There’s a scene early on in the film The Night of the Iguana (1964) where Richard Burton, playing a jaded ex-priest-turned-tour-guide in Mexico, asks the bus driver to stop on a bridge. The passengers—a group of American matrons—are puzzled. “What are we stopping for?” one asks. “A moment of beauty…” says Burton, gazing wistfully at the locals on the riverbanks below—women cheerfully washing...
“Chris Burden: Extreme Measures,” at New York’s New Museum is the artist’s first major exhibition in the U.S. in over 25 years. A legendary provocateur, Burden has challenged traditional concepts of art through his galvanizing performance pieces and later thought-provoking sculptural work, consistently questioning physical, moral and structural limitations over the course of his 40-year career....
As the Los Angeles Aqueduct celebrates its 100-year anniversary this month, many art institutions and organizations are showing support in their exhibition programming. Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) in downtown Santa Ana erected a monumental installation in commemoration of the centennial birthday. Matt Moore & Braden King's "Cumulus" from Creative Capital on Vimeo. The Art Center invited...
Lately, I've noticed mysterious islands along California freeways. The half circumferences of curving transition ramps from one freeway to the next form their perimeters. Many contain terraces of plants native to this arid region, large rock formations, and gravel pathways. The islands are part of a new freeway beautification strategy built by the state of California’s freeway management...
In the middle of the sitting there was a knock at the door. A beautiful woman entered the studio. She did not say a word but went straight to the bathroom. The Grand Painter followed the young woman. He would be back in a few minutes. Then, there was the sound of people having sex behind the bathroom door. After a bath, the painter returned naked to the studio and continued painting. Lucian...
Leading artists from around the world gathered in Venice in October, not for the celebrated biennale, but for a project with even loftier ambitions—the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Launched in 2002 and renewed every two years, the Rolex initiative pairs young artists with world-class masters in seven disciplines to spark creativity and to “ensure that the world’s artistic heritage...
Next week an explosion of art, champagne, and parties descends upon South Florida in the annual blowout that is Art Basel Miami Beach. With all of the events, exhibits and parties at Basel Miami this year, it's hard to decide what to hit and what to miss. So here's our guide to the events we're looking forward to along with a map and addresses of all the venues. Events happening this year at...
I didn’t know what to expect on my first visit to High Desert Test Sites, a series of art installations and performances out in the desert organized by artist Andrea Zittel, Aurora Tang and their team. The most ambitious edition yet, HDTS 2013 featured some 60 projects, stretching from Joshua Tree to Albuquerque over a week, Oct. 12–19. Their mission has been to support “experimental art that...
LA’s rise as a major architectural center, chronicled by the Getty Research Institute in Pacific Standard Time’s ongoing and extensive set of shows, is difficult to reconstruct despite the copious evidence. The architectural history of Los Angeles is multifaceted and heterogeneous; each of the historical strands that make up that complexity forms a complicated set of relationships with a larger,...
Like its Himalayan literary counterpart, Joshua Tree’s Shangrila is a utopian vision; part dream, part tourist destination. Concretely, it’s a one-bedroom residence on Shangrila Lane, overlooking a seemingly endless expanse of undeveloped, government-owned desert. It’s remote enough to seem completely isolated, yet close enough to civilization that you can feel the earthquake-like blasts from...
How we balance our individual experiences within the larger scope of our lives in many ways determines who we are, and how we understand and relate to the world around us. Reflecting on the dense and often traumatic events of the past year, which included a global...
Upon entering Stephen Neidich’s solo show, “five more minutes please,” everything is stock still, until the clattering begins. It immediately becomes clear that one’s movements cause the Venetian blinds—hanging from the ceiling or against the gallery walls—to raise or...
Painter Amy Sherald became a household name in 2018 when her portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art. Sherald’s unique approach to studio portraiture and practice of universally rendering Black skin in grisaille (an...
There almost certainly are figures both human and animal, as well as a plenitude of botanical, arboreal, avian and possibly extraterrestrial apparitions inhabiting and defining the landscape-like spaces of Lucy Bull’s paintings. But closer contemplation makes it...
With a large grouping of esteemed photographers—Jo Ann Callis, Tania Franco Klein, Kennedi Carter, Graciela Iturbide, Katsumi Watanabe and others— it’s the curator, not the artists, who moderates the conversation. In a world defined by schisms and polarities, and a...
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman’s solo exhibition “Sighs and Leers and Crocodile Tears,” at first seems to be a curious series of clichés, but a story begins to unfold—through Silverman’s attention to detail—about the history of power, erasure, hierarchy and otherness that...
Johanna Breiding’s show of photography and ceramics at Ochi Projects defied singular characterization in favor of an enveloping tsunami of empathic correspondence—a tidal progression of images both intimate yet nothing less than oceanic. The exhibition’s slightly coy...
Tarik Garrett’s compelling show addresses how the past intersects with the present. This minimal, mixed-media installation brings together appropriated documents, Polaroid photographs, junked wood, metal fragments, a partial tree trunk equipped with speakers and a...
Artists Vonn Sumner and Holly Elander each offer astonishing exhibitions of intensely personal artworks, that coupled with intimacy also present a prescient commentary on current socio-political times. Sumner’s solo show, “Burning Down the House,” features oil...
“Beginnings,” the new show from Spanish artist Paco Pomet, is funny. Hard-hitting criticism, I know, but humor can be a rarity in the world of contemporary art. Most art that one could even remotely consider funny is usually of the ironic, intellectual variety, like...