Various sizes of square panels mostly covered with dots with groups of parallel lines and occasional fields of paint line the gallery walls of Locks Gallery in Jennifer Bartlett's installation "Recitative"—its title derived from a rhythmic free form vocal style of...
OUTSIDE LA: Jennifer Bartlett
Remarks on Color: Timid White and Bruised Sand: A Conversation Remarks on Color
Considering the world today, it’s no wonder you’ve begun to peel, to pull away from your respective homes, to hide from the tremors, quakes and quick-sands of the living world. We are all guilty of something. We have all fallen under at some time or other, curling in...
Pick of the Week: Unseen Picasso Norton Simon Museum
My first review for Artillery Magazine – almost two years ago now – was for my favorite museum in southern California, The Norton Simon. I recently went back and reread that article, and I found that my own writing was, to be kind, academic. Dry as a bone, really....
Bennett Roberts It’s About Time
Back in 2006, I approached Bennett Roberts at his gallery on Wilshire Boulevard with a bit of chagrin. The LA art dealer had always been nothing but nice, helpful and accommodating to me as a person and as an arts writer. So my heart was heavy when I had to break it...
June Edmonds Freedom in Abstraction
The post-pandemic era can offer rewarding challenges, as I found out when engaging in my first Zoom interview. I spoke with painter and educator June Edmonds on the occasion of her current 40-year retrospective at the Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, and a...
Constance Mallinson Talking Trash: Figuratively and Abstractly
Constance Mallinson’s career has spanned the many vicissitudes of the art world, from Minimalism to Pattern and Decoration, through to postmodern conceptual strategies. More recently, she has created a form of realistic painting that draws from Modernist Abstraction...
ASK BABS FRIEND’S ART SUCKS
Dear Babs, My longtime friend recently started painting and selling his art online. We live in different cities, and it’s been hard to meet because of the pandemic, but he’s having me over soon, and I know he’s going to want my thoughts about his art. The problem is I...
Pick of the Week: Amoako Boafo Roberts Projects
In his essay on photography entitled “The Decisive Moment,” Henri Cartier Bresson describes the intricacies of portraiture and the subject. He writes that the ideal portrait is a “true reflection of a person’s world – which is as much outside him as inside him.” We...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Tiffany Alfonseca The Mistake Room, Los Angeles
The two dozen or so paintings Bronx-based artist Tiffany Alfonseca made during a summer residency at the Mistake Room not only represent a kind of reimagined family photo album, but are intentionally rendered with fidelity to those source materials and their awkward...
Pick of the Week: Humming to the Sound of Fear Helen J. Gallery
The Korean Peninsula is a region rooted in duality. It is a land both literally and ideologically split down the middle, a lasting result of Cold War-era proxy wars, Western imperialist action, and an on-going brutal dictatorship. And even before the interventions...
Pick of the Week: Devin B. Johnson Nicodim
Grief comes in countless forms. There are as many ways to feel the peculiar sensation of loss as there are things to lose. One can lose another, something external, and just the same – or just as differently –one can lose oneself. With bereavement, there is no wrong...
Pick of the Week: Ariana Papademetropoulos Jeffrey Deitch
Fairytales operate in a special place of human consciousness. They offer the building blocks of moralism and societal standards, for better or worse. Though folk stories, myths and fairytales are found throughout every culture, there are many common elements: simple...
OUTSIDE LA: Anne Buckwalter Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York
Though at first seeming to depict ordinary, even prudish interior domestic scenes, upon closer inspection Anne Buckwalter’s paintings reveal provocative signs of sex, eroticism and sensuality. In Clean Linens, her first solo show at Rachel Uffner Gallery, Buckwalter...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Ernie Marjoram TAG Gallery
When it comes to exploring concepts of Zen Buddhism and contemporary art, artists have used Modern and Contemporary art approaches like Minimalism, video, and Expressionism to convey these ideas to the viewer. What about Realism? Ernie Marjoram in his solo show...
Pick of the Week: Jason Mason Bill Brady Gallery
I’ve written a lot about Los Angeles and how it’s mistakenly known as an “ugly city.” And while before I’ve been willing to blame that mistake on biased reporting, I’m starting to believe that the call is coming from inside the house. Truthfully, we have only...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Hanna Hur Kristina Kite Gallery
It is hard not to wonder if Hanna Hur's paintings were made explicitly for Kristina Kite's gallery space or if it is pure coincidence that the black and white checkerboard floor so perfectly complements the geometric patterns within the paintings. The way the space...
Pick of the Week: Camille Rose Garcia KP Projects
As an omnipresent symbol across the history of humanity, the ocean assumes many roles. It is a healing force, and is immensely destructive; it is divine and earthly. The ocean encompasses the myriad of natural and mystical forces which have captivated our imagination...
Pick of the Week: Art on Paper Athenessa Gallery
Paper is a flexible medium. It is unconstrained frames and backings, untethered by nails or staples, and has become essential across countries and centuries. Still, in the canon of western art history, the primacy of canvas painting has pushed works on paper aside,...