I have had the opportunity to visit the Venice Biennale on numerous occasions. In reflecting, I realize that what makes one trip stand out over another is the totality of the experience and not the specificity of the art. How can one not love Venice? Navigating criss-crossing bridges and canals to find an installation that completely takes over and transforms an ancient palace is always one of...
In Sandra de la Loza’s art, research—what she calls “the archive”—is central to her process. Treating archival material as mutable; she relies on it to expand narratives about history. She is also involved in community activism. Not everything she does is art, or at least happens in that context. But if art serves as a metaphorical megaphone, she uses it to broadcast loudly, aiming to erase the...
Ana Serrano’s colorful cardboard sculptures of cityscapes and buildings, inspired by Latin American vernacular architecture, will be featured prominently this fall in two PST: LA/LA exhibitions. “The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility” at the Craft and Folk Art Museum will include her sculptures Cartonlandia (2007) and Chalino (2008); additionally, several of Serrano’s smaller...
When I heard the title of Jose Dávila’s recent book, Daylight Found Me with No Answer, it sounded familiar. During the years I was living in Guadalajara, I frequently talked with Dávila and other mutual friends at endless parties that lasted until dawn. But I hadn’t seen Dávila since those distant days and this was the first time I had ever paid him a studio visit. He was finishing a public...
Every morning I wake up and see At Home with the Nortes (1990). In this black-and-white photograph, a family sits in the living room watching television. This could be construed as a typical family activity, but the family is hardly typical in Laura Aguilar’s depiction. Each face of its four members—two young boys, father and mother—is made up in the style of the Mexican Dia de los Muertos. The...
The ornate paintings depicted in Robert Ginder’s first solo show at Craig Krull Gallery induce nostalgia, especially for those Angelenos. Palm trees, long-standing businesses, bungalow-style homes, and points of attractions rise from their gold leaf-encrusted wooden...
I’ve always enjoyed the playful and uninhibited spirit of summer group shows, unbridled by the circuits and agendas of the art market. Chirs Sharp’s exhibition, “A Minor Constellation”, perfectly exemplifies this kind of delightful candidness. The show features a...
Co-curated by Liz Gordon (of Loft at Liz's) and Monique Birault, the 15th iteration of Gordon’s ecologically driven “Diverted Destruction" is both exciting, and more visually spare than past exhibitions. Rather than filling the main gallery space with smaller pieces...
Artists Casey Kauffmann and John de Leon Martin have created a super-collage at Human Resources, Los Angeles. A messy collision of screens, drawings and passionfruit vines engulf the gallery space with the intention to bamboozle. The duet’s maximalist installation...
Cornelia Parker's landmark retrospective at Tate Britain journeys through her multimedia work to narrate a country willingly stuck in small-island-energy. Parker (b.1956) examines objects by considering how they change when their associated value is disrupted,...