Articles
LUDOLOGY
This month’s game is an art contest. You must make it. Specifically, you must make a work of art that is perfect for Instagram and made at Instagram scale. Make a rectangular art object that exists in the real world (no digital art), and make that object no larger than 3 inches wide by 4 inches tall. Make the best object you can, scan or photograph it and send the result to:...
Helmut Lang’s Burdensome Bodies
The R.M. Schindler House is unexpectedly quiet. Despite being smack-dab in the middle of West Hollywood, there’s a noticeable lack of noise around the house and grounds, as if the air is somehow thick enough to deaden dog barks and car horns. The silence somehow feels borne of the house rather than its surroundings. As one of three Los Angeles headquarters for the MAK Center for Art and...
MOURNING SICKNESS A spate of Sad Girl art is on view in LA this spring—but is our interest in Sad Girls subversive or exploitative?
Thérésa Tallien, the French Revolution’s ‘it’ girl, knew how to manipulate perception. Once an emblem of revolutionary glamour, she played the game until it turned against her. Even in captivity, awaiting execution, she refused to become a simple object of pity. The mirror sent to her cell each day wasn’t punishment; it was a tool. Stripped of adornment, starved, pale, she studied herself—not to...
She Sees What He Says A review of the novel "What You Make of Me" by Sophie Madeline Dess
Sophie Madeline Dess, who has written clever short stories and perceptive pieces on Cormac McCarthy, Eva Hesse, and many other things for many prestigious and worthwhile publications, has produced a novel about Ava and Demetri, a critic and an artist. They are brother and sister, unusually close, with fates entirely entwined. That was a good idea. What remains of our creative class should...
IN SEARCH OF A CITY — (print exclusive) An Insider's Guide to Los Angeles
I came to the screening wearing the outfit compulsory for all such events: a faded and frayed sweater in a neutral color, sexless jeans, and a dirtied canvas tote. I had composed this outfit to signal my status as a true believer—my monkish intent to remain forever materially impoverished but spiritually rich. I entered the venue on that rainy winter night as a Jacobin for the cause(s)—which...
Lost Money How NEA Cuts Impact the Los Angeles Arts Community
In an unsurprising, though nonetheless upsetting, move, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has rescinded funding for arts organizations across the United States. The decision follows the Trump administration’s publication of the 2026 Discretionary Budget Request, which proposed slashing—if not entirely cutting—federal funding for the NEA. Most grant recipients received emails over the...
COLLECTORS CORNER: Danny First — (print exclusive)
Tell us who you are in 50 words or less: I live, collect, and breathe art. For the past ten years, I’ve run the La Brea Studio Artist Residency, The Cabin LA (according to ArtNewspaper, “Per square foot, the most influential gallery in LA”), and The Bunker LA. Two alternative exhibition spaces in LA. I also sculpt. What do you require from an artist you collect? Originality. Even if other...
ART DAMAGED Etiquette Stink Lines
ARTIST TAKEOVER: Jonny Negron
Reviews
Tony Cokes at Hannah Hoffman
To get to Tony Cokes' "All About Evil" at Hannah Hoffman, a show displaying 12 selected works from a period of nearly two decades (2006-2022), one must pass a sidewalk sign for the neighboring jewelry boutique Spinelli Kilcollin. Cokes' HD videos feature large white...
MEGHANN STEPHENSON at Half Gallery
Dario Argento’s 1977 film Suspiria left a lasting impression on me. It’s moments of indiscernibility, of looming disquiet, of eyes flashing against a blackened screen have stuck with me long since first watch. It’s an exhilarating study of the ominous, of unease, of...
SELINE BURN at Baert Gallery
“Kairos” by Seline Burn at Baert Gallery features 10 large oil paintings on canvas and linen, all completed this year. Blues, yellows, and greens render female figures across landscapes and interior settings that blur the boundaries between inner and outer, self and...
FRED LONIDIER at Michael Benevento
When I look at Fred Lonidier’s show “Vacation Village Trade Show,” at Michael Benevento, my mind naturally goes to Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966). Much like Antonioni, whose film is about a photographer who inadvertently captures a murder, Lonidier is interested in the...
Duelling Reviews: Jon Rafman Two takes on Jon Rafman’s “Proof of Concept” at Sprüth Magers
Alex Israel at Gagosian
To prepare for his current show “Noir” at Gagosian, Alex Israel claims to have walked about fifteen thousand steps per day around Los Angeles. This is highly unusual and, honestly, suspect. As the saying goes, no one walks in LA. Yet Israel insists on it and says that...
Michelle Uckotter at Matthew Brown
There’s something in the Los Angeles air recently that’s been conjuring the ghost of Charles Manson. He has been coming up in conversation frequently (or maybe I am bringing him up). California’s back on the national stage for its hippie-turned-fascist tendencies....
Jacqueline Humphries at Matthew Marks
We recognize the legacy Jacqueline Humphries is working from the moment we set foot in Matthew Marks’ two gallery spaces; yet something throws the viewer slightly off. It’s the echt gestural vocabulary of post-World War II art, but as if viewed through a scrim or...
Ramsey Alderson at Tiffany's
It’s a matter of complete coincidence that Ramsey Alderson’s show “d’Or” at Tiffany’s—an East Hollywood artist-run garage space programmed by Adam Verdugo—coincides with the 17th anniversary of the notorious Emos vs. Punks Fight held in Mexico City’s Glorieta de Los...
Gregg Bordowitz at The Brick
I left Gregg Bordowitz’s recently-closed exhibition at The Brick, “This is Not a Love Song,” thinking the same thing as upon leaving The Brutalist: “I didn’t know it was going to be so Jewish.” In both, the artist’s Jewish identity weaves through a deep consideration...