On an old oak-lined Pasadena avenue, I’m standing before an imposing wrought-iron gate to a stately Tudor mansion. In dappled afternoon sunlight twinkling beneath breezy treetops, this mysterious setting feels like the beginning of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Sprawling far beyond, the colossal estate, which I recognize from a video in Ariana Papademetropoulos’ recent show at Wilding Cran Gallery,...
The paintings of Lenz Geerk are unprepossessing and quietly sublime, his figures poised inside singular moments of divine inscrutability as they consider the world around them, whether it be a dying flower or the pointed edge of a table. This sense of veiled mystery could be said to denote a distinctly German sensibility as there are obvious connections with artists like Ludwig Kirchner and...
In her Culver City studio on a late summer afternoon, encaustic painter, printmaker and educator Pamela Smith Hudson revealed the origins of her vocation as a “materials artist” dedicated to exploring the potentials of paint, clay, print and wax: “My dad was a cement mason,” she said, while surrounded by her liquid-looking charcoal, teal, rose and cream-white canvases. “Dad worked on the federal...
What does it mean to fall from grace? To really fall, from great heights, perhaps at first thinking you’re flying and only realizing too late that this was an illusion, probably induced by the drugs. That would explain why the world out there appears so eerie, so pink and gold, so velvety, so noir-ish. Still, it’s beautiful in an afterlife kind of way, the damp night air, the hot wafting breeze,...
Ushering in the new era of Trump, a sea of pink at the 2017 Women’s March became the first undeniable sign of mass resistance. A resounding response to “grab ’em by the pussy” and other far-flung insults that characterized the presidential election. For a while, the handmade, cat-eared hats were everywhere. One might even a draw a correlation between the Women’s March and its inclusion of Pussy...
Film and video artist Christopher Richmond has been interested in science fiction for as long as he can remember. When he was a kid, he rented videos based solely on the cover art; his favorites were sci-fi. “Any sort of surrealist landscape, I was sold,” he tells me during a conversation at his studio near MacArthur Park on a hot summer-like day in February. He was also fascinated by comic...
While there’s nothing new about teenagers making parody videos—which have been a part of popular viral culture since the existence of strap on-webcams, :NSYNC and the boredom of teen years—a recent parody clip has transcended the form. What began as a typical pop montage video, viewed across Russian social media, was transformed into a national political protest movement, a parody evolving...
The structure is made out of bamboo poles and stakes, secured with palm rope. It stretches from the side door leading out of the museum, crosses the small courtyard, and extends towards the street. The soft beige color of the Moso bamboo underscores the apparent simplicity of this tunnel/bridge, which was designed following the geometric and mathematical principles of the golden ratio and...
The photographic tableaux of Los Angeles–based Parisian transplant Reine Paradis evoke an ambiguity of place. The central focal point of each is a solo figure, played by Paradis, typically costumed in an A-line mini or similarly chic garment fashioned from transparent, tinted PVC; she is most often posed humorously or awkwardly—sometimes, heroically—in an iconic landscape, accompanied at times...
“Made in L.A.” has finally hits its stride—this fourth edition feels fresh with discoveries, both of artists you may know and many you may not. It features 32 artists, from emerging ones with promising talent to the exciting re-emergence of an artist who fell from the public eye for several decades—Luchita Hurtado, age 97. In the last two years, Hurtado has had two shows, but her last solo show...
Victor Estrada erupted onto the art world landscape with his confounding work in the 1992 Los Angeles MOCA exhibition, “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s,” along with other luminaries such as Harry Gamboa Jr., Megan Williams and Mike Kelley. What’s mystifying is...
For someone brought up within a more or less secular Roman Catholic culture, living now (atheism aside) essentially as if she were a nun, one would think I might know something about “Vespers”—the title of Justin Liam O’Brien’s current show at the Richard Heller...
During the early months of the pandemic, Judy Fiskin needed a new way of working in which she did not have to leave the security of her home. Fiskin happened upon a real estate website with interior images of houses for sale and...
Occasionally a gallery delivers a show of work that activates the intellect, rewards an afternoon of driving, and restores a little hope. In the small gallery at François Ghebaly are Patricia Iglesias Peco’s large works on paper. Flowers rendered in understated...
Lisa Solomon creates evocative watercolor self-portraits wearing the traditional attire of the countries that make up her ethnic heritage, as well as the traditional clothing of countries she’s had misidentified as a part of her cultural history. Perfect, precise and...
Alonzo Davis’ paintings are breathtaking in their materiality. Using saturated, refractive palettes, and woven paper and canvas to form a layered topography, the works assert their physicality as much, if not more than the imagery. Abstract—but with elements of...
Immersive and sensual, the richly floral images of Gary Brewer’s “Voluptuous Charm of the Monumental Image” is a kaleidoscope of color and form. These are works bursting with life, subtly O’Keefe-like—though still uniquely Brewer—evoking the mysteries of nature, the...
In the late winter of 2019, I became enamored with Joan Didion. I and my then partner were driving the backroads of Tennessee and North Carolina as a leg of a cross country move from Portland to Philadelphia. Somewhere along our trip I picked up a copy of South and...
In Laguna Art Museum’s 10 years of mounting its annual Art & Nature installations, a consistent theme has been the preservation of our planet. In this year’s version, the museum celebrates the beauty of nature while artfully addressing environmentalism and...
Forever enchanted by Francesca Woodman’s photographic realms, I trace her contorted, fluttering body in the passing shadows and opaque reflections of her self-portraits–I see a witch, a siren, a spirit, a saint, a veiled apparition. Woodman’s body is simultaneously...