Articles

Graffiti Highway
Crude and Sophisticated; Now Gone Forever

On April 8th of this year, Fox News reported that Pennsylvania’s famed Graffiti Highway was being completely covered with truckloads of dirt. The one-mile stretch of Route 61 was abandoned in 1993 after an underground fire in the nearby abandoned mining town of Centralia caused the highway to buckle and collapse. Despite the danger, the highway became popular with tourists who left behind both...

The Pros and Cons of Erasing History
Damned If We Don't

by Tucker Neel

I’ve been thinking about the concept of damnatio memoriae recently. Translated as “condemnation of memory,” the term refers to a practice associated with ancient rulers who called for the erasure of their predecessors from the historical record; their likeness removed from statues, monuments, coinage and texts. It was a punishment the ancient Romans viewed as worse than death. Of course, it’s...

The City as Canvas
Democracy in the Art World Means Inclusion of Graffiti

by Cole Sweetwood

For this democratized issue of Artillery, I’ve decided to focus on the most democratic medium of art: graffiti. Graffiti is as diverse as any medium but, generally, it is the painting of text or images onto surfaces in public spaces. The operative word in that definition is “public;” these works of art are able to be viewed and enjoyed (or scorned, for some) by anyone who happens to see them....

Frederick Douglass’ Stunning Portrait
Leaving His Image Behind

by Colin Westerbeck

Among the amateur photographers of our time are some rare daguerreotype buffs who still practice this 19th-century form of portraiture, which creates a unique image on a photosensitized metal plate. Back in the 1990s, two such buffs were shrewd enough to realize that an auction house specializing in gun sales didn’t know what they had when they listed as a miscellaneous item a box of odds and...

Kimberly Morris
Give Me Some Art With Hair

by Genie Davis

Kimberly Morris creates work that is intensely visceral. She makes art about subjects intrinsically rooted in American culture, yet entirely personal. As an interdisciplinary artist, she has worked with a wide range of mediums over the years, including painting, video, photography and sculpture. In her recent sculptural work, hair is one of the most used materials. “I tend to work with whatever...

Ari Salka: On Bodies (Be)held
Trans Rights are Under Siege; This Artist Resists

by Julie Schulte

Ari Salka is a trans, non-binary artist based in LA. Their ecstatic paintings and drawings—primarily self-portraits of their body—move in a liminal fantasy space brimming with queer angels and ghosts; a buoyant space where their present and former selves, can meet: recognizing, adoring, embracing and saying farewell. Embracing the ever-changing self, embracing with equal measure the limitations,...

Ramekon O’Arwisters
Fabric and Ceramics Fits His World

by Barbara Morris

Growing up as a queer Black child in the Jim Crow era South, Ramekon O’Arwisters and his family had many barriers to overcome. His grandmother, recognizing that the young boy was “a bit of a hot mess,” one day called him over and invited him to work with her on her quilt. While already carefully planned out, by allowing him to break the pattern with fabric and thread, she validated his choices...

Forrest Kirk
“It Doesn’t Always Have to be Didactic”

by Shana Nys Dambrot

“Art is on the frontlines of social change, challenging people’s core beliefs,” says artist Forrest Kirk, “and this is where I live in my work.” An exhibition of nine new paintings exploring the raised fist motif in his richly textured, chromatically charged expressionist style had just opened at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery when we spoke—a show that had already been scheduled for November but was...

Photographers of Democracy: Part 1
Mark Peterson and David Butow

by Lara Jo Regan

“Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something the nation must be doing.” – Archibald MacLeish Few contemporary American photographers have covered the endless living, breathing spectacle of democracy with more dedication and distinction than Mark Peterson and David Butow. Often working on commission for magazines who encourage more interpretive...

Joey Forsyte
Our Vote is our Power

by Betty Ann Brown

Joey Forsyte knows that “The only cure for grief is action.” Her beloved mother died shortly before Hilary Clinton lost the election for president. Overwhelmed by grief and loss, Forsyte was transformed into “a different person,” a person who—like her holocaust survivor parents—was committed to political action. She attended the January 2017 Women’s March in Washington D.C. and her new...

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Reviews

Converge 45: Art and Politics Along Portland’s Parallel

The Converge 45 biennial initiative exists to forge a regional, national, and international artistic discourse, and to intentionally center certain aspects of those conversations within the Pacific Northwest arts ecosystem. Showcasing some 50 local, national, and...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Sabrina Che
Great Art Space LA

I’ve always found the word “gilded” to be slippery. On a literal level, it refers to the application of paper-thin sheets of gold leaf, a technique that’s been around for millennia. Not only does the process coat and protect ordinary materials like wood or stone, but...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Soumya Netrabile
Anat Ebgi

Nobody walks in Los Angeles but ducking out of the overheated concrete jungle and into “Between past and present/ Between appearance and memory,”—Soumya Netrabile’s vivid exhibition of wildlife, texture, line and color at Anat Ebgi—may inspire the urge to lace up your...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Analia Saban
Sprüth Magers and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

The theatricality and malaise of machines characterized by abundance, repetition, necessity, error and expansion, come into full play in Analia Saban’s latest body of work, “Synthetic Self,” which is simultaneously exhibited at Sprüth Magers and Tanya Bonakdar...

OUTSIDE LA: Jesse Mockrin
James Cohan

One could see the LA-based artist Jesse Mockrin’s decision to name her first solo exhibition in New York City and at James Cohan—“The Venus Effect,” after the art historical term, motif, and visual effect—as itself a gesture towards acknowledging, even inviting...

GALLERY ROUNDS: “John Waters: Pope of Trash”
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

This September, the Academy Museum opened its John Waters retrospective entitled “John Waters: Pope of Trash,” shortly followed by Waters' induction into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The exhibit includes the glasses Mink Stole wore in Pink Flamingos (1972), costumes by...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Evita Tezeno
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

In Gladys Knight’s version of “The Way We Were” (1974), she sings, “Can it be that it was all so simple then; or has time rewritten every line; if we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we?” Upon viewing “Evita Tezeno: The Moments We Share Are...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Jasper Marsalis
Kristina Kite Gallery

“Jacket and Shadow and Jacket and Shadow and Jacket and Shadow,” Jasper Marsalis’ exhibition at Kristina Kite Gallery, directs me to hear its entirety with my body. The visitor is tasked with arriving and making contact with his process of transcoding a glitch-like...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Rose Wylie
David Zwirner

In the rehearsed simplicity of “CLOSE, not too close” at David Zwirner, artist Rose Wylie grapples with Platonic ideals and the basic tools of semiotics. In both work on paper and oil on canvas, the artist depicts, again and again, important personal symbols....

GALLERY ROUNDS: Allen Ginsberg
Fahey/Klein Gallery

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg often carried a camera with him so that he could memorialize his friendships in a photographic diary. From 1953-63, he spontaneously recorded times spent with an intimate entourage that included literary figures Jack Kerouac, William S....

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