All weekend, the Westside was ablaze with art. StART Up Fair, located at The Kinney (no relation to our editor!) Hotel in Venice, featured over 67 artists in a series of terrific and eclectic motel-room installations. At Friday’s opening, performance artist Guta Galli prowled the halls in a walk-through of 61 pounds, in which the artist carried the titular weight of red yarn and the essences of...
Traversing pre-history, Mesoamerican cosmology, and sexually free interplanetary-futurism, The Formaldehyde Trip, a live performance with video and songs, creates alternate realms for the overlooked casualties of colonialism. Dedicated to the memory of Bety Cariño, it not only envisions a realm in which Cariño is reborn, but foresees a radically feminist world, where according to the lyrics “you...
The rendezvous point was a small coffee shop and bar. Along with about 30 other recruits (participants) I was given a lanyard containing a welcome letter and a schematic of Colony 933. I almost missed a small tightly-rolled scroll that outlined a brief modern history of Earth and the colony. It made claims contradictory to the ones in my welcome letter. Directed by Kate Speer, an...
Last Tuesday night (January 16, 2018), a day before he died, Ed Moses had an art opening of his latest work at a gallery space next to the new Hal’s restaurant in Playa Vista (where you can see a remarkable installation of his painted sliding door screens). Ed wasn’t at the reception which was unusual, and when I spoke with his son Andy I could tell without much explanation that the end was...
In ancient days of strife and warfare, a death squad of bird-women used the strategies of sound and seduction to destroy their enemies. Homer gave the Sirens a starring role in book 12 of The Odyssey, where they attempt to divert Odysseus from his returning home to Ithaca and cleansing his castle of enemies. The Sirens approach Odysseus’s black ship as it sails the western sea, and tempt him...
Sometimes art looks like design, and sometimes design looks like art. It’s hard to know the difference these days as both artists and designers seemingly want to merge one with the other. Either way, the 5th edition of FOG Design + Art was the perfect hybridization. FOG likes to promote the D for design to attract non art fair patrons; however, the A was in full force this year filling a...
On Thursday evening, when performance artist Astrid Hadad began telling a glitter-bombed, sombrero-wearing rubber chicken that everything would be okay, I remembered that there was still good in the world. The day’s news had been completely crappy, and I had ridden into the Mayan Theater on a toxic tide of gloom. I arrived to see Hadad’s show, I Am Made in Mexico, which kicks off REDCAT’S Live...
The experience of art in Los Angeles is always both very specific to its localized encounter and acutely conscious of its engagement with the world. As political forces outside California moved to further isolate us in 2017, that dialogue and artists’ sensitivity to the global implications of their work have only intensified. To move through the many memorable art shows this past year in Los...
At Kandis Williams’ studio, sparse and white with tall ceilings and drywall divisions, her studio neighbor Orion Martin and I sit and talk with her about contemporary intimacy. I am struggling as to whether I should revive a Tinder account in an act of hysteria spawning from a relationship that cut far too deep for its brevity. Williams shakes her head, empathetic and saddened. Williams is at...
In the mainstream, queerness has a way of being pushed into the shadows, forced back into the closet. It happens all around us, especially in communities of color, spaces which still oftentimes say that queerness does not belong here. It was a bit of a surprise then to see queerness so unabashedly out this fall as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the massive exhibition series funded by the...
There is something sugary about Sharon Ellis’ new psychedelic paintings that are reminiscent of my favorite childhood board game, Candy Land, nostalgic of gingerbread plum trees, the peppermint stick forest, Queen Frostine and Princess Lolly. Ellis’ paintings also...
Mary Kelly‘s show "Corpus" at Vielmetter Gallery includes thirty framed pieces which alternate between image in one frame and text in another. The name of the show, "Corpus," refers to the work being a collection of writings, yet has a double meaning built in as the...
It’s one thing to engage in a discourse about the influence of art historical movements on contemporary painters, and another still to analyze a particular artist’s specific set of influences, such as Nicole Eisenman’s robust relationship with the European...
Vessels are containers–spaces for bodies of volume to dwell, to fill up–shaped by what they have held and what they long to hold. In Anina Major’s solo exhibition “Inheritance” at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, fragmented baskets molded from clay operate as metaphorical...
Two works by Shirley Tse, originally exhibited indoors, are remixed under the spell of wild elements in The Magic Hour's current iteration time going backward and forward. Founded in 2018 in Twentynine Palms, California by Alice Wang and Ben Tong, The Magic Hour has...
At the wall in the back of the space rests an altar surrounded by oyster shells, pearls, pumpkin seeds, white candles on white cloth, white gloves, a brown fedora, a box of pralines, a Precious Moments angel. An audience member approaches and places a stem of white...
There’s something remarkable about standing in front of a painting that makes you squint, move, readjust your perspective and question your eyesight altogether. Christina Allan’s paintings do just that. Made with acrylic and spray paint, Allan’s compositions are crisp...
An ouroboros of hair and vomit surges through an arched body; vulvic lilypads share a tender moment of caress; aluminum breasts perched above erect flower stocks posture as suits of armor, guardians, gargoyles; a tantalizing cocoon drips from above; a nest of braids,...
And we’re back… back to communing for art’s sake. If you’re looking for something intimate and off the trodden path, there’s Caleb Stein’s exhibition "Down by the Hudson." It’s a focused collection of subdued, low-contrast, black-and-white photographs featuring water...
Just as Diego Velázquez’s "Las Meninas" (1656) troubled differentiations between life and painting, Paul Mpagi Sepuya confuses the boundaries that separate life and photography, questioning what is intended to be seen and concealed. In his recent exhibition at...