contemporary art
COMICS
Reconnoiter: Kimberly Brooks Interview with the artist
The acorn never falls too far. At age 12, an enterprising artist stood in front of White on White, the Kazimir Malevich painting at MoMA NY. She tugged on her father’s sleeve and asked the surgeon, “What does it mean?” His answer inspired Kimberly Shlain Brooks toward...
Pick of the Week: Taewon Heo Libertine
The silencing of protest is the hallmark of authoritarian governments. While often this silencing can be very bloody, the most effective form of violence is legislative. The fight for democracy in Hong Kong – and the accompanying crackdown – is a prime example of how...
Pick of the Week: Lawrence Calver Simchowitz Gallery
Lawrence Calver’s first US show at Simchowitz Gallery, “On the Off Chance,” is one of the most fascinating studies in material of any show in Los Angeles that I’ve had the chance to review. Calver is not a traditional fine artist; his background is in creative...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Naotaka Hiro The Box
Two side-by-side paintings face the gallery's front door, awaiting visitors like sentries. They have all the elements that characterize Naotaka Hiro's "Armor" exhibition, namely colorful swatches and fervid mark-making that expands from a vertical center line. The...
Pick of the Week: Guy Yanai Praz-Delavallade
Guy Yanai is irreplaceable. Not simply his vibrant, structured style (though that too is unique,) each of Yanai’s paintings carries an air of individuality and transience. Seeing them for the first time is a new wave crashing on the shore of your subconscious, dousing...
Outsider Art Fair & Takashi Murakami "Super-Rough" Group Show, New York
Outsider art is on display in full force in SoHo with a special exhibition hosted by the Outsider Art Fair and curated by Takashi Murakami. Focusing solely on sculpture, the exhibition brings together works by nearly 60 Outsider artists, a term that generally refers...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Rebecca Campbell L.A. Louver
The radiant and complex paintings in Rebecca Campbell's exhibition “Infinite Density, Infinite Light” draw from the past, yet are very much about the present. They explore the nature of family, the freedom of being a child and the fragile nature of memory. Using found...
Pick of the Week: Arnold Kemp JOAN
Art is a reflection of the artist. The culmination of personal experiences, years of study, and distinct perspectives that comprise their life emerge in their works. But none of us are infinitely unique – which is good, for if we were, we’d have no way to relate to...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Patrizio di Massimo François Ghebaly Gallery
Like Schrödinger’s cat, the figures populating the canvases of Italian painter Patrizio Di Massimo’s paintings exist in two potential states at once. In his newest exhibition, Close at Hand at François Ghebaly Gallery, time/space freezes in each of the five paintings...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Emil Alzamora Lowell Ryan Projects
Emil Alzamora’s “Waymaker” is like journeying through a series of time warps. Cement, steel and wood figures loom in various states of decay like Greco-Roman relics in a museum. Yet a modern sensibility invites the sculptures into a surrealist dream conjuring a...
Pick of the Week: Federico Solmi Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
Los Angeles is coming back to life. That’s a sentiment that somehow simultaneously feels cliché and unexpected all at once. But just look around: concerts are being promoted, theaters are rescheduling shows, and bar hoppers are, once again, singing far too loud at far...
Remarks on Color: Marooned Maroon June's Hue
Maroon is unmoored, untethered, unhinged and completely undone by the weight of isolation, marooned as she is on an unnamed island somewhere in the South Pacific. Alone, she communes with phantoms that include the likes of Oscar Wilde, Salome, Kierkegaard and of...
Pick of the Week: Roland Reiss Diane Rosenstein Gallery
If the uncanny valley had an interior decorator, their name would be Roland Reiss. The recently departed artist has a new exhibition at the Diane Rosenstein Gallery, featuring not only a host of recent works but also Reiss’ ground-breaking installation, The Castle of...
OUTSIDE LA: Derek Weisberg
From the outside, Trotter&Sholer’s current exhibition of works by Derek Weisberg might look like jarring Frankensteinian creations. With roughly hewn figural assemblages, mixed media collages, and fragmented bricolages of ceramic masks, the show reveals sensitive,...
OUTSIDE LA: Galleria Nazionale d’Arte, Rome Group Exhibition "lo dico lo - I say I"
The capacious white central gallery is filled with a medley of artworks that at first glance seem to have no apparent connection. Sculptures, photographs, paintings and ceramics are distributed evenly on the walls and floor. Eventually it becomes clear all of these...
Pick of the Week: Richard Nielsen Track16
The line between the real and unreal is a thin one. Just beyond the horizon, and beyond the corner of our eye, exists only the expanse of our imagination – what you might call magic. And it’s in this liminal space between magic and matter, fact and fiction, that you...
William T. Wiley (1937–2021) Paying tribute to an influential artist
Influential Northern California artist William T. Wiley passed away on April 25 in Greenbrae, CA. His combination of irreverence and spirituality so keenly reflected the spirit of our times, where we don't know quite what to believe, but would all like to believe in...