“Building As Ever,” the 2017 California-Pacific Triennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, investigates the economic, political and social forces that affect the built environment. Themes of gentrification and dislocation, meditations about home and displacement,...
Forty-three works in an expansive range of media highlight Richard Deacon’s versatility in a broad yet uneven survey of the British sculptor’s art from 1979–2016 in “What You See Is What You Get” at The San Diego Museum of Art. Deacon’s austerely lyrical...
It used to be about the art. It used to be that seeing (and being told to step back from) a Picasso was enough. But, once again, millennials have ruined it for everyone. Simply admiring a statue is as anathema as simply watching a movie without simultaneously texting,...
Every now and then an artist pops above the horizon line with a private cosmology like the late Mati Klarwein whose Aleph Sanctuary in the 1970s was a marvel of jewel-like paintings. An artist like Alex Grey known for his visionary painting and his "Chapel of Sacred...
The graffiti artist John Crash Matos, known simply as Crash, started spray-painting buildings and trains in New York City in his early teens. Before long, he transitioned to showing in galleries. Although he may not be as renowned as colleagues Shepard Fairey or Barry...
The standard museum retrospective brims with artworks supported with biographical and thematic information. “Roy Lichtenstein: Pop for the People” brims with biographical and thematic information supported with artworks. Neither the selection nor installation of the...
For his exhibition, “Sunflower Seed” at Team (Bungalow), Portland born, New York based artist/programmer Tabor Robak has created custom built PCs with high definition display screens on which generative abstractions morph constantly. Robak's technical prowess creating...
Like many Cuban artists, Aimée García has learned how to avoid censorship while still communicating her message and ideas. In García’s current body of work titled “Suprematist Speech,” she combines self portraiture with appropriated fragments from the government...
he beasts of burden in Cynthia Minet’s conceptually and politically astute project include an elephant, pack dogs and birds of prey (vultures/falcons/raptors). Internally illuminated by LEDs and created from recycled and repurposed plastic fragments of all shapes,...
The term, “mindful awareness,” is a buzz phrase in current therapeutic and meditation circles (and, as I discovered a year or so ago, the institutional art world—or at least the Hammer Museum, by way of its alliance with UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center). But...
“A Better Nectar” is a rare exhibition merging art with nature, while focusing on the daily activities of bees—those diligent flying insects that pollinate our planet. Among this show’s surprising pieces are several larger-than-life fiberglass sculptures that...
Piggybacking on Kim Stringfellow’s recent successful documentary, exhibition, and publication—JACKRABBIT HOMESTEAD: Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape—Flora Kao explores and examines remnants of abandoned homes in the Mojave desert, the...
Awol – as you gentle readers may not have noticed – was a little more awol than usual the last week or so. Once upon a time that might have implied too many bars or after-hours clubs. Or piles of actual paid work (remember salaried employment?—once almost as...
“Rainbow Girls” at Cheim & Read continues Ghada Amer’s inventive strategy of using thread as paint, and needle as paintbrush, but with a marked difference. Bold embroidered stenciled text covers her canvas. Women’s rights and Amer’s stance are as forthright as her...
I don’t remember when I first ran across Ad Reinhardt’s dazzling, sarcastic collage comics—probably in the ’80s (around the same time I stumbled upon his brilliant “Art is Art. Everything else is everything else” screeds, but before I saw his equally but oppositely...
When I drove up to Zackary Drucker’s home off San Fernando Road, the front door was wide open—a startling sight since most of the surrounding houses have metal bars over the windows and doors. The Los Angeles video and performance artist lives in Glassell Park, an...
I heard a rumor that some artists went to visit Henri Rousseau and were shocked that he put one of his paintings on the floor for them to walk on because he didn’t have a rug. Was he naive? Crazy? Suffering from low self-esteem? It doesn’t matter. He was unique and so...
Starting this Sunday, the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is admission free. And the free-for-all will have a new exhibit that tells viewers they can take it or leave it.Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology is the first large-scale exhibition to...
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