Articles
COLLISION ENSURES REACTION Getty PST: Art and Science Collide
This past fall, I saw over twenty PST ART exhibitions offering contrasting visions of how “art’ and “science” might collide or collaborate. The shows addressed topics from surveillance to biotech to space exploration with dives into artificial intelligence, Indigenous textile-based technologies of the early modern era, and reflections on the environmental precarity of Los Angeles. There were as...
DUELLING REVIEWS: Doug Aitken at Regen Projects and the Marciano Art Foundation
Gallery Dogs & Cats
STAYING SANE(ish) WITH DR. TRAINWRECK Ask Dr. Trainwreck
Trying to Navigate LA Dear Dr. Trainwreck, Can you talk about chasing fame and how that affects friendship? I’m from the Midwest and came out to California for art school. I’m fresh out of school (one year) and was able to get pretty good gallery representation early on so I count myself lucky. But a classmate that graduated at the same time keeps asking me how I did it. I’m happy to share. I’m...
In Search of a City
“Loa Angeles is 72 Suburbs in Search of a city.” —Dorothy Parker January is always a quiet month for the Los Angeles art world, but it was made even quieter this year by natural disaster—the fires shut down many art institutions while the city grappled with destruction—and the gloom of the national political situation, which depressed an already down-and-out town. There were fire fundraisers, of...
ROLL CALL
Where Artists Eat
ART DAMAGED Reverse Hated
STAYING SANE(ish) WITH DR. TRAINWRECK PTSD, Trauma, Fires
What is to give light must endure burning. —Victor Frankl I had this plan, I was going to spend each issue clarifying an overused, misunderstood and generally obnoxious term or diagnosis. Remember last time when I went on a tirade about ‘triggering’. I planned to do the same with narcissist, borderline, attachment styles, and so forth. Of course, I may still get there but I had to regroup. The...
Reviews
TERESA MURTA at Nicodim
Teresa Murta’s hallucinatory fever dream of gestural abstraction is full of organic lines and undulating forms that made me feel like I was finding images in clouds that would begin to take a familiar form before disintegrating before my eyes. Is that a bouquet...
DL ALVAREZ at Guerrero Gallery
Those of us who have dreamed—which I pray is everyone reading this—know how it goes: A cacophony of vignettes rattle through your unconscious, some a single flash, some endless, though in reality, they’re all only a few seconds in duration. No matter their...
JOE SOLA at La Loma Projects
It seems heaven is butter scented. Or at least La Loma Projects is butter scented. And who knew the Pearly Gates were actually in Highland Park? Walking through those gallery doors, you’re hit with a bright light that really does feel like a scene out of a...
KYLE DUNN at Vielmetter
Kyle Dunn celebrates the languid vibe of siesta culture through figurative and still-life pieces. The works on view use acrylic to replicate the luminosity of the Old Masters’ oils, giving Vermeer illuminated by the harsh New York summer sun. Siesta (2024)...
HAILEY HEATON at Authorized Dealer
Sontag famously wrote about the photograph as a means of securing ownership over an ethereal past. Her words come to mind as one moves through Hailey Heaton’s "Hissyfit," which reckons with the erosion of memory (and therefore history) through dementia. (The...
DERRIANN PHARR at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
It’s not uncommon that an art show claims to deconstruct the human form and challenge societal notions of beauty. Derrian Pharr’s innovative “I Am a Bloodstone” makes good on this promise. The otherworldly heroines in Pharr’s works (made with pastels and prisma...
Ryan Preciado at Palm Springs Art Museum
Palm Springs’ annual Modernism Week dominates the city in February, but I caught this quiet, elegant exhibit at the museum’s satellite space. It’s a revelatory history and homage to Frank Lloyd Wright craftsman Manuel Sandoval, a twentieth-century Nicaraguan American...
KELLY AKASHI at Lisson Gallery
Time is a common theme in Kelly Akashi’s work. Doilies inherited from her grandmother represent the past. The artist’s hands, cast in bronze, serve as timestamps for the present— lines and wrinkles marking specific moments. Cast bronze seed pods represent the...
Ramekon O’Arwisters at Craft Contemporary
Textile art has not always been one of my favorite mediums, but Ramekon O’Arwisters' exhibit altered my thinking. At a time where being Black and Queer, and any semblance of DEI seems fraught - the artist has come out swinging. The thoughtfully curated show is...
Ed Gomez at the MXCL BNL LAB
The long-running MexiCali Biennial got a recent boost from Mellon Foundation and is currently making its mark in the eastern LA suburb of Whittier. The space, which also houses an archive, MXCL BNL LAB545, is located in an unpretentious storefront, betraying an...