Artist Ai Weiwei takes himself down a notch before you can with the title of his Haines Gallery show, “Overrated.” The works are largely reiterations or extensions of previous work for which he is already world famous; works in which he subverts the authority of history and of the power establishment. To the left as you enter the newly reconfigured gallery hang the 40 photographs from his...
One of Los Angeles–based artist Audrey Wollen’s Instagram posts features an undated 1890s painting in which a nude woman reclines, examining herself in a mirror she is holding up to her face. Red beads are wrapped around the woman’s neck and ankle, bringing to mind Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (“A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.”). Wollen...
“I’ve been going the wrong way for a long time … it’s sort of a reverse commute.” This is said by Todd Gray at the start of his 2010 performance, Caliban in the Mirror. This seemingly autobiographical, storytelling piece has Gray on stage with a few props—a camera, a large afro wig, a blackboard, a drum set—verbally leading the audience through his discovery of the right way to go with his...
Two hundred years ago, the hierarchy of subjects taught to academic painters placed history and mythology at the top, with landscape and still life at the bottom. This ranking followed the scala naturae, the ladder or scale of nature derived from Plato: God, followed by angels, demons, stars, moon, kings, princes, nobles, commoners, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants,...
The first to grow up in an image-centric world where the mass-dissemination of images via film, print and television started to infiltrate American culture on scales never before seen, those of the Pictures Generation found themselves grappling with notions concerning authenticity and authorship. Immersed within a world where the affluence of representation was starting to reveal its impact upon...
Inside American prisons, thousands of men sequestered in tiny, dim rooms spend their lives waiting to die. Outside, this marginal population is hardly considered, except as a seamy abstraction. SoCal-based artist Amy Elkins finds inspiration in prisoners’ hermetic introspections. Through her vividly evocative photographic series, “Black is the Day, Black is the Night” (2009–14) and “Parting...
As soon as I entered the recent exhibition “Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), things took a turn for the worse. Or anyway, I did. Because it was the last day of the “New Photography” show that MoMA does every two years, the gallery was packed. I turned to the only piece in the first room that offered an unobstructed view: photographer Natalie...
Jeremy Couillard says that the pleasure of working with virtual reality (VR) is that he can move away from “a deceitful world I deeply wish did not exist. I need to create an alternative to that universe so I don’t go insane.” A video and installation artist, and teacher at LaGuardia Community College, Couillard had a recent exhibition at the Louis B. James Gallery in New York. Visitors entered...
The world of contemporary popular culture has largely left the biosphere behind, for a world of limitless extraterrestrial space. It is not so different from the contemporary avant-garde, which remains a cerebral, intramural phenomenon. It takes an extraordinary, even cataclysmic, event to turn the conversation, the way we see and talk about art—sometimes even a change of civilization.The 2016...
Liberty Cabbage. Freedom Fries. Whenever a reactionary quorum congregates one can be certain no good can come of it. While our senate stages a work stoppage on judicial appointments, and a viable presidential candidate—best known for his government shutdown antics—suggests patriots patrol Muslim neighborhoods just to keep an eye on those people, it is instructive to review the bigotry of our...
Noelia Towers’ new collection of works, “Opening an Umbrella Indoors” (all works 2021), presents a world of dichotomies: pleasure/pain, soft/hard, natural/synthetic, obscured/vulnerable. The collection of paintings is consistent in its motifs of both overt and covert...
From George Washington’s celebrated portrait to Frank Sinatra’s mug shot, Raymond Logan paints a wide range of subjects with exquisite depth and color. His layered palette resembles sculpture, crafted of hue and shadow. While each portrait in his current exhibition is...
Capturing human dignity through drawing requires commitment not only to clearly see but to deeply observe. Current works by Richard Wyatt Jr. at Steve Turner gallery encapsulates such an act. As a muralist in the tradition of such predecessors as Charles White, John...
Trinidadian artist Miles Regis searches for hope and meaning in the ugly and chaotic. An astute social commentator drawing from his experience as a Black man who emigrated to America 31 years ago, Regis imbues each canvas with a rich visual narrative dealing with...
Karla Knight is sending us a message. With maps, symbols and UFOs, there are mysteries in every piece. Four decades worth of paintings, tapestries and drawings are on view in Knight’s first institutional solo show, “Navigator,” at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum...
“Let Me Talk” at The Brand Art Center has a lot to say. Curated by artists Ada Pullini Brown and Jill Sykes, the group exhibition’s inspiration comes from a fierce quote by Toni Morrison, stating “In times of dread, artists must never remain silent.” This varied body...
Survival is dependent on adaptability. But at what point will humans be willing (or forced) to become adaptable? Josh Kline's 16mm short film, Adaptation (2019–22), presents a future shaped by human destruction. New York City has become submerged by seawater due to...
Enlivened by the energy of Frieze Week LA, I went to The KNOW Contemporary to view curators Knowledge Bennett and Charles Moore’s group exhibition, “BLACK.” To my surprise, I’d stumbled into the installation’s culminating event, a panel discussion with its artists and...
We are supposed to wish upon them when we see them fall. But however sentimentalized shooting stars may be, they are merely rocky debris skimming the atmosphere — all their mythology is manufactured by those of us watching in awe from our Earthly confines. In the five...
Jonas Wood’s highly patterned and flattened paintings take up all four gallery rooms at David Kordansky Gallery. Evoking the decorative arts, their inherently “attractive” quality reminds one of a painted mosaic. Wood created this affect by using deliberate linear...