Articles

An Artist Answers Questions
with Narsiso Martinez

TOP 3 SONGS? Strange Fruit (Abel Meeropol) interpreted either by Billie Holiday or Nina Simone, Strawberry Fields (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) interpreted by La Santa Cecilia. I was attracted by the music video. TOP 3 DEAD ARTISTS? Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), Vincent Van-Gogh (1853-1890), Käte Kollwitz, (1867-1945), David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974). GIVE US AN ART WORLD HORROR STORY?...

Taxi Driver

by Ira Wile

I’ve moved around, a lot. Not kicked around, just trying to find some dirt that was my own, and mebbe some puzzled hands for this jigsaw heart. And in all of that highwaying, i found that, no matter the burg i plopped down in, i could get a job driving a taxi. The organization of them all was pretty much the same – quite loose, and almost exclusively cash. Plus i’m good at talkin, and a very...

POEMS

by Jimmy Komma, John Tottenham

The Sublime and The Beautiful Revisited Ascending even lower into the empyrean of autonomy, believing one’s own lies, the beauty that should only be seen through somebody else’s eyes. A pointless exercise, no purpose does it serve: tracking one’s moves, getting on one’s own nerves. But how can life otherwise be lived without these airless flights: descending ever higher into the abyss of...

LUDOLOGY

by Artillery Staff

I’m located at an arts institution (free to the public on Tuesdays). I’m a painting by someone who is better known as a sculptor. I’m older, but not ancient. I live in the permanent collection. I have color, but it’s severely limited (I’m mostly shades of white) I was painted by someone who was alive during WWI. Both the model and the painter tried to mutually exhaust each other during the...

Eileen’s Top Ten of Frieze Week

by Eileen Havant Townsend

On this special date—the Monday after Frieze Week LA—I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers. We made it through. I did it all this week, or as close to all of it as I could with merely a press pass. Here are my final stats, which I think are not too shabby for someone with nothing to buy or sell: (3) Art fairs (3) Press previews (1) Artist talk (7) Parties (3)...

In Search of a City

by Eileen Townsend

“Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.” —Dorothy Parker This is a column about the Los Angeles art world. Or at least it was supposed to be. I successfully pitched this column on Wednesday December 4th, 2024 and my editor assigned me a deadline of Saturday, December 7th. “But I can’t write about the art world in Los Angeles with a two-day turnaround while everyone is at Art Basel,” I...

Postmodern Vaudeville
Amy Gerstler on Dynasty Handbag's Frenzied Satire Titanic Depression at MOCA

by Amy Gerstler

Even though the term ‘performance art’ has become a catch-all phrase, it still feels too narrow to convey the onstage antics of Dynasty Handbag, the performance persona of writer, visual artist and actor Jibz Cameron. When Titanic Depression debuted in New York in 2023, its sensibility was described by the New York Times as “queer vaudevillian.” That’s a more intriguing, and perhaps more...

Alternative Spaces
A Look at Alternative Spaces in Los Angeles

by Photos by SAWA

Chez Coronado Founded by Andy Little and Calli Webb and nestled in an unused portion of a basement under an apartment building, Chez Coronado specializes (so far) in works that, like the space, are small, intimate, personal and eccentric. Their most recent offerings include witty, crafty work from Joachim Castañeda, and a moose-themed show from Molly McDonald. Devout Many tattooists learned to...

Artist Takeover
Emma Webster

by Emma Webster

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

by John Tottenham

Adrift between lust and sleep, the highway unwinds behind closed eyes, in scratchy sheets and stinging heat. A one-way street on repeat. Cracking the veneer, stripping it away, in the obvious light of day. Coming from nowhere, going nowhere, but never far enough. The same signage mile after mile. Interminable layers of fast-food landscape surround dried-up downtowns where nary a soul strolls and...

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Reviews

ORDINARY PEOPLE
at MOCA

MOCA’s “Ordinary People” manages to tell a story about photorealism that is eclectic, diverse, condescending and drab. Homage to the People of the Bronx: Double Dutch at Kelly Street - La Freeda, Jevette, Towana, Staice (1981–1982) by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’...

RUBY ZARSKY
at Ceradon

Goddesses once etched into stone tablets and later deified in oil paintings now live another immortal existence: nude or scantily clad, wet and voluptuous, digitally rendered and plastered across Reddit or X, they resemble magical beasts or aliens. Some have had their...

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
at The Wallis

In his monumental displays of structure, history, movement and sound—operatic compositions that unabashedly aspire to the now-“traditional” status of Gesamtkunstwerk, William Kentridge has become a leading voice not only in contemporary art but in the world’s cultural...

REFRAMING DIORAMAS
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

This beautiful show grapples with the history and purpose of habitat dioramas—those eerily lifelike tableaus found in darkened museum halls—and, by extension, questions the past and present life of natural history museums. What is the role of a natural history museum...

François Pain
at JOAN

What is art without the asylum (from classical Latin asȳlum: refuge, sanctuary)? In François Pain’s first solo show in the US, three video displays, a mini-bookstore, and a vitrine of pamphlets compete for the viewer's attention. At the center is a 2025 video...

ADORATION
at REDCAT

Atom Egoyan’s 2008 film Adoration follows a half-Arab teenager who weaves a fictional story about his father orchestrating a terrorist attack, causing a stir within his suburban community. Adapting it would be a difficult task in any case—not just because of the...

Sawako Goda
at Nonaka-Hill

This exhibition features paintings, sketches, and ephemera from the estate of Sawako Goda (1940-2016). Goda's oil paintings immerse the viewer into a strange urban sea in which the body merges with gems the size of appendages. Goda's "story of the eye" shifted when...

Valerie Keane
at Gaylord Fine Arts

Valerie Keane's works on paper are constructed with devotion, resulting in miniature worlds that reflect the viewer back unto herself. These are “flat” images in comparison to Keane’s other work, and yet a close look into the frame reveals parts that appear as though...

The Monster: Curated by Robert Nava
at Pace Gallery

Per the exhibition text, “The Monster,” a multi-media group show at Pace Gallery, deals with the abstract creatures from early nightmares rather than the metaphorical “monsters” that haunt our adult existence. Childhood logic filtered through an adult POV often lends...

Jaxon Demme and Paz de la Huerta
at Spy Projects

The damsel in distress; the innocent vindicated. These are relatively common motifs when it comes to trauma and recovery, yet Paz de la Huerta’s beautifully bizarre paintings make them feel new. Women and girls embrace while crowded by angelic creatures and wild...

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