“You’ve caught me in a really good mood,” said Jeffrey Poe, as he sidled up to the bar of an upscale West Hollywood restaurant. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I was hoping to play up the ‘lonely at the top’ angle and find a backhanded way of comparing your fortunes unfavorably with mine. I guess I’ll have to ditch that idea.” “I’m happy because I bought a new piece of furniture,” said Jeff,...
Kristy Edmunds took over the reins of performing arts at UCLA at a time (2010–11) when the kind of avant-garde international theater and festival programming it was famous for seemed to be all but dropping from UCLA’s sightlines. But Edmunds’ purpose and seriousness were conveyed in the rebranding alone: the Center for the Art of Performance (“CAP” UCLA). Within a year, we had a treatment of the...
Three of the most storied artists in recent Los Angeles history were the subject of “Disappearing—California c. 1970” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (May 10–Aug 11, 2019), the show’s only venue. Despite the tight focus on just three artists, the exhibition encompassed the breadth of the radical experimentation of conceptual and performance art in Southern California in the ‘70s, a...
Lima, Peru is a city of idiosyncrasies, where modern skyscrapers neighbor aging Spanish baroque mansions and colonial squares, all in varying ages of birth and decay. While Lima is not particularly known for having an overwhelming number of art galleries—there are only about 40 in the city—the city is a hotbed for both street art and artisan makers. The AC Hotel Lima Miraflores provided a...
Before I interview Mr. Chow, he sets my copy of his book on fire. After smashing large Sharpies onto a blank page of the book in a riot of color (“green always goes well with red”), he pours flammable paint thinner on the page and calls for his “darlings” to bring him some Kleenex which he rubs onto the page (“I like having some dimensionality”) while his assistant hands him a blowtorch to set...
The Los Angeles art world is far from monolithic, but if there’s one thing you are certain to overhear at every gathering, it’s an expression of wonderment at the onslaught of new galleries opening across the city. And they’re right, it’s a lot. It feels like for every physical space we lose to its internet-only avatar, two new storefronts or warehouses announce an inaugural. Leaving aside...
Ceramics is real-world alchemy, where a material mined from the earth is magically transformed by human ingenuity. I love the fact that the result can be rough and reveal the grit and minerals embedded in clay, or it can be highly refined as a smooth white porcelain vase. So I make regular visits to the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, just south of the 10 Freeway, a museum that shows...
5 Car Garage is located in an alleyway in a residential neighborhood in Santa Monica. While it is not far from Bergamot Station, visitors to 5 Car Garage make the trek because the experience is homey and friendly, and the art on view is often engaging in unexpected ways. The gallery space is a transformed five-car garage with ample light flowing in from the alley when the garage doors are rolled...
Los Angeles, being what it is—a big, sprawling desert grid with almost as many art galleries these days as there are Starbucks—can seem overwhelming when it comes to actually hopping in the car and making the point to go and see some art. Let’s face it, we sometimes spend more time on the freeway getting to the gallery or museum than we do actually viewing the work itself! That said, the amount...
There is still a sense of shock over racially charged policies out of Washington that feel out of line with the West Coast’s progressive ethos. Los Angeles’ major art institutions are trying to counteract this as best they can by presenting more exhibitions by people of color (POC), increasing representation and amplifying voices once silenced in historically white spaces. In the past year,...
There’s a special kind of push-pull pleasure to an exhibition that derives from conceptual interests, but is realized through material experimentation and finesse. Such was the case with Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret’s appealing new exhibition “Mother Sky.” My first...
Still life meets prop table in a series of surreal symbolist tableaux, as painter Michael Hilsman inventories his dreams and sets the scene for unguessable actions to come, or inscrutable actions just past. In capacious landscape-based works, Hilsman offers horizon...
Steeped in noir, as visceral and real as a photograph or a frame plucked from a black-and-white film, the rich monochrome charcoal works of Eric Nash draw the viewer into a quintessentially Los Angeles world. While not a native of the city, Nash has embraced it with...
Los Angeles is a city of immigrants: over 200 different languages are spoken here. Every immigrant comes to this country with an already established identity. Each has to jettison their old identities and craft new, LA-based ones. Some do so by making art. One way to...
At the entrance to “Global Asias: Contemporary Asian and Asian American Art from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnizter and His Family Foundation” at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, stand two giant ceramic heads. One features a black-and-white striped neck, red crown and...
The quality and diversity of the work of Yolanda González—a painter, illustrator, printmaker and ceramic sculptor—makes a solo installation of her work long overdue. This current exhibition, with nearly a 100 pieces from the career of the 59-year-old LA–based Chicana...
This iteration of Macho Stereo was a durational performance by Marcus Kuiland Nazario with Paul Donald presented by CultureHub, a collaboration between the legendary New York theater La MaMa and the Seoul Institute of the Arts at Hot Shot Muffler in Highland Park....
A series of secreting, grotesquely glamorous portrait paintings rendered in gloopy lip gloss, lustrous nail polish, sparkly eye shadows, tints, and creams pay homage to queer-feminist heroes and the power of the performative body. Intimate in scale, Vaginal Davis’...
Cubist, geometric, abstract, and seminal—together those words sum up the exhibition of Lee Krasner’s work, “A Through Line” at the Kleefied Contemporary Art Museum. The exhibition traverses Krasner's vibrantly colored path, showcasing her wide range of painted works...
Many of the works featured in Nancy Monk's exhibition "Walk + Wood" at Craig Krull Gallery are of small scale and draw from a restrained palette. Looking at the works, the viewer sees things that, at first glance, appear whimsical and childlike. However, on closer...