“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...
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...
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....
Felix LA, the fair that for two years has run concurrently with Frieze LA, is once again at the Roosevelt from July 29 through August 1. This time it is going up without the auspices of the larger Frieze fair, which first delayed in February, then fully cancelled in July. To keep to the current code, all booths will also be held in the open-air cabanas, or in the downstairs rooms that open up...
John Knuth is a Los Angeles-based artist who recently had a solo show with Hollis Taggart Gallery in Southport, CT. His work explores how humanity and material and the natural world intersect and influence each other. “The Dawn” ran from May 15–July 3. MATT STROMBERG: From its title, the show has an unmistakably optimistic tone. what makes you hopeful? is it for a return to pre-pandemic life, or...
L.A. sculptor Kenzi Shiokava died June 18 at age 82. His passing was announced by the Japanese American National Museum. JANM featured Shiokava's totemic wood sculptures in the 2017 Pacific Standard Time exhibition "Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo." The artist was an ideal fit for the show. Born to Japanese immigrant parents...
Salvador Dali has always had a troubled relationship with the Art World. His work embraced figurative representation during a century where deconstruction and reinvention were the mode du jour. His theatrics often upstaged his considerable talent. The amount of energy he expended playing the role of eccentric artist often distracted critics from the solid theories and concepts that underlie his...
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, 2020 By Okwui Enwezor 264 pages Phaidon/New Museum, New York In a pivotal scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather a Mafia don grieves over the body of his dead son. “Look how they massacred my boy,” the weeping father intones, and the audience grieves with him. A worldwide audience is moved by the pantomime death of a handsome...
No one ever “works” in Eric Rohmer’s movies—but they do read. By necessity, Rohmer’s setting is one of leisure, whether it’s the beaches of Biarritz or the shores of the French Riviera. His characters need ample time to read and to daydream, and for ennui, disturbed by the intruding object of desire, to ripen into an obsessive devotion. They are not attentive readers. Their attention is...
Rooting through used bookstores in Berlin in 2006, I discovered the minibuchs published in East Germany during the ’70s and ’80s. These tiny volumes, with their exquisite bindings and photos of happy children giving floral bouquets to returning cosmonauts, launched me into collecting miniature books. Over time I narrowed my focus to handmade books, books by artists and books that played with the...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
"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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...