Articles

Unknown Landscapes
Jessica Taylor Bellamy Explores the Wetlands

“Can you smell the earth exhaling? I love the smell of moisture coming out of the ground,” exclaims artist Jessica Taylor Bellamy, inhaling the sweetness after the drizzling rain as we embark on our Sunday afternoon hike through the wetlands of South Los Angeles. As we descend the muddy hillside draped in bright yellow wildflowers, we share a moment of childhood nostalgia, recalling wild mustard...

Of Murals and Mullahs
The Revolutionary Graffiti of Iran

by Josh Herman

It began with marker on concrete: “Dear Zhina, you will not die. Your name will be a symbol.” Zhina was the Kurdish name of Mahsa Amini. On September 13, 2022, the 22-year-old was arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for wearing her headscarf too loosely. While in custody, she was murdered. Mahsa’s grandfather wrote those words on her gravestone. #MahsaAmini did become a rallying cry, igniting...

“Britt Ransom: Arise and Seek”
at Pitzer College Art Galleries

by Renee Reizman

When stepping into Britt Ransom’s solo exhibition, you face an archway. This reproduction, created with 3D scans, prints and a CNC machine, revives a signature piece of the Tawawa Chimney Corner house in Wilberforce, Ohio. Today, only the arch’s stone pillars remain, but Ransom dug into her family archives to find a photograph suitable for reference. In “Arise and Seek,” Ransom amplifies her...

Zak Smith and Making Art for A World That Is Falling Down
An Unburnt Witch: Zak Smith Drawings — Torrance Art Museum - March 25, - May 6, 2023

by Ezrha Jean Black

Full disclosure up-front: I am well-acquainted with Zak Smith as an artist. Before we met (in 2010), I was aware of his work only because of his inclusion in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and not incidentally because his work for that show had (what was for me) an irresistible hook: Pictures of What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow. The Torrance Art Museum will be...

All That Glitters
The Transformative Portraiture of Jamie Vasta

by William Moreno

One of my favorite paintings is a portrait of myself at the age of five or so, composed by my father. Along with my siblings’ pictures and beyond the sentimentality, these portraits have become distinctive family emblems and historical markers, wrought at a time of optimism and possibility. That singular ability to capture transitory moments and ephemeral character is the essence of portraiture,...

Brilliant Veils
Amir H. Fallah Creates Vibrant Artworks That Question Cultural Boundaries

by George Melrod

Entering a room of portraits by Amir H. Fallah, the first thing you’ll notice is that you can’t see their faces: the figures are cloaked. In one, the subject sits draped in a richly patterned blue-and-purple shawl, cradling what looks like a gilded African head in its lap. In another, a figure with purple arms strikes a pose seemingly drawn from ancient Near Eastern art, swathed in a lustrous...

On the Nose
Helen Chung Talks Anatomy

by Ezrha Jean Black

The afternoon we agree to meet for a quick Q&A over drinks, Helen Chung arrives at the restaurant slightly late (though not much later than me)—fittingly enough, from a commissioned portrait sitting. Engaged by the process, conversation and the resulting portrait itself, the subject has kept her somewhat longer than originally anticipated—commissioning a second portrait on the spot. ...

Frames Within Frames
The Photography of Grant Mudford

by Jody Zellen

Grant Mudford is a photographer with an extensive publication and exhibition history. Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1944, he studied architecture at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) and moved to Los Angeles in 1977. Since the 1980s he has functioned as a commercial photographer and became well known for his architectural and editorial work, along with his portrait photography. Last...

Spiritual Healing
Luis Sahagun's Cathartic Family Portraits

by David S. Rubin

As a practitioner of curanderismo, an ancient Meso-American system of folk medicine, Mexican-born, Chicago-based Luis Sahagun regularly performs limpias, traditional cleansing or “soul-retrieving” rituals. As an artist, he has applied this practice to the creation of portraits of people, living or dead, who are the chosen beneficiaries of his healing efforts. For a recent exhibition at Charlie...

Africa Around Town
“Adornment | Artifact,” Curated by jill moniz

by Bianca Collins

The Getty Villa’s exhibition, “Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan,” offers a stunning display of jewelry and items of personal adornment excavated from burials of royalty and aristocratic individuals from a region that spans what is today southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Almost 3000 years of ancient history are presented in exquisite examples of metalwork in silver, bronze and mostly gold,...

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Reviews

Kyungmi Shin
Craft Contemporary

In The Head in the Tiger’s Mouth (2021), the first composition in Kyungmi Shin’s kaleidoscopic exhibition, my eyes immediately landed on the luminous collection of swirls and stripes suggesting the calligraphic form of a tiger before catching on the colorful tableau...

Chris Eckert
Long Beach Museum of Art

Incessant texts and social-media alerts are inescapable facets of contemporary life, and artist Chris Eckert attempts to make sense of this glut of seemingly endless data. Eckert has successfully melded backgrounds in the fields of mechanical engineering and...

Chiffon Thomas
Michael Kohn Gallery

A church is a grand gesture to the community it serves and sustains. At its best it’s a hub, as well as a display of worship, tradition, sacrament and humility. A chapel by contrast is a modest little space—distinguished from the former by its size more than anything...

Uta Barth
1301PE

As part of her career-spanning 2022–23 survey, “Peripheral Vision” at the Getty, and in honor of the museum’s 20th anniversary, the German-American photographer Uta Barth presented an expansive commission entitled “…from dawn to dusk” (2022). Twice a month for a year,...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Everything But the Kitchen Sink
La Luz De Jesus

California amusement parks like Disneyland are multi-layered entertainment fantasies, offering created environments for escapism and joy-filled distraction. These tourist sites entice visitors with adventurous rides, performances and tantalizing food. Similarly,...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Covey Gong and Monique Mouton
Bel Ami

The meeting of Covey Gong and Monique Mouton at Bel Ami is like watching the contact of two elements transforming one another. While their respective works are satisfying on their own, together, Mouton’s mixed media on paper and Gong’s tactful sculptures, spotlights a...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Christopher Culver
Michael Benevento

If—in the next couple days—you are keen on communing privately with melancholic beauty (or “tough joy,” as the artist might have it), visit Christopher Culver’s latest suite of charcoal and pastel drawings on paper at Michael Benevento Gallery. Never mind the...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Alice Wang
Vincent Price Art Museum

In his journals from his first expeditions in the Sierra Mountains, John Muir wrote, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” The interconnectedness of our world stretches beyond our innate abilities and into...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Matthew Barney
Regen Projects

Somewhere between warfare and entertainment, sports as a spectacle is deeply rooted in the ways modern societies organize, present and consume events and expectations. Pacing through "SECONDARY: commencement," there is a sense of nostalgia that belongs to a media...

OUTSIDE LA: Margot Samel New York
“Thank you, I’m rested now. I’ll have the lobster today, thank you”

Two galleries have teamed up to co-present the group exhibition, “Thank you, I’m rested now. I’ll have the lobster today, thank you,” borrowing its title from Karen Kilimnik’s 2016 collage of a Siamese cat poised on a Rococo-style bed. Margot Samel from New York and...

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