It became clear to us during our first night of gallery hopping in 2017, that this year can only be better than last if we choose not to fear what we do not understand. It was a night of coming together—artists, gallery lovers and strangers alike …We talked about...
In Blair Saxon-Hill's installation to no ending except ourselves (2016), wall and floor based sculptures fashioned from discarded and broken materials come to life. Making art from found objects is nothing new and while Saxon-Hill's works pay homage both to outsider...
Dear Readers Happy New Year! Last October I was invited to moderate a panel titled: “Is Art our Last Safe Place?” The general topic was whether art could be healing in times of war, poverty, starvation, overpopulation ...you know, all that stuff that just keeps...
Los Angeles performance artist Molly Jo Shea knows that you’ve got some genuine feelings, you’re just scared to reveal them. If you attend one of her shows, maybe you should be afraid. Shea operates as a doula of the emotions and she will barf blood or take a tough...
An austere flat horizon is blanketed by intensely blue sky and bracketed by the remnants of an orange window frame, its rectilinear quiet slyly evoking Rothko. Gauzy clouds, piled atop a low mountain, are seen Magritte-like, through a thick wooden square—maybe a...
“My name is called Disturbance,” as Mick Jagger sang in "Street Fighting Man," and as 2016 careened into 2017, many of us wondered where exactly we stood with respect to what beckoned immediately across the horizon and came to grips with an unsettling notion that we...
Melanie Pullen invites me into her sunny apartment as she cleans up from a party the night before, “This is why I left New York!” she says, gesturing to full-length windows with a sweeping view of Koreatown. “All this room!”Pullen’s enthusiasm for Los Angeles is apt,...
It’s worth considering why it’s so easy to caricature Donald Trump. He looks strange—with his fake tan, anus-like pout, signature comb-over—topped with a bright red, race-baiting ball cap. Like any President-to-be, he’s the focus of boundless criticism and ridicule,...
Mel Chin’s latest public art project in Los Angeles, The Tie that Binds: MIRROR of the FUTURE, was initiated last summer during CURRENT: LA Water, the city’s inaugural month-long Public Art Biennial presenting temporary large-scale artworks sited along the LA River...
In a post-truth world, what are the value of words? Intuition beats brags of sexual assault. 140-character tweets trump columns of The New York Times reporting. It was something evident at the first debate, prefigured by Fox News pundits, and understood by every...
The famous physicist Richard Feynman once said, “Men should study hard what interests them in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” Dave Tourje is a living example of this philosophy as he is interested in practically everything from hot...
Since 1933, the 6th Street Bridge stood as the iconic landmark that connected Boyle Heights to downtown Los Angeles. In 2015, the official proclamation of its imminent demolition provided an opportunity for me to direct Virtual Vérité in a series of ephemeral...
I first became aware of the remarkable documentarian Adam Curtis a few years ago, when I stumbled across The Century of the Self, a four-part television program exploring the birth of the public relations industry by way of the career of Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward...
“Scientists are saying that the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.” So says Krysta Now in the underrated film Southland Tales. It’s hard to imagine that film getting made for theatrical distribution today. On the other hand, it...
HOW MANY TIMES? PAINTING IS NOT DEADDear Babs, I've been noticing more and more galleries focusing on figurative paintings. As a painter myself who has found the recent years difficult with the popularity of new mediums including photography, do you think there is a...
HELP SAVE SANTA FE ART COLONYThe Santa Fe Art Colony Tenants—some 80 working artists —recently had a close call. Theirs is the only rent-restricted artists’ live/work community in Los Angeles, and the clock was ticking down on their 30-year agreement with the...
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