Your cart is currently empty!
Tag: art review
-
Jane Dickson
at KarmaI never feel hotter or more detached (indeed, more American) than in a car, windows down in the August heat. It’s an exercise in movement, longing on an unremarkable plane of asphalt. Each lane is a pulse, where everyone seeks a false salvation. Jane Dickson’s new paintings on astroturf capture these moments, underscoring the futility of escape from monotony, from yet another flaxen sunset. Her works of desolate roads, brake lights, and palm trees at night illustrate a search for significance in the ordinary. It conjures the sweetness of smoke from California wildfires. I brace myself to be engulfed, and I am, quietly, by the work’s nothingness.
-
Darya Diamond
at Sebastian GladstoneLooking at Darya Diamond’s limp latex sculpture, In Every Dream Home a Heartache (2024), I think of bruised skin, frail shoulders: a tired body collapsed on the floor — phallic, deflated, stamped with marks like a trampled body bag. Throughout “Sugartown,” intimacy battles urgency, particularly in the fevered silkscreen prints on bedsheets. These prints evoke the violence of desire; imprints from bodies and the filth left on the bed like scars. A surge of savage images — teeth, thighs, Virgin Marys — serve as feral, disobedient relics pressed onto a lover’s skin, only to fade in morning light or to be discarded. Diamond’s work lingers like the shadow of a worn body.
-
“Scupper”
at François GhebalyCurated to pose as a mirror to society’s collapse, “Scupper”’s artists address a spectrum of social ills from preservatives in food to inadequate healthcare. The six-page press release does a better job than some of the works themselves at justifying their presence in the gallery; however, there are some standouts. The sculptures by Cielo Saucedo and Analia Saban, as well as Maren Karlson’s hazy painting of failed state infrastructure are provoking and memorable. The most striking piece is Ed Ruscha’s video on the history of Elysian Park and Chavez Ravine, which shows that in-depth research is not incompatible with care and legibility.
-
Divya Mehra
at Night GalleryA mechanical broom wielded by a robotic arm sweeps across the floor under the corner of a custom-made carpet shaped like India. In an adjoining room, an enormous inflatable Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man lies face-down adjacent to a neon sign which reads “DIASPORA.” A small display of Sunday funnies-style cartoons with nuclear explosions in their backgrounds ring the walls. If you read the previous sentences, you now correctly understand the sum total of content in this exhibition. The actual execution adds virtually nothing to the concept. Perhaps Mehra’s intent is to render the evils of capitalism in a banal way, but this type of irony is nothing new.
*A previous version of this review misidentified the character represented in the show and included the word”oriental” to describe the style of carpet, and has been updated.
Divya Mehra: The End of You
Night Gallery
2276 E. 16th St.,
Los Angeles, CA 90021
On view through October 19, 2024 -
Raymie Iadevaia
at The Pit[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]Don’t let the cute animals fool you; these paintings are not so innocent. A vague sense of foreboding permeates these otherwise joyful works. In Iadevaia’s last show, climate apocalypse hovered in his portentous smokey-pink skies. Here, the colors tend toward a primary-centric palette which suggest heat maps, those innocuous harbingers of our likely doom. As paintings, these are impeccably executed in searing pigments with a pitch-perfect, almost fractal attention to detail. His painterly touch is loving but trepidatious, as it should be. Given the storybook atmospherics, I’ll leave you with this: A storm is coming…
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section] -
Gabriel Madan
at GattopardoNot all pop art is created equal. Gabriel Madan’s literally pops off the wall: As in, a colorful macaw plushie is affixed to one of his paintings, a heart-shaped tag reading “I’m a puppet.” I want to stick my hand up its rear and make it talk. Vulgar, yes, but tasteful vulgarity is the name of the game here: A wooden cross stands adjacent to an image best described as Big Bird trapped in a coloring book, only vaguely aware of his plight; a clown-alien-demon pops up in the corner of a scene like a jumpscare. The show avoids the pitfall of being overly representational; block letters reading “Amanda Bynes” are paired with anthropomorphized celestial bodies hovering above a cluttered room rather than the likeness of the actress. Cute? Creepy? Either way, I couldn’t stop staring.
-
“a field once more”
at Melrose Botanical Garden & Jane GalerieMelrose Botanical Garden is not actually a garden, but it might as well be. Tucked between thrift shops and piercing parlors on the avenue, the narrow gallery feels like an oasis. “a field once more,” a group show drawing upon Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows, lets the whisper of nature join the city’s chorus. Some works, like Sean McFarland’s Desert Sage (2024)—which flaunts the dainty outlines of petals, made with sagebrush trichomes and Great Basin Desert dust—show how darkness can illuminate rather than obscure. Others, like Jenna Garrett’s Fires (2024), hung high in a corner and folded over (such that studying it requires the viewer to crane their neck and squint as if observing a real-world spectacle), subvert archaic paradigms, presenting dark as stillness and light as chaos. Not only does the exhibition provide respite from the Hollywood sun—it leads visitors on a stirring journey through shades of shade.
a field once more
Melrose Botanical Garden x Jane Galerie
7406 Melrose Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90028 -
Michael E. Smith
at Chris Sharp GalleryMichael E. Smith’s unassuming, poetic sculptures are late capitalist Zen koans: riddles with no answer but which nevertheless spark a moment of satori. For instance, a milk carton covered in mirrors seems to suggest that we are all the lost children. But is this a joke or what? And to what end? The show-stopper is a large foam dice covered with actual bison scrotums. This might sound gimmicky but somehow isn’t. Despite their simplicity, none of these sculptures are easily reduced to a single obvious reading and offer something far more delicate: a collective invocation of absence, negation, and emptiness.
-
Oscar Tuazon
at Morán MoránOscar Tuazon’s activist art project LAWS: Los Angeles Water School combines high concept with a rigorous materiality. Machined folds and facets shape The Evening Redness in the West (2024) a C-print printed on an aluminum sheet that mimics the way coated analog photo paper responds to folding. Sculptural works incorporate architectural elements, and 2-D works with a circular theme represent the sun, moon, water distribution pipes, and the rings of a tree. One of my favorites of these is the cleverly titled Inner Ring (2024). Less successful are a series of marbled paintings—I get what they are trying to do, but am not a fan of the results. Overall, the show succeeds in showing rather than preaching.
-
Oshay Green
at C L E A R I N GI’m not sure I completely understand Oshay Green’s obliquely-named sculptures made of deconstructed leather couches, or how they relate to a series of embossed wooden slabs and a haunting wall work that imposes itself over the gallery like a giant spider. A legible press release might have helped me decipher how sculptures like Y- -M2-3 (2024), a sphinxlike sofa frame draped in suede and mesh upholstery fabrics connect with works like SMDMM (2024), a sheet of wood laser cut with a text version of the RIFF file of audio recording “Scared money don’t make money.” But perhaps I don’t need to totally understand, and it is enough to simply appreciate how Green’s works carry forward Mike Kelley’s abject-domestic vibes while offering something completely fresh.
-
Rema Ghuloum
at Philip Martin GalleryThis show has some of the best paintings that Rema Ghuloum has made, but that might be a problem. She’s honed this language—obsessively detailed, rainbow-hued, color field paintings—past the point of perfection. These paintings glow, but the unfinished, muddy, and off-kilter areas are just as compelling as the glimmering bits. At some point, the prismatic palette feels repetitive, and the impasto borders are too stabilizing. The best ones move away from that, with off-tones taking on a leading role. These are gorgeous but a little too fussy and controlling.
-
Carter Potter
at as-is.laSometimes art can just be a weird, cool thing that happened one time. Like, what if you took apart a three-part sectional, stacked it vertically, and poured eight gallons of house paint through it. This is a dumb idea, but dumb stuff can be fun. With art, one plus one can equal five. The piece has the raw physicality and gravity of a Lynda Benglis (famous for her poured latex pieces) but with more furniture involved. This type of grunge-era art has run its course but, as a throwback to a less professionalized moment, feels refreshing.
-
Austin Lee
at Jeffrey DeitchAustin Lee’s haunting soft-focus paintings are what I imagine my nightmares would look like if rendered in claymation and run through an AI algorithm. The artist’s digital/analog hybrids are creepy—a good kind of creepy, my kind of creepy. In the video Starers (2024), three long-necked creatures gaze at the viewer. The standout works are the video and sculpture. In the center of the gallery lies Blue Fountain (2022-24), a blue figure splayed on his back, its head—impossibly flipped and reversed —spews water from its mouth. The hologram Artist Head Crying Animation (Fan Video) (2024) is giving peak uncanny valley. This exhibition will get under the viewer’s skin and stay there. It cannot be unseen.
Austin Lee: Psychomachia
Jeffrey Deitch
7000 Santa Monica Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90038
On view through October 26, 2024 -
“signifying the impossible song”
at Southern GuildAt the entrance of the gallery, viewers are confronted by a massive wall work by Moffat Takdiwa, bhiro ne bepa (pen and paper) (2023), constructed from the detritus of late-stage capitalism and post-colonialist society. The artist embraces the texture and materiality of discarded toothbrushes, and keyboard keys among other objects in pattern and repetition. Oluseye’s Lady Soul (2022) consists of three vintage gumball machines stacked in a column, filled with cassette tapes labeled “Black” music, black-eyed peas, and synthetic braiding hair. Two rogue braids spill out from the upper spout, pooling into a spiral on the floor below. I visited to see works by my faves, Sanford Biggers and Zanele Muholi, but ended up discovering so much more. Despite, or maybe because of the mundanity of the materials, this is an elegant and powerful show.
signifying the impossible song
Southern Guild
747 N. Western Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90029
On view through November 14, 2024 -
Becky Tucker
at Steve TurnerI love seeing an artist push the boundaries of the medium. Becky Tucker does exactly that with stoneware creations that are —FIRE. They look like Clive Barker created the Cenobites from Hellraiser in a kiln lit by hell’s inferno. The most imposing pieces are a trio of life-sized anthropomorphic figures arranged in a battle formation. One of the figures, The Welcome (2024), has spikes protruding from the top of its head and exaggerated, long tongues falling from the gaping mouths of the three faces on the figure’s chest and outer thighs. 10/10 recommend seeing Turner’s stoneware apocalypse.
Becky Tucker: Umbra
Steve Turner
6830 Santa Monica Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90038On view through October 12, 2024
-
REALM OF THE SENSES
Jónsi’s “VOX” at Tanya Bonakdar GalleryJónsi, artist and frontman of Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, masterfully crafted a recent show titled “Vox” which challenges the definitions of visual, sonic and olfactory art, merging the mediums to form a multi-sensory exhibition that plays on the viewer’s mind and body.
The entry point to the show is Var (safespace) (2023), a tapestry of hundreds of micro speakers draped over a rope strung diagonally from one corner of the room to the other. Reminiscent of a rudimentary tent, the speakers emanate a mixture of bubbling water, faint whistling, ambient techno and other sounds that swirl together in a surprisingly gentle cacophony. The intensity of noise shifts as you walk around and under the sculpture, creating new sensations with every pass, all accompanied by a faint smell of cis-3-Hexen-1-ol, the semiochemical associated with the scent of freshly cut grass. Closing your eyes, the soothing and often nostalgia-inducing aroma intertwines with the sounds to transport you to a
tranquil space of your choosing.In a separate enclave of the gallery is Silent sigh (dark) (2023), a large sculpture, the face of which is a circle made of 100 different-sized speakers arranged with the largest in the middle and the smallest on the fringes, like some organism growing outward. A deep, metallic arpeggio-like sound filters out of them, and with each beat the speakers softly pulsate—pushing the noise from the sculpture’s center to its edges and back again, like a rock skipping on water or a heartbeat. Each note becomes physical as the speakers hammer forward with every beat. The subtle throbbing creates a visual ripple that carries your eye through the sound.
Jónsi, Vox, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. Combining the multitude of senses of the two sculptures, the immersive installation shines as the focal point of the exhibition experience. Behind a heavy black curtain, the darkened room is illuminated by four LED screens that run the length of each wall. In the center is a bench, with speakers underneath that vibrate through the body of anyone who sits on them. A deafening combination of Jónsi’s voice and AI-generated vocals resound throughout the room, passing beyond intelligibility as they mix in a dissonant yet beautiful sound. Fog-like air embraces you as vetiver and other earthy notes are vaporized into the room. The multisensory work builds on the basest interpretation of video art as light displays morph across the screens in response to Jónsi’s voice. In the thick atmosphere, the installation is all enveloping, with each breath contributing to the work. This deeply corporeal but highly ethereal show—even with your eyes open—is almost a holy experience.