Art Los Angeles Contemporary
SIGHTS UNSCENE
PROVENANCE The Watts Riots, Nickerson Gardens, and Black Lives Matter
In 1965, angry, fed-up citizens took over Watts, a historically Black neighborhood in South Los Angeles. Similar to the recent Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprisings, the Watts Riots began after police responded to a minor infraction with violence, arresting two Black men...
St. Elmo Village Thrives Today A Safe Space
Hidden in a quiet Mid-City tract is a Los Angeles art institution. Not that you’d know it if you didn’t slow down and really look for the five-lot compound on this quiet residential street. Otherwise you could easily miss the sign: “St. Elmo Village,” half hidden by...
Bunker Vision Relevant References
When the lockdown ends and art-making resumes, there will be plenty of temptation to make art about what is happening in the world. Referencing popular culture in your art can carry risks. Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons were both successfully sued for things they...
HOPPING ONLINE Virtual Viewing has its Virtues
During these last three months art galleries have been tripping over themselves to create virtual viewing rooms and walkthroughs, and to join collective ventures in online selling such as GALLERYPLATFORM.LA and FAIR (from New Art Dealers Alliance or NADA). Meanwhile,...
Shoptalk: LA Art News Taylor Brandon vs. SFMOMA; Museums and galleries may reopen
We Will Never Forget the Spring of 2020 On May 25 the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police ignited a tinderbox over continuing racial and escalating economic inequality in this country. Of course, we were already dealing with the dreaded COVID-19, with its...
BOOKS: Expansive Care A Conversation with Ceci Moss
Ceci Moss is the director of Gas—a truck gallery that serves as “a mobile autonomous, experimental and networked platform for contemporary art” in Los Angeles. She has worked as the senior editor for the digital archive Rhizome and her impressive curatorial background...
ASK BABS My Question to You
Dear Reader, Babs thinks now is the time we ask some important questions: Who are your friends, collaborators and colleagues in the art world? How many are white? How many are Black? How long has this been the case? Who controls the museums, galleries, fairs, auction...
POEMS "Gomorrah" by Eddi Saladoe; "Iron Anniversary" by John Tottenham
Gomorrah by Eddi Saladoe Right when I believed that I was finally free from the angry longing and a need to hear your voice just one more time you come to me in dreams like smoke sneaking under a bedroom door the innocent sleepers unaware that the civilization...
COMICS Above, The Law
Reconnoiter Interview with Cliff Benjamin
In 2003, Cliff Benjamin and Erin Kermanikian founded Western Project. The pioneers were the third gallery to open in Culver City. In 2015, they moved out of their space and now operate in our new virtual frontier. I caught Cliff on the island Maui. Beyond the obvious...
Tom Wudl: “The Flowerbank World” L.A. Louver Gallery, March 11–May 30, 2020
We live in a time when the value of the work of art in society has changed radically. In February, the whole mercantile mechanism of the art world was in full swing, and by the end of March, with the global pandemic, life as we have known it had more or less stopped....
All of Them Witches at Jeffrey Deitch
My experience at the opening night of All of Them Witches--snaking through the costumed crowds, the abundance of art from such a wide-reach of featured artists--78!-- was a maddening, sensual delight--because women, because witches. With so much to feast my eyes on,...
SHELTER-IN-PLACE: How Can We Revive Public and Participatory Art During Coronavirus?
Journalist Calvin Trillin once claimed that California had “a profusion of lawn sculpture…as a natural product of a large retired population and a climate that permits outdoor hobbies.” Quirky though California landscaping may be, its public art has always involved...
Profile: Robert Ortbal
Rather than pursuing variations on by now familiar themes, the Sacramento and Emeryville-based Robert Ortbal follows a path that may well twist into an entirely different dimension. Recently you might find the serious and intellectual Ortbal wearing an oversized dog...
SHELTER-IN-PLACE: Brigitte Lacombe Photography from a Distance
During the pandemic, celebrity portrait photographer Brigitte Lacombe has been sheltering in place in Northern California. Accustomed to working on film sets, theater productions, fashion campaigns, and glossy magazine spreads, Lacombe has used the past few months to...
MORE REASONS TO STAY IN YOUR BUNKER
It looks like this may go on for a while. Even when arts venues reopen, capacity is going to face new limits. Photos of theaters in Germany where seats have been removed to accommodate social distancing, in some cases show theaters with 75% of the seats removed. Large...
QUARANTINE Q&A: Solimar Salas of MOLAA
Are you still changing exhibitions as you would if open and are the exhibitions virtual-only now? How’s that going? We continue to have our exhibitions onsite and our new one, HERland, will open on August 22. Our online initiative through the MOLAA en Casa program...
