Three abstract painters converge like an artistic Venn diagram in "Intersecting at the Edge" at the Claremont Museum of Art, where paintings by the late Karl Benjamin, a principal figure of the California Hard-edge painting movement, are displayed alongside...
Rosha Yaghmai’s installation in a sideroom of its own, Slide Samples (Lures, Myths), is immediately visually striking. With the soft low light, the room is quiet with abstract shapes cast from a slide projection filling all the walls. As your eyes adjust to the...
If you are one of the cool kids (or artists or gallerists), then most likely you were at 3rd street in DTLA last Saturday for a jam-packed and super festive opening. We aren’t talking Hauser, rather its newish next-door neighbor Over the Influence. OTI—with its Hong...
Aftermath of Puerto Rico flooding looms large in the backgrounds of Jonny Negron's psychically charged scenes. Indoors and outdoors, water is everywhere. Resembling graphic novel or zine illustrations, Negron's eleven gouache-on-paper paintings in "A Small Map of...
The practice of selling art presumes severability. To sell a work from the white walls of a studio or gallery promises a degree of independence: this piece will appeal in another room, at another time. In this way a gallery is an anti-ecology. Its elements do not...
Michael Queenland’s installation in Made in L.A. 2018 at the Hammer Museum conjures up images of a post-apocalyptic future, where humans have gathered up their last resources— boxes and boxes of cereal—and rationed them for their imminent escape to outer space....
Halfway through the selection of videos by LA artist Ulysses Jenkins, I was sweaty and sticking to my seat in the crowded upstairs cinema room of ltd los angeles gallery. Still, it was little of a deterrent to my enjoyment. The gallery provided beverages along with...
Watch out! Don't tread on the dead rats; they're part of the show. "Macrosolutions to Megaproblems" is a small but captivating assortment of quirky pieces by Sam Davis and Josh Mannis at M+B. At first, you might be so distracted by Mannis' attention-grabbing paintings...
‘What is it with dudes and trees?’ I wonder for a second as I’m about to put this up on-line—thinking more about Shakespeare’s pastoral romantic comedy than the cool oasis of a summer group show René-Julien Praz has curated at Praz-Delavallade’s L.A. premises. (Though...
Wobbly hot pink letters pasted above the threshold of the interior gallery of Walter Maciel spell "Short Stories," the title of Greg Mocilnikar's exhibition. Appearing more like a literary heading than the title of an art exhibition, this seemingly minor gesture sets...
This week’s announcement that Klaus Biesenbach, director of New York’s PS1, the Museum of Modern Art’s satellite in Queens, was chosen to be the new MOCA director was greeted by mixed notices among the LA art community including: “He never smiles.” True if he’s judged...
The heat goes on—and so does the beat of pulsating great art in Los Angeles. On Thursday, Laurie Shapiro offered a DTLA studio preview of her about-to-open gallery installation at Da Plume, "All Yoni is Love." The immersive lush psychedelic installation was draped...
When I walked into OURCHETYPES (2018), an installation by Jade Gordon and Megan Whitmarsh at the Hammer Museum’s biennial exhibition “Made in L.A.,” I felt as though I had entered a bubble. The soft purple carpeted floors, the ambient voices emanating from the video...
Just as sordid episodes leak bit by bit from grand American narratives, a morbid sense of truculence stealthily emerges from Joshua Hagler's bright palette and superficially quaint old-time imagery. His show "The River Lethe" at the Brand Library encompasses two...
Across a series of ethereal vignettes in Sophie von Hellermann’s new series, the petri dish operates as both a quirky formal motif and a sophisticated allegorical framework. Each of the mostly large-scale paintings (all acrylic on canvas, all 2018), display a picture...
There is a new queen in town. Last Saturday the Tanya Bonakdar matriarchy entered Hollywood in the most appropriate of ways—with the 12th solo presentation of gallery SoCal artist Charles Long. The exhibition “husbands, sons, fathers, brothers” provides context; it is...
Contorting harlequins bow and sprawl over pastel chairs, rugs, walls and potted houseplants in Sara Berman's paintings. Are these mysteriously leotarded people lost in reverie, engaged in awkward stretching exercises, or merely lolling indolently? It's impossible to...
Imagining an art object made entirely without thought and therefore completely physical is a fascinating exercise. On the other hand, trying to imagine as art something that was entirely wrought by thought without a physical trace (and therefore practice) is equally...
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