R. Crumb’s “tales” (even filtered through psychedelics and cannabinoids) weren’t always so paranoid—though they were frequently calamitous. The street-hip graphic domain Crumb freely improvised during the 1960s and 1970s across densely cross-hatched black-andwhite...
I felt dizzy at mosie romney’s show “every Spiral has its law” at Sebastian Gladstone. I could chalk it up to external factors (fatigue, harsh gallery lighting), but I suspect that the work itself was the incubator of disorientation. My previous visits to the space,...
Entrusted to the sprawling Skirball Cultural Center in Brentwood by New York’s Jewish Museum, “Draw Them In, Paint Them Out” presents a handful of Philip Guston’s depictions of cowled Ku Klux Klan figures, alongside Trenton Doyle Hancock’s ambitious, mixed media...
150 years after the Civil War, it seems American art institutions are finally ready to discuss Confederate statuary. Seizing this opportunity, curator Hamza Walker (along with co-curators Bennett Simpson and Kara Walker) has gone to unusual lengths in his sprawling...
Ah, yes, the front room at Hauser & Wirth: the room you usually walk past on the way to the better shows in the back. There’s a certain type of painting one expects here: Blue Chip filler, the type of young artists who get mentioned in Vanity Fair articles. Where...
You get a brief shot of Matinée, a new project space thought up by Los Angeles-based artist Andrew J. Greene, at around minute one of a video posted by a daredevil urban explorer YouTuber, Davy, titled “EXPLORING THE ‘WARNER BROS’ THEATRE IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES.” In...
Though I grew up with pets, I’ve never taken to them. As a boy, we had a beast of a dog, Soxy. She was scary and insane, except for when my older brother could tame her long enough to let me ride her around like a pony. My mother preferred fish, silent and remote,...
The seminal Jeffrey Deitch exhibition “Post Human” (presented in 1992 and reimagined in 2024) explored evolving concepts of identity in the digital era. “The Abstract Future” feels in some ways like its spiritual sequel. Brilliantly curated by Alia Dahl, the gallery’s...
When The Pit announced a show by the late ceramicist Viola Frey, it piqued my editorial interest. I myself first became aware of Frey when I began taking ceramics courses with other sculptors, who would often speak of her as a totemic influence on their practice and...
There is a moment in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass when the Unicorn says to Alice: "Well, now that we have seen each other…if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.” The private question of whether one sees themselves reflected in the art that is...
The flattening of high and lowbrow imagery is certainly not new, indeed the painter Jason Fox has been mining this territory since the early 1990s. In his current show at David Kordansky Gallery, “Why Are You Sitting in the Dark?,” Fox refines his enigmatic...
This, remarkably enough, is Carolee Schneemann’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, six years after her passing. Schneemann may be late, but her show isn’t. It may indeed be a case of too little; the sparse hanging (8 wallworks and an installation) barely hints at...
Christine Sun Kim’s work leaves little room for misinterpretation. Clarity, for Kim, is a reality of survival. “American Sigh Language,” the artist’s recent solo exhibition at François Ghebaly, makes it clear: for Kim and other Deaf individuals, intelligibility serves...
Impressionism, with its kitsch trinkets and gift shop ephemera, lives in a realm of surfaces. I’m not alone in thinking this—most of us know Monet through wall calendars, not the Musée. The prevalence of these reproductions make the originals, when seen, difficult to...
On the top floor of The Gaylord Apartments, a spare selection of seven new paintings by Magnus Peterson Horner tingles the optic and haptic senses, even when they’re barely paintings, even when they’re barely there at all. Horner paints people as if sensed through...
The delicate line-work in these semi-abstract sea/land/sky-scapes is incredibly controlled, almost to a fault. It doesn’t leave much room for the unexpected. This might be okay except that the overall vocabulary of forms is a bit too constrained. For instance, the...
The title “positioner” refers to the photographer’s inclusion of himself in several of these photos as he positions his models, most of which are queer men and women. These are a reflection on studio portraiture as a specific social context. They explore the...
The centerpiece of this show is a carpeted wooden platform, covered with white on blue stars like an American flag. Various Small Fires’ owner, Esther Kim Varet, is running for Congress, and this mini-stage is meant for use by her campaign. What Varet and artist...
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