Elizabeth Turk transforms huge blocks of marble into refined sculptures, pieces that display classical beauty and technical virtuosity. Observing the graceful artist at work in her studio in a Santa Ana marble yard—wearing ear protectors, safety glasses and padded cycling gloves, surrounded by dust and the ear-splitting sounds from the drilling of the stone—is to witness the magic of turning raw...
When Kai Loebach emigrated to Los Angeles 27 years ago, after a brief vacation during which he was blown away by the friendliness of the people and the “visual orgasm” of a clean-as-new supermarket in the San Fernando Valley, he knew no one, had no place to stay and didn’t know the language. Studying of any kind, especially English, was not on the top of his list. As a young man, he was...
Once a city on the margins of the art world, Hong Kong now sits center stage, boasting the world’s third-largest art market. A wealth of galleries, museums and art centers can be found on either side of Victoria Harbor, which separates the commercial center, Hong Kong Island, from the Kowloon Peninsula, notable for its colorful open-air markets. Exploring the city’s diverse art offerings, I’m...
If you have been in any number of major cities this summer across the U.S., you might have seen a billboard with the hashtag caption #ArtEveryWhere alongside a reproduction of a famous work of art. According to the tagline on the #ArtEveryWhereUS website, this is “A Very Very Big Art Exhibition.” Apparently, what looks to the uneducated eye like lackluster museum advertisements are actually art:...
One artist who is returning to his roots after spending the last several years working on massive projects is sculptor Charles Long. For his next major exhibition “Up Land,” at his gallery Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea, Long is embracing his personal style of hands-on production, which made him popular years before any of HIS major projects.Working as Long’s studio manager through many of those...
The residential valley neighborhood wasn’t what I was expecting when I went to Chas Smith’s studio for our interview. Big shade trees lined the wide boulevards of modest houses and neat lawns. Smith has been Paul McCarthy’s main art assistant for over a decade, and for some reason I was thinking the area would be trashier, near a remote woodsy area. I guess I was already typecasting Smith in my...
Up-and-coming Los Angeles-based artist Christian Tedeschi describes his former boss, Nancy Rubins as “a tornado—so much energy.” The 40-year-old assistant professor and head of sculpture at Cal State Northridge recalls his experience as a studio assistant with a combination of reverence, awe and pragmatism. His admiration for Rubins—both as an artist, and as a person—is clear. “She is no...
Many young artists, especially those coming right out of school, find working as a studio assistant to be a valuable intermediary step. If they are lucky, they learn practical skills—and perhaps even more importantly—they make significant connections with more accomplished artists.Rebecca Ripple completed her MFA at Yale in 1995 and decided to move to Los Angeles. She identified five women...
Yes, Shepard Fairey is a street art superstar, a highly collectible blue-chip artist, and a household name worthy of museum retrospectives. Fairey’s also a multiple-city muralist, a curator of talent with his own Subliminal Gallery and most recently a co-producer of the massive Art Alliance: “The Provocateurs,” extravaganza in Chicago—Lollapolooza’s answer to the art world.However, Fairey will...
Unbeknownst to many, the majority of sculptors that are known for creating large sculptures in bronze, never actually work with the material. Rather they sculpt in some alternative natural—such as clay or wax—then when the final aesthetic is reached, the object is handed off to a bronze fabricator—a foundry person—to change the sculpture’s materiality. The job of the foundry is to take that...
The garage has a long and glorious history as a place where inspiration happens—the site of tools, tinkering, rehearsing, inventing and restoring from rock bands to classic cars to scientific discovery. In Gary Simmons’ new exhibition “The Engine Room” at the Henry...
One of the most uncanny things about the photographs in Vera Lutter's exhibition Museum in the Camera, is the fact that many of the galleries depicted, as well as the buildings themselves are no longer there. Lutter shot on site at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
The pair of shows on view at Gagosian, Frank Gehry’s “Spinning Tales” and Nancy Rubins’ “Fluid Space,” are as dissimilar as they are masterful. Two artists, whose works are to be found in the halls of major museums and on city...
During the last year, proximity became a defining characteristic of our daily lives. Geographic proximity limited our access to family, friends and resources, and ideological proximity determined the news we consumed, the information we shared and the concepts we...
The act of self-disclosure is an intentional revelation of one’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings to another individual; it is part confession and part declaration. The 11th Biennial Ontario Open Art Exhibition at the Ontario Museum of History and Art was an aesthetic...
“Sugar Houses” is another production that was stopped in its tracks last year by COVID, but fortunately REDCAT has managed to stage it as their first live production since the pandemic shutdown, if only for a week (July 8 -11). This kinetic piece of dance-theater is...
Her multilayered works encompass oil, watercolor, and collaged paper cut outs. The works exist in the Black Atlantis.
The gap between memory and history has never been more obvious than since the proliferation of photography. History presents a narrow view of our past: the highest achievements and the lowest atrocities – which can even be the same depending on the historian. What is...
Red is the color of extremes, especially the Cadmium Red Deep of Lygia Pape’s posthumous show “Tupinambá” up at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles. The same red as both Valentine’s Day ornamentation and oxidized blood—red represents birth, seduction, war, death and a...
I feel like most people would have a tough time imagining something more ideologically opposed to art than data analytics. Even the phrase sounds unartistic, more at home in investment banking than gallery houses. Art just feels too subjective to be encapsulated by...