Articles

THE GEORGE FLOYD PROTESTS IN LOS ANGELES
Photographs by Lara Jo Regan

The uprisings and protests over the death of George Floyd erupted in Los Angeles not unlike its legendary wildfires. The flare-ups were largely spontaneous and unpredictable, some small and contained, others massive and out-of-control. Yet all were fueled with an undeniable burning passion against police brutality and racial injustice. Unlike the Rodney King riots of 1992, fewer structures were...

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

by Sarah Sargent

Set on a six-acre site overlooking downtown Montgomery and, most significantly, the Alabama State Capitol, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened in April 2018, is dedicated to the over 4,400 known victims of racial terrorism who were murdered by lynching in the years following Reconstruction up until 1950. The memorial goes further however, also addressing the humiliation of...

In Conversation: Kesha Bruce
Step One to Afrofuture

by Alexia Lewis

A good white American friend can be hard to find, so I appreciate and cherish mine. It’s June 2020, a month that will probably go down in history as one of the most pivotal, enraging, disgusting, hypocritical, amazing months in American history. And one by one, these friends text or call me. Not seeking justification and reassurance from me that they’re not racist, thank God—I’ve chosen my...

Brandy Eve Allen: Connection in Isolation

by Leanna Robinson

Los Angeles–based photographer Brandy Eve Allen has responded uniquely to the isolation of the COVID social distancing period with a new series of portraits, shot from the street, of isolators in their homes. The subjects of the photos, who Allen found on Nextdoor around the Silver Lake, Echo Park and Los Feliz areas of Los Angeles, elicit an emotional response, encompassing both a longing...

Lynn Hershman Leeson
Political and Hopeful

by Cole Sweetwood

Lynn Hershman Leeson has always been an artist simultaneously ahead of her time and very much a product of the present moment. From her revolutionary Breathing Machines in the early 1960s—the first sculpture works which incorporated sound—to her most recent video installation, Shadow Stalker, which investigates the use of the surveillance software PredPol, Hershman Leeson has been at the very...

The Power of Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe
Proverbial Portraiture

by Kate Caruso

When I talk with Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, his smiling face lights up the video conference window as he speaks of joy. He hopes to bring joy to the subjects of his portraits, and to those that view them. Picking up the range of tonality in Blackness, his portraits demand attention with a quiet yet confrontational gaze. He talks a lot about empowerment, which is registered in the stately and regal...

St. Elmo Village Thrives Today
A Safe Space

by Luca Celada

Hidden in a quiet Mid-City tract is a Los Angeles art institution. Not that you’d know it if you didn’t slow down and really look for the five-lot compound on this quiet residential street. Otherwise you could easily miss the sign: “St. Elmo Village,” half hidden by the lush shrubbery. And yet “The Village” is certainly an institution by virtue of its 51 years as a community arts center. A...

HOPPING ONLINE
Virtual Viewing has its Virtues

by Scarlet Cheng

During these last three months art galleries have been tripping over themselves to create virtual viewing rooms and walkthroughs, and to join collective ventures in online selling such as GALLERYPLATFORM.LA and FAIR (from New Art Dealers Alliance or NADA). Meanwhile, Saatchi Art has already been an online marketplace for art since 2010. Although you won’t find a Banksy or Yayoi Kusama among the...

SHELTER-IN-PLACE: Remarks on Seafoam Green

by Eve Wood

Editor’s Note: In lieu of our usual reviews and gallery rounds, we will be running a special SHELTER-IN-PLACE series for the duration of social distancing. This series will focus on that which can be enjoyed from home: musings on stream-able films, online art, and memoiristic reflections on colors, permanent collections, and craft. Thanks for sheltering with Artillery, and we hope to see you at...

LA’s Strange Still Beauty
Dani Dodge and Diane Cockerill Tool Around the Empty Streets

by Genie Davis

Dani Dodge and Diane Cockerill are two very different artists, both working in the photographic medium during Los Angeles’ great exile inward from the onslaught of the COVID-19 virus. Their recording of this time is both surreal and sublime; capturing these frozen moments of stillness and making them sing songs of sadness, resilience and stark beauty. Shaping color images rife with a loneliness...

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Reviews

Joni Sternbach
Von Lintel Gallery

In much of her work, New York–based photographer Joni Sternbach experiments with historical photographic processes, specifically tintypes, direct positive images created on thin pieces of metal. Tintypes were popular in late-19th-century photography studios since the...

Maria A. Guzmán Capron
Shulamit Nazarian

“Pura Mentira,” the title of Oakland-based artist Maria A. Guzmán Capron’s exhibition, is a statement on people’s propensity for multiplicity. Using textiles as her medium, Capron merges the figures in her pieces together, their bodies often winding together to create...

Linda Arreola
Avenue 50 Studio

Curated by Nicolas Orozco-Valdivia, Linda Arreola’s “Abstract Wanderings From the LA Borderlands: 2020–2023” comprises the artist’s strongest work to date. The presentation of nine paintings, some in multi-panel formats with varying scales, can scarcely be contained...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Ken Taylor Reynaga
at The Mistake Room

Ken Taylor Reynaga’s exhibition, “A Mano,” features a wide array of paintings and ceramics that speak to the personal and shared experience of cultural duality, and interrogate the belief that being multicultural places one in an identity limbo. Using his own...

PUBLISHER’S EYE: Laura Larraz
Chris Sharp

In these bright, gestural paintings, Laura Larraz explores ranging depictions of femininity, from notions of purity and domesticity to the idea of witches. At first glance, her paintings have a clear sense of humor; in Beware of Holy Whore, two pink cherubs hover over...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Myrlande Constant
The Fowler Museum at UCLA

“Lush” and “riveting” are words that best describe Haitian artist Myrlande Constant’s exhibition “The Work of Radiance” at The Fowler Museum. Constant creates astonishingly beautiful mosaics out of fabric and beads, leaning on skills she developed as a young girl...

OUTSIDE LA: Susan Chen
Rachel Uffner Gallery

After three years of experiencing artwork, exhibitions, podcasts, and news reports related to Covid-19, it seemed there could be nothing left to consume that is new, inspiring or even interesting. Enter Susan Chen. In a surprisingly refreshing and engaging solo show,...

PUBLISHER’S EYE: “Strong Winds Ahead”
François Ghebaly

In this expansive group show featuring the works of 18 artists, curator Lekha Jandhyala creates a strange, almost dystopian environment, both primordial and futuristic, of works that imply destruction and rebirth; in dialogue with each other, Ragini Bhow’s floor...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Sarah Miska
Night Gallery

Pulsing with energy and light, exuding a sense of dynamic motion, Sarah Miska uses the world of horse racing as her subject and the compelling need for control, risk-taking and forward motion as her themes. Her current exhibition “High Stakes” features large-scale,...

OUTSIDE LA: Anselm Kiefer
White Cube

It’s difficult to really appreciate the extent to which Anselm Kiefer has transformed the space of White Cube Bermondsey London for his exhibition “Finnegan’s Wake” unless one is familiar with what the gallery looks like under more “normal” circumstances. An absolute...

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