Wanly illuminated in the sickeningly greenish aura of an outdoor motel lamp, a woman's partially clothed body lies lifeless at the threshold of Room # 118. Inside, a reverse peeping Tom anxiously peers out the window, hunching before another woman's body, his piercing...
Sol LeWitt was (and still is) a major influence in the realm of conceptual thinking. During his lifetime (1928-2007) he championed and supported many artists, and over the years his influence has become widespread. LeWitt was among the first to create not only site...
As soon as the exhibition opened at DENK gallery last Saturday, the space circulated with a plethora of gallerygoers who attended to see the work of Renée Lotenero and Soo Kim—luckily we were amongst the crowd. Upon entrance into the first room, we were captivated...
Challenging traditional conceptions of photography, Klea McKenna creates embossed photograms based on haptic, rather than visual, impressions. In a darkroom, she generates each image by pressing light-sensitive paper against an object and thus capturing the item's...
Lita Albuquerque’s Auric Field paintings have graced museums and galleries throughout the Southland and beyond since 1998. With each meditative piece featuring a black background, surrounding a gold or silver-leafed circle, which itself has a blue aura, the effect...
Like many Pre-Millennial truths that were once irrefutable, the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is waning into obsolescence. After all, what is the utility of a book cover in the era of e-books that claim neither form nor substance? In his exhibition...
Upon walking into Paolo Colombo’s opening at Baert Gallery last Saturday, we were immediately absorbed into a world of visual poetics. Contrary to most openings, which tend to be more reliant on interaction with the overall “scene,” each of Colombo’s works posed...
It is not uncommon for an artist to begin with images from a personal archive amassed over time and use these fragments as a range of raw material. Anthony Giannini's mixed media paintings are all about recontextualization. He draws from a wide range of sources...
Two artists exploring aspects of their Islamic heritage and personal identities converge in a pair of enchanting shows at New Image Art Gallery. Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Brooklyn-based artist Hiba Schahbaz applies her rigorous undergraduate training in...
"WISHFUL THINKIN'," the title of Sarah Cromarty's show at Klowden Mann, indicates its tenor of hope against hope. Cromarty layers cardboard, digital prints, paint, glitter, rhinestones and sundry other materials to create 3D paintings affecting appearances of escapist...
There is something delicious about the commingling of delight and horror, or really any opposition of sensations pushed to their extremes: confectionary sweetness with an aftertaste on the wrong side of savory—the foreshadowing of decay; the sweetness of...
The surrealist impulse in art taps into not merely a human stream of consciousness, but the life and aura of everything around us, from the natural and organic to the built or crafted an inanimate. Nothing is definitively inanimate in the surrealist domain. Warhol saw...
The LA gallery scene was stacked with quite the line-up for openings this weekend, making it difficult to decipher which to hit and which to save for a later date. However, Ron Arad’s debut exhibition of CUBA working title, at Over the Influence Gallery was too...
Presenting Euripides’ The Bacchae against the backdrop of the Getty Villa has to be as challenging in sheer existential terms as it is technically to a theatrical artist. It’s a play that addresses both the essential conditions of the theatre and civilization’s...
Major religions don’t do much image control; with his long hair and white skin, the hippyesque Jesus of the 21st century looks identical to the savior of the 11th century. The Buddha is also presented as the same old, same old; hair or no hair, it’s the smilin’ guy...
Channeling Death Valley into downtown LA, William Lamson has transformed Make Room into "Badwater," an ecologically themed installation as poetically evocative as it is scientifically ingenious. Via an elaborate system of pumps, fans, hoses, timers and other...
Positing achievements in the decorative arts as a viable window into any culture’s zeitgeist, Lari Pittman takes his flair for generating psychosocial motifs to a genuinely exciting new place in his latest collection. As the exhibition title hints, the installation...
There is probably no pianist still breathing who hasn’t been fascinated (and perhaps frustrated) by the 1915 Études of Claude Debussy. It’s a foundational suite in several senses. Students of the instrument may initially approach them (or at least the first couple...
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