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HEAVY WATER Rethinking the LA River for Future Generations

HEAVY WATER
Rethinking the LA River for Future Generations

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The Los Angeles River is a permanent topic of fascination for artists in this city. In order to establish the city, bureaucrats and businessmen fought to colonize this humble waterway. They tore it away from Indigenous people, encased it in concrete, then rerouted it past the rancheros and into the burgeoning metropolis. Even if one never visits the Los Angeles River, its presence has informed...

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NATURE’S WAY Lucia Monge Collaborates with Her Environment

NATURE’S WAY
Lucia Monge Collaborates with Her Environment

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As a kid, Lucia Monge often gazed at birds through her grandfather’s binoculars, taking in the wonders of nature at an early age. Sometimes the birds looked so extraordinary and colorful that she pondered: Could they be real? Or were they something from a fairy tale? Those formative years in Lima, Peru, shaped Monge’s focus as an artist. “A garden is a great privilege,” she said in a recent...

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THE STARS ARE ALIGNED Lita Albuquerque on Observational Astronomy

THE STARS ARE ALIGNED
Lita Albuquerque on Observational Astronomy

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A matriarch of the Land Art movement that is closely associated with the American Southwest, Lita Albuquerque has engaged with the surface of Earth from the South Pole to Saudi Arabia, Peru to Paris. But she has always given special attention to the music of the stars, and to the desert—a fixture of both her Tunisian heritage and her life in LA. Albuquerque’s iconic celestial blue-and-gold...

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SENSE OF WONDER Innovation in the Islamic World

SENSE OF WONDER
Innovation in the Islamic World

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Centuries before Leonardo da Vinci lived and worked in Italy, a Persian astronomer, physician, geographer and writer was conducting research into the nature of the cosmos and man’s place in it. Zakariya al-Qazwini (d. 1283) wrote and illustrated The Wonders of Creation and Rarities of Existence (1280), a remarkable 13th-century document cataloging the earth, the heavens and the many forms of...

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DEATH OF A STAR Directed by Jasmine Johnson New Theater Hollywood

DEATH OF A STAR
Directed by Jasmine Johnson New Theater Hollywood

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The tedium of a particular self-consciousness ascribed to Generation Z was on full display in The Death of a Star, a performance and self-proclaimed “reality show,” directed by Jasmine Johnson, which had a sold-out four-day run at New Theater Hollywood (NTH) this June. The black-box theater, run by the artists Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel, which has quickly made a name for itself as one of the...

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NO REALER THAN OTHER THINGS Focusing on the Positive at This Year's Whitney Biennial

NO REALER THAN OTHER THINGS
Focusing on the Positive at This Year's Whitney Biennial

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The 2024 Whitney Biennial—“Even Better Than the Real Thing”—features artworks, films and performances by 71 artists and collectives. Within the show’s title is an obvious allusion to AI, but the Whitney suggests that it also raises the possibility of other ideas of “the real,” giving artists considerable latitude to explore the body, identity and precariousness of the natural world. Chrissie...

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(BITTER) SWEET VIRGINIA Navigating Monuments in the Cradle of the Confederacy

(BITTER) SWEET VIRGINIA
Navigating Monuments in the Cradle of the Confederacy

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In March, an invitation to view ceramic work by New York–based artist Patrice Renee Washington brought me to Richmond, Virginia, for the very first time. A midsize  Southern city often referred to being as far north as one can get until one is in the North, Richmond’s reputation preceded itself. When I informed friends about the impending trip, they were quick to remind me that it was once the...

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LESSONS TO BE UNLEARNED The 60th Venice Biennale is Less Art World and More Real World

LESSONS TO BE UNLEARNED
The 60th Venice Biennale is Less Art World and More Real World

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This year’s 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, titled “Foreigners Everywhere,” curated by Adriano Pedrosa from Brazil, takes an in-depth look at the work of more than 300 artists and collectives who have experienced exile and colonialism. Pedrosa’s thoughtful selections for the main exhibition and strong representation of immigrant artists in the pavilions resulted in an inspiring gathering of...

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CALIFORNIA GOLD Hilbert Museum Expands its Space and Collection

CALIFORNIA GOLD
Hilbert Museum Expands its Space and Collection

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Millard Sheets’ glass mural Pleasures Along the Beach (1969) adorns the façade of the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University in Orange, CA. Its brightly colored California scene, portraying sunbathers, birds and sailboats, beckons visitors to the newly expanded 22,000-square-foot museum. While the Hilbert Museum has many art pieces on display and in its collection, museum...

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DYSTOPIAN FILTERS Ethel Lilienfeld Considers the Nuances of our Virtual Selves

DYSTOPIAN FILTERS
Ethel Lilienfeld Considers the Nuances of our Virtual Selves

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Technology cannot be separated from the world we live in today. Indeed, post-pandemic, we are experiencing even more of our daily lives virtually. This phenomenon lies at the core of French multidisciplinary artist Ethel Lilienfeld’s work. Using video, installation and photography, Lilienfeld examines our relationships with technology and the virtual body—avatars we create to engage in digital...

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Reviews

Haunting House at Departure Lounge

Haunting House
at Departure Lounge

The last time Jamison Edgar curated Matthew McGaughey was at Honor Fraser, where I had VR sex with the Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines. I wore goggles with Chip’s POV and had an unforgettable sexual experience with a creepily uncanny version of Joanna through...

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Shiva Ahmadi at Shoshana Wayne

Shiva Ahmadi
at Shoshana Wayne

A welcome break from hordes of contemporary painters retreading 60’s rear-guard aesthetics, Shiva Ahmadi is instead reminiscent of her near-contemporary Wangechi Mutu. Here are the same flowing watercolor lines radiating thick tendrils of hair, the same cosmic mother...

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Sabine Moritz at Gagosian

Sabine Moritz
at Gagosian

Staggeringly reactionary paintings for a staggeringly reactionary world, Sabine Moritz serves up “lyrical abstractions” (this is a genre, not an assessment) with the warm Crayola-explosion palette of early Jasper Johns and the paint handling of a tamer and more...

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Elise Rasmussen at Night Gallery

Elise Rasmussen
at Night Gallery

The history of photographers capturing the West is as storied as the mythos of manifest destiny. Elise Rasmussen steps knowingly into this lineage and subtly pushes the contemporary momentum of turning towards the sculptural, beginning to break photography’s physical...

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“Actions” at Sarah Brook Gallery

“Actions”
at Sarah Brook Gallery

While the connection between the works in Actions is as ambiguous as its title, the exhibition braids together three artists worth examining individually. Laurel Nakadate’s installation serves as a wall-sized shrine for bridging time and absence, with altered...

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Beatrice Arraes at Sea View

Beatrice Arraes
at Sea View

The song Kukukaya, which partly inspired Beatrice Arraes’s solo exhibition, speaks of a game meant for four, but “Jogo de Mesa (Table Game)” feels purposely solitary, quiet—a slow reckoning with time, where winning was never the point. Her paintings, saturated in deep...

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Rocky Morton Shatto Gallery

Rocky Morton
Shatto Gallery

These paintings feature drip-like tendrils of paint, blown by a leaf-blower and sprawled across the canvas at all angles. Areas of the surface are covered at random but, more or less, evenly, like static. The process-based stochasticism is all too predictable. This...

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J. Parker Valentine at Bel Ami

J. Parker Valentine
at Bel Ami

The one large abstract drawing here, wedged precisely in between the ceiling and floor, explores a relationship between geometric form and explorative mark-making. The light touch is enticing, but the sketchy linework feels too beholden to the diagonal lines and ovals...

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Alexander Reben at Charlie James Gallery

Alexander Reben
at Charlie James Gallery

The central piece here is four split-flap displays showing AI-generated text and a large HD TV displaying images based on those texts. The problem is that AI images are already familiar enough to be corny. The upscale production values do not help, and the jokey...

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