It’s cold. He looks even larger in his winter coat. He is a large man. Tall and broad-shouldered. In football, he might be a tight end; I’ve stood next to several players for the Bears. He would not seem out of place among such large men except that the hair on his head and beard is flecked with gray. He has just arrived at his studio—a swift bike ride from Soldier Field (yes, Chicagoans ride...
If there is anybody more unpopular in Mexico at the moment than President Enrique Peña Nieto, it is, of course, Donald J. Trump. After a long list of aggressions, rudeness and even “jokes” by Trump, and in the middle of a big domestic crisis—both political and economic, rooted in corruption of Mexican government, but aggravated by the imminent breakdown of the North American Free Trade Agreement...
Five years ago, San Francisco–based painter, sculptor and performance artist Ana Teresa Fernández woke from a long night’s sleep with a sudden inspiration: She would erase the border fence that divides the United States and Mexico. It was June, 2011. That October, President Barack Obama would announce the record deportation of nearly 400,000 people. The year before, the U.S. Senate rejected the...
Kim Abeles’ studio doesn’t have enough chairs, so we have to sit in the adjacent gallery space at the front entrance of the building. Even though it’s glaringly sunny outside, it’s freezing inside the space as attendees spill into the room and sit down on rolling office chairs, stools, wood blocks and ledges. This is a meeting of the Association of Hysteric Curators, a self-described “fluid Los...
Nan Goldin, to borrow a phrase from her friend and fellow-artist David Wojnarowicz, has always lived and worked “close to the knives.” Her most recent published collection, Diving for Pearls, can only intensify our appreciation for her images of that pain and that exultation. In many ways, Diving for Pearls continues the so-called snapshot aesthetic indelibly associated with Goldin’s name after...
A lot has changed over the last two years in the world of water. The high level of lead found in children living in Flint, Michigan—exposed by consuming and bathing in Flint River tap water—was brought to the nation’s attention. And last fall, over 10,000 Keystone Pipeline resisters showed up at Standing Rock in North Dakota to show solidarity with the Sioux tribe protecting the Missouri River....
Tony Conrad is one of the unlikeliest figures to be the subject of the kind of late-career historical recontextualization that authenticity-starved hipster youth have made their simulacral avant-garde. Don’t get me wrong. His bona fides are all in place; a pivotal figure in 1960s NYC experimental circles—the Velvet Underground was formed in his loft for God’s sake!—but his scattershot oeuvre and...
“She’s famous for her use of negative space.” The security guard’s soft voice wafted over to me from the corner of the gallery. I stood in the white cathedral of LACMA’s Broad Contemporary building, narrowing my eyes at a huge expanse of what looked like nearly nothing. MacArthur “Genius” Grant-winning Toba Khedoori’s massive and recondite oil-on-wax drawings of a table and a chair, a...
Every now and then an artist pops above the horizon line with a private cosmology like the late Mati Klarwein whose Aleph Sanctuary in the 1970s was a marvel of jewel-like paintings. An artist like Alex Grey known for his visionary painting and his "Chapel of Sacred Mirrors" currently resides in Chelsea, New York. For one month right in our very midst and showing at the Highways Performance...
As every year, since 2004, Zona Maco, one of the most important Latin American art fairs, was carried last week in Mexico City with the participation of more than 150 galleries. Founded by Mexican Zélika García, Zona Maco is such a big and social event in a city plenty of museums—170 according with the Ministry of Tourism—and with an increasing number of contemporary art galleries. Besides...
A pair of exhibitions each in their own manner engage with formula and intuition. In Portraits: Invented Subjects and Divergent Styles, 90 works (all acrylic on paper, 30 x 22 inches, 2015-22) by Nathan Redwood form a tight procession flanking the walls in grids and...
Lethal Amounts in Downtown LA is well known in the underground scene for being a venue which supports alternative music and outsider artists. This unconventional venue is the locale for Emma Ruth Rundle’s first solo show entitled Dowsing Voice. Rundle is originally...
Octavia E. Butler's speculative fictional imagining of Los Angeles seems to inch closer and closer to nonfiction as our apocalyptic reality grows louder and hotter by the day. At REDCAT, the exhibition of new work by American Artist shows how Butler’s words are so...
Cold sheets of perforated metal gnaw quietly at severed plaster limbs inside Matthew Brown’s La Brea gallery. Despite the unsettling horrors this description might conjure, Jeffrey Meris’ exhibition, "be ever wonderful," is deceptively healing and hopeful. A series...
The tradition of organic and biomorphic form sculpture is one of the most singularly important in modern and contemporary art. Stretching all the way back to the undulating serpentine forms of the Läocoon, the tradition really took off in the early 20th century in the...
Every so often I make it a point to see plays that I’ve seen before – plays I thought terrific or felt could have been done better. In the latter case, when the play is done better, it’s an especial joy. This is the case with the current Sierra Madre Playhouse...
As my feet touch the terrain of compact, glittering soil that covers the floor of the Hammer Projects space, it feels as if I’m stepping into another realm, another planet even. Kiyan Williams’ solo exhibition, "Between Starshine and Clay," curated by Erin...
The creation of Black superheroes in Marvel Comics during the Silver Age (comics published from 1956–1970) and Bronze Age (comics published from 1970–1984) has consistently been the exception and not the rule. There was Black Panther (1966), Blade (1973) and Monica...
Fawn Rogers' exhibition "Your Perfect Plastic Heart" at Wilding Cran Gallery presents a series of paintings depicting oysters and their gooey erotic membranes. At first glance, these works struck me as a cross between Marylin Minter and Chloe Wise–glittery...
Three fine solo shows of paintings offer personal perspectives as unique as the artists who created them: Laura Krifka, Evita Tezeno, and Nancy Evans. Krifka’s “Still Point,” is a beautiful tribute to light, the human body, and the human heart. With domestic settings...