moments in which the viewer understands things both cognitively and perceptually. Sometimes it even provides a glimpse into another place, at another time, about which one does not yet have any real experience. “The Shape of...

GALLERY ROUNDS: XANADU
Gallery V, Pasadena City College

Currently on view at Gallery V, located on the Pasadena City College campus, is “Xanadu,” a group show featuring the work of nine artists. Though tightly curated by Shelli Tollman, who is also in the show, each artist has enough breathing room to leave a real impact...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Nicole Wittenberg
at Fernberger Gallery

Vivid and broad brushstrokes streak across Nicole Wittenberg’s paintings currently on view at the newly opened Los Angeles gallery, Fernberger. The exhibition, titled “Jumpin’ at The Woodside,” marks Wittenberg’s first solo show in Los Angeles and the debut of her new...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Cristina Iglesias
Marian Goodman

Cristina Iglesias’ exhibition, “Ellipsis,” features otherworldly, large-scale sculptural environments crafted from materials such as casted aluminum, bronze, copper, glass, steel and various pigmented materials. This collection draws inspiration from Stanislaw Lem’s...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Marek Wolfryd and Michele Lorusso
John Doe Gallery

For their joint exhibition at John Doe Gallery, Marek Wolfryd and Michele Lorusso present a selection of sculptures and paintings embedded in their shared exploration into Mexico’s history of architecture, urban planning and design. The title, “A Collapsing...

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