The sculptures of Sergio Garcia contain an otherworldly essence. Like relics from an alternate dimension created by Salvador Dali, Henry Darger and Kaz Oshiro, Garcia’s surreal concoctions teeter on the brink of absurdity and play with the experience of living and growing in contemporary society.This second-generation Mexican-American Dallas-based artist discovered that he had a gift for...
As a student, seeking respite from the relatively hidebound painting department, I often retreated to the sculpture studios. There, the critical gaze of teachers seemed less intense; sculpture students did as they pleased. Around that time about a decade ago, I took Beginning Sculpture from Krysten Cunningham, who fostered critical dialogue around fundamental techniques of welding and casting. A...
Stefan Simchowitz is a controversial figure in the art world. He doesn’t own an art gallery yet maintains a large network of art collectors. He eloquently expounds upon art theory but is not associated with an art institution. He provides advice and monetary support to numerous artists whom he claims to have discovered but isn’t a conventional art patron. He doesn’t like to be called an art...
Where cities are being built up and money spent, local legislation has often passed a percent-for-art program; alternately, cities look to create stable partnerships between the public and private sectors, so some of that money is made available for public art, too. In the past, this has meant producing somewhat conventional monuments and commemorative images. Since the 1980s, public art...
At Esplanade Pierre Vidal-Naquet, l’Université Paris Diderot, Paris. Nancy Rubins,Monochrome for Paris, 2013,stainless steel and aluminum, approximately 40 x 50 x 40 feet,photograph by Erich Koyama,©Nancy Rubins.
The South Coast Repertory Theater’s production of Red, John Logan’s Tony Award winning play about abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, which opened in Costa Mesa on January 22, is directed by SCR’s Founding Artistic Director David Emmes and stars Angeleno Mark Harelik as Rothko. Harelik, a tall, slender man with a full head of hair, shaved the top half of his head and adopted a slightly...
Not all films about artists and the art world are silly, but most of them are. To paraphrase a Mark Twain quote, “There are lies, damned lies, and films about artists and the art world.” (Twain linked “statistics” with lies and damned lies.) From such films as the Vincent van Gogh epic Lust for Life (1956) to the Michelangelo biopic The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), we get overripe portrayals...
In an episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Louis CK takes Seinfeld out on his boat on the Hudson River. Looking across the water and admiring the skyline, Louis says, “New York makes me crazy. I love New York City. I love the different brick colors and the water towers.” It is a telling observation for the most part because it is not funny nor is it meant to be. It...
Seeming to arise from the video music world this past summer to land at MOCA, the path of “Kahlil Joseph: Double Conscience” may seem roundabout if one only follows the trails of his dreamlike images. Digging a bit deeper unearths multiple contemporary art connections: he’s the older brother to recently deceased painter Noah Davis of the Underground Museum (where Double Conscience/m.A.A.d. first...
We live in interesting times—possibly the end of time, or at least the end of history as humans have conceived it over the last few millennia (an irony Francis Fukuyama never considered in the dislocated thesis for his 1989 essay and 1992 book, nor for that matter many of his critics). These epochal changes have been accompanied by a shift of consciousness, reflected and complemented by a range...
Gianna Vargas’ latest body of work “Dessicate,” comprises photos taken throughout December of 2021 during the middle of the pandemic. The work stems from Vargas’ trip to Utah where she took images of the forest amid winter decay. I made my way toward the intimate back...
Dazzlingly inventive and lovingly curated by Jason Jenn and Vojislav Radovanovic, “A Practical Guide to Parlour Games & Magic” at The Loft at Liz’s, features work by Phoebe Barnum, Brad Davis, Adrienne Devine, Doug Hammett, Orit Harpaz, Jason Jenn, Ashley...
Upon entering the stunning new group show at Night Gallery, one of my first thoughts was: Why is it called Shrubs? A shrub conjured in my mind a certain nondescript, low-growing bush — nothing memorable and certainly nothing to write home about. But after walking...
Ilana Savdie’s first solo show with Kohn Gallery comprises 13 canvases and nine works on paper. Savdie uses vivid color, structure and composition to explore ideas of a liquid world as a metaphor to an ever-changing identity. The title of the exhibit “Entrañadas”...
To walk through Kentaro Kawabata’s solo exhibition at Nonaka-Hill is to be constantly excited by original and unexpected forms around every corner. Working with porcelain clay, Kawabata creates an alchemical wonderland by amalgamating innovative materials into...
The woodblock prints by American painter, Frankenthaler (b. 1928) that form "Radical Beauty" at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, follow the wave of recent retrospectives highlighting overlooked 20th-century female artists such as Hilma Af Klimt and Agnes Pelton....
Tim Hawkinson is full of surprises. He is an idiosyncratic artist who is at once a master craftsman, a scientist and a tinkerer who has an amazing facility with a wide range of materials and mediums. His works are precise and cerebral, yet often about the imprecisions...
As the omicron variant tightens its grip on the world, it seems like the light at the end of the tunnel is receding, evading us once again. For the first time in a long time, I recalled the anxious uncertainty that became all too familiar to us all in the early throes...
Hilary Baker calls her current show at Rory Devine Fine Art, Predators—which we might loosely define as any species that dares to assert its presence amongst the invasive, marauding, and all-devouring species of apex-predators, we know as humans. Baker’s subtitle is,...
Doubtless you’ve seen the billboards: the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit has shown in cities across North America, and now it’s Los Angeles’ turn. It’s Time To Gogh! commands the sign, and I oblige, stepping into the old Amoeba building on Sunset Boulevard, which will...