conceptual art
COMICS
David S. Rubin California State University Northridge, West Gallery
It has been a while since David Rubin ended his long and distinguished career as an institutional curator, but he continues to write and curate—and continues to produce art as well. Rubin had put aside his youthful artmaking once his curatorial direction took over,...
Top 10 Picks of 2021
I resisted compiling this list (the limitations of which are obvious); but then thought: “Wait! In this awkward year of slow emergence from a pandemic that may never really be over, how many really great shows could there actually be?” Until, as I went over the shows...
OUTSIDE LA: Jasper Johns Philadelphia Museum of Art
As the room unfolds before a viewer’s eyes there is a veritable procession of numbers going from one to nine through all the gyrations of being outlined, filled in or partially obscured. It is as though the sequence of this set of well-known forms is taken...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Jeffrey Deitch Group Show Curated by Kehinde Wiley
Born in 1935 and raised by sharecroppers during an era when rural Alabama was segregated, Simmie Knox persevered by making history in 2004 as the first Black artist to have his work selected for the official Whitehouse portrait collection—his rendition of former...
OUTSIDE LA: Jennifer Bartlett Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Various sizes of square panels mostly covered with dots with groups of parallel lines and occasional fields of paint line the gallery walls of Locks Gallery in Jennifer Bartlett's installation "Recitative"—its title derived from a rhythmic free form vocal style of...
More Fireworks for MOCA Art Brief
One of the most memorable events at MOCA occurred when Chinese-American artist Cai Guo-Qiang exploded gunpowder from an exterior wall of the Geffen Contemporary just after sunset, setting off blinding and spectacular explosions before a huge crowd unprepared for such...
ASK BABS FRIEND’S ART SUCKS
Dear Babs, My longtime friend recently started painting and selling his art online. We live in different cities, and it’s been hard to meet because of the pandemic, but he’s having me over soon, and I know he’s going to want my thoughts about his art. The problem is I...
Keith Walsh Rory Devine Fine Art
Historically, art and politics have often been intertwined. In Dada, Futurism and Russian Constructivism, as well as in some Conceptual art practices and works by individual artists such as Sister Corita Kent, text and image have emblazoned artworks with calls to...
COMICS Future Features for Creative Creatures
COMICS Concerned Creative Artists Against Climate Change
Dozie Kanu’s “to prop and ignore” Manual Arts, Los Angeles
The sculptures in Dozie Kanu’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles flirt with functionality but refuse to reveal a clear purpose. Instead, these stylish hybrids possess the elegance of aspirational interior design and the subtle menace of dystopian relics. Many of...
Remarks on Color: Subterranean Smog September's Hue
Subterranean Smog is not one color or another, but a sickening miasma of grays, browns and a lingering smoky orange. Drawn from the bowels of the earth, SS identifies with the antihero -- Pig Pen in Charlie Brown, Sir Gawain, the Green Knight, Alex from a Clockwork...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Shoshana Wayne Gallery Group Exhibition "Above & Below"
Fans of Los Angeles' Craft Contemporary museum will enjoy Above & Below at Shoshana Wayne Gallery. The exhibition features twelve artists working in textile art, ranging from ethnic craft traditions to the wildly unconventional. The show marks the Los Angeles...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Vera Lutter Los Angeles County Museum of Art
One of the most uncanny things about the photographs in Vera Lutter's exhibition Museum in the Camera, is the fact that many of the galleries depicted, as well as the buildings themselves are no longer there. Lutter shot on site at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
John Knuth’s The Dawn John Knuth and Writer Matt Stromberg talk Horseshoe Crabs, Manet, Realism and Kids in a Vaccinated World
John Knuth is a Los Angeles-based artist who recently had a solo show with Hollis Taggart Gallery in Southport, CT. His work explores how humanity and material and the natural world intersect and influence each other. “The Dawn” ran from May 15–July 3. MATT STROMBERG:...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Lygia Pape Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles
Red is the color of extremes, especially the Cadmium Red Deep of Lygia Pape’s posthumous show “Tupinambá” up at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles. The same red as both Valentine’s Day ornamentation and oxidized blood—red represents birth, seduction, war, death and a...
Shoptalk Return of Art Fairs, Painting is "In," and What The New Normal Looks Like
The New Normal We thought the world would end in fire, or possibly in ice. And now we know it can end with a virus. As a child growing up in Taiwan and then later in the US during the Cold War, I often imagined—and literally dreamed—how the world would end....
