los angeles art publications
SIGHTS UNSCENE
OFF THE WALL Under the Bridge
Thrift stores are potentially the end of the line for any object on sale therein; after that, it’s either ref-use or reuse. Consequently, there’s a poignancy to the purchase of any artwork from a thrift store, whether by an ironic hipster being or a sincere abuelita....
ASK BABS Jack of Not All Trades
Dear Babs, One of my greatest music heroes recently started painting. So when a local gallery showed his art in a pop-up show, I was excited to go. But his paintings are really not good. He’s had a very long career as a musician and always puts a ton of effort into...
CODE ORANGE January-February 2023 Winner & Finalists
Congratulations to our winner, Precious Aiyeloja and our finalists, Precious photo is seen above and first in our photo gallery in the January/February 2023 online edition of Artillery. The following photographs are the finalists. Please see the info below on how to...
POEMS "No One Leaves Me Like You Do" and "The Lugubrious Game"
No One Loves Me Like You Do A soft and rotten moment of loving you hits the pavement like seasonal fruit gone overripe. Skipping to the part where you leave a cigarette burning in my ashtray, I take out eyes swollen by another’s prying that pass through the mouth and...
COMICS Cab Calloway
Victor Estrada Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery, ArtCenter
Victor Estrada erupted onto the art world landscape with his confounding work in the 1992 Los Angeles MOCA exhibition, “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s,” along with other luminaries such as Harry Gamboa Jr., Megan Williams and Mike Kelley. What’s mystifying is...
Justin Liam O’Brien Richard Heller Gallery
For someone brought up within a more or less secular Roman Catholic culture, living now (atheism aside) essentially as if she were a nun, one would think I might know something about “Vespers”—the title of Justin Liam O’Brien’s current show at the Richard Heller...
Judy Fiskin Marc Selwyn Fine Art
During the early months of the pandemic, Judy Fiskin needed a new way of working in which she did not have to leave the security of her home. Fiskin happened upon a real estate website with interior images of houses for sale and...
Paulo Nimer Pjota & Patricia Iglesias Peco François Ghebaly
Occasionally a gallery delivers a show of work that activates the intellect, rewards an afternoon of driving, and restores a little hope. In the small gallery at François Ghebaly are Patricia Iglesias Peco’s large works on paper. Flowers rendered in understated...
Lisa Solomon Walter Maciel Gallery
Lisa Solomon creates evocative watercolor self-portraits wearing the traditional attire of the countries that make up her ethnic heritage, as well as the traditional clothing of countries she’s had misidentified as a part of her cultural history. Perfect, precise and...
Alonzo Davis parrasch heijnen
Alonzo Davis’ paintings are breathtaking in their materiality. Using saturated, refractive palettes, and woven paper and canvas to form a layered topography, the works assert their physicality as much, if not more than the imagery. Abstract—but with elements of...
ARTILLERY 2022 TOP TEN
There has never been a year in Los Angeles—certainly not in this century, more probably the last 30 years—when our artists haven’t delivered something surprising, extraordinary, something to change the way we talk and think about and look at the world. This year was...
Remarks on Color: Resolute Red January's Hue
It’s that time of year again, when the mistletoe has wilted and bedraggled Christmas trees line the city streets, slumped against dumpsters like drunken sailors. It’s that time of year when Resolute Red makes BIG plans, none of which will ever be realized, but it’s...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Gary Brewer Wonzimer Gallery
Immersive and sensual, the richly floral images of Gary Brewer’s “Voluptuous Charm of the Monumental Image” is a kaleidoscope of color and form. These are works bursting with life, subtly O’Keefe-like—though still uniquely Brewer—evoking the mysteries of nature, the...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Joan Didion: “What She Means” at The Hammer Museum
In the late winter of 2019, I became enamored with Joan Didion. I and my then partner were driving the backroads of Tennessee and North Carolina as a leg of a cross country move from Portland to Philadelphia. Somewhere along our trip I picked up a copy of South and...
OUTSIDE LA: Art & Nature Laguna Art Museum
In Laguna Art Museum’s 10 years of mounting its annual Art & Nature installations, a consistent theme has been the preservation of our planet. In this year’s version, the museum celebrates the beauty of nature while artfully addressing environmentalism and...
PICK OF THE WEEK: Francesca Woodman Danziger Gallery
Forever enchanted by Francesca Woodman’s photographic realms, I trace her contorted, fluttering body in the passing shadows and opaque reflections of her self-portraits–I see a witch, a siren, a spirit, a saint, a veiled apparition. Woodman’s body is simultaneously...
