Articles

PAINTER OF DARKNESS
Cracking the Kinkade Vault

Shortly after Thomas Kinkade died tragically from an overdose of Valium and booze in April 2012, LA artist Jeffrey Vallance had a dream in which Kinkade showed him a secret vault of disturbing artwork that ran counter to the wholesome, uplifting image cultivated around the Painter of Light™ and his artwork during his lifetime. To Vallance’s astonishment, when he recounted the dream to Kinkade’s...

MICHELANGELO WHO?
"The Story of Art Without Men" by Katy Hessel

by Reviewed by Annabel Keenan

Any project that attempts to recontextualize history is embarking on a daunting, arduous task. There’s a fine balance between providing too much detail and too little, in particular when the temporal scope of the story is ambitious. Embracing these challenges with confidence and clear mastery of her material is Katy Hessel, who has rewritten art history from the Renaissance to the present day to...

THE BOOK AS BOOKWORK
Luis Delgado's Physicality as a Thing

by William Moreno

Luis Delgado, prolific photographer, documentarian and inveterate bookmaker seemingly operates under the radar—even after a nearly 50-year run. A recent Los Angeles transplant, he was born and educated in Mexico City to a Mexican father and American mother —immersed in a growing cosmopolitan milieu. Early on he studied under the tutelage of Guggenheim fellow Frank Gonzales, and took up painting,...

ENVIRONMENT MAKING
Malaya Malandro on Collaboration

by Emma Christ

Created by Francis Kanai and Malaya Malandro, Everything Is a Self-Portrait is a collection of photographs and poetry produced from years of phone calls and emails between their respective homes in Japan and the US. More than a simple display of two artists’ works, the book is a glimpse into a larger conversation—one that is ongoing. While the book is separated into sections by medium, the...

CELEBRATORY AND MOURNFUL
Clay Biennial at Craft Contemporary

by George Melrod

One expects certain things from a good ceramic biennial: personal visions, agile skill sets, revelatory juxtapositions, and an insightful contemporary theme to weave them all together. Happily, this third iteration of the clay biennial at the Craft Contemporary, titled “Wayfinding,” offers vision and agility to spare. Although the theme is rather broadly drawn—referring to clay’s origins in land...

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Reviews

Matthew Brannon
at David Kordansky Gallery

Through images of Satan and Darth Vader, and references to the politics of the 1970s, Matthew Brannon will unexpectedly break your heart. His show at David Kordansky Gallery mirrors the sensation of biting the pit at the center of a peach: a bitter core beyond what...

Haena Yoo
at Murmurs Gallery

Brushing my hair as a girl, I remember my hand growing heavier with each stroke as I entertained the wicked urge to unearth every girlish tendril in one fell swoop. The manic, menacing quality of Yoo's strange architecture reminds me of these early manifestations of...

Gabriel Madan
at Gattopardo

The slapdash brushwork of Gabriel Madan’s work suggests a personal but ultimately fleeting investment in his subjects. The style and content are both Pop but not too Pop - an oddball mix of semi-famous celebrities and obscure kitsch. By loosely hand-painting...

Austin Lee
at Jeffrey Deitch

Some shows suck, and some shows barely avoid sucking. Austin Lee seems capable of great things while failing by a long mile. The paintings depict brightly hued, crying, Gumby-like cartoon figures. They are clearly intended to be emotive but fail to elicit emotion; the...

Betye Saar
a Roberts Projects

Mojotech is Betye Saar's abbreviation for the "magic of technology" and the title of her large-scale installation from 1987 on view at Roberts Projects. Standing at the horizon of Saar's trailing altarpiece, I'm reminded of the language of trees and how they...

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