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Tag: Pick of the Week
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Pick of the Week: Richard Nielsen
Track16The line between the real and unreal is a thin one. Just beyond the horizon, and beyond the corner of our eye, exists only the expanse of our imagination – what you might call magic. And it’s in this liminal space between magic and matter, fact and fiction, that you find “Past Imperfect,” a new exhibition of paintings by Richard Nielsen at Track16.
Nielsen’s works, many of them portraits of masked people or surreal landscapes, tap into the unease of our contemporary moment. I can say with absolute certainty that if you polled people in at the start of the millennium how they thought the country would look in twenty years, no one would have even been close. The images and news stories of today would have been impossible to imagine for many Americans. And by juxtaposing paintings of cryptid monsters and psychedelia with paintings of masked faces and hospice rooms, Nielsen draws out that subtle divide.
One of the most striking paintings that lies completely in this divide is one of a zookeeper, dressed in a loose fitting panda costume, swaddling a cub. The caretaker stands on a flat green background adorned with prints of deciduous leaves, hand-feeding and looking down at the small cub like a doting mother. It’s surreal and bizarre, but it’s based in reality – zookeepers actually dress like that to handle a new cub, so as to acclimate it to other pandas.
But Nielsen does not just deal with the bizarre reality of our present, but ties it also to our tumultuous past. In the painting Antifa Denmark 1945, Danish Freedom Fighters, Great Uncle (2020), we find five well-dressed men, standing in a variegated cobblestone street – members of the Danish resistance, as the title suggests. Nielsen connects this earlier form of anti-fascism – that is, freedom fighters working against Nazi Germany – with the more modern catch-all movement titled Antifa, which has become a bogeyman for ultra-conservative nationalists. In doing so, Nielsen contextualizes the modern Anti-Fascist movement with grass-root anti-fascism throughout history, letting the past meet the present to make sense of our reality.
Track16
1206 Maple Ave., #1005, LA, CA, 90015
Thru May 29th, 2021 -
Pick of the Week: Paco Pomet
Richard Heller Gallery“Beginnings,” the new show from Spanish artist Paco Pomet, is funny. Hard-hitting criticism, I know, but humor can be a rarity in the world of contemporary art. Most art that one could even remotely consider funny is usually of the ironic, intellectual variety, like Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. or Magritte’s The Treachery Of Images. But Pomet’s oeuvre of surrealistic landscapes possesses a genuine, accessible humor that is a refreshing departure from the self-serious, incisive world of the global contemporary.
Instead of trying to explain the humor of “Beginnings” – an endeavor that is always doomed to fail – it’s best to start with the value of humor in art in general. Art can do many things, but it’s especially good at reminding us how to feel. Most often prized are the profound feelings, like sublimity and sharpness, but there is equal value in reveling in absurdity and levity. Pomet’s brilliant painting draws out the admirability of these over-looked feelings, elevating them to equal profundity.
And Pomet appears aware of this dichotomy between profound and absurd, as he borrows imagery from very profound works. In Das Erhabene Büro (2020), Pomet borrows the central figure from Casper David Friedrich’s classic Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818). In an example of Romantic sublimity, Friedrich’s titular wanderer stands atop a mountain, looking down towards a mist-covered valley; by contrast, Pomet’s wanderer instead looks out from his rocky perch onto a 1920s office, complete with candle-stick phones. Pomet’s office is in grey-scale, except for a sun, blazing yellow and white in an adjacent room and giving our wanderer a warm glow.
The absurdity of Das Erhabene Büro (German for “The Sublime Office”) is valuable because it encourages us to consider the very real absurdity of our lives. Be it working in a modern office or the Cold War anxiety of nuclear destruction, Pomet weaves scenes with humor and beauty that challenge the sophomoric conception of our world as a serious place. Yes, our world is a place where serious things happen, where profound feelings are felt, but it is equally a place where silly things happen, where people laugh and feel light – and both are worthy of art.
Richard Heller Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave., B-5A, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Thru May 8th, 2021 -
Pick of the Week: Anna Weyant, Alexander Tovborg, & Asuka Anastacia Ogawa
Blum & Poe[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]Belief – whether you call it religion, spirituality, or anything else – is as vital to our lives as shelter or sustenance. Myth-making is how lessons are passed down, how mysteries are explored, and how home is remembered. These functions of belief are all found in the works of Anna Weyant, Alexander Tovborg, and Asuka Anastacia Ogawa, whose works are on view in three separate shows now at Blum & Poe.
Admittedly, when I was planning this review, I was only going to write about Anna Weyant’s show “Loose Screw,” because it’s just simply that good. In terms of technical ability, Weyant’s works rival the Dutch Golden Age masters which inspire her work, and in terms of narrative, she surpasses them. Through her beautifully rendered oil portraits and still-lifes, Weyant constructs fantastical vignettes engaging with absurd and often unsettling subjects. These scenes are modern fairytales, which grapple with lessons of loneliness and pain – a woman falling down stairs, another laughing alone with her hand wrapped in bandages, and a horrid dinner of raw eggs, piranha, and impaled bread.
But while I could write a full review on Anna Weyant alone, it would be to the great disservice of the spectacular paintings and sculptures of Alexander Tovborg in his show, “Sacrificial Love.” Tovborg weaves a complex web of mythology in his show, using a dazzling array of gemlike colors to create muses, goddesses, and idols of every variety. The paintings are of an imposing size, and the figures within them emerge from their settings as if etched into rock faces. Female figures clutch instruments and are wreathed in foliage, while a few hold young girls in reimagined depictions of Virgin and Child. Tovborg invites us to reckon with our connection with history and mythology, and how the way we view the world has been informed by the stories of our past.
But while Tovborg and Weyant explore the beliefs of societies both real and imagined, Ogawa’s collection of works is far more personal. Within the brightly colored, pictorially flat paintings, Ogawa amasses figures and stories which represent her own interpretation of home and history. She wields her mixed Japanese and Brazilian heritages like twin torches, equally illuminating the canvases. The figures – mostly Black children, with almond eyes and simple clothes – participate in mysterious rituals or performances, often staring out at the viewer as though the curiosity that they inspire is mutual.
Blum & Poe
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2727 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034
Thru May 1st, 2021 -
Pick of the Week: Ana Serrano
Bermudez ProjectsOur city’s beauty is often overlooked. This is a subject I’ve touched on in the past, and it’s an unfair generalization that Los Angeles is an “ugly” city. Maybe it’s because our city is difficult to walk through, and so you don’t notice the beauty. Maybe it’s only ugly in comparison to the beauty of the nature surrounding it. No matter the reasoning, one thing is clear: LA has an image problem. Unlike New York or San Francisco, the neighborhoods in which the vast majority of Angelinos live are not glorified in media, if they are ever shown in the first place. This is why Ana Serrano’s show, “a sense of place,” will bring the beauty of Los Angeles to the fore and change how you see our city.
Serrano’s show is composed of cardboard, diorama sculptures of single-story, LA houses, along with a pair of cardboard trucks. The space is also adorned with LA-inspired installation pieces, like paintings of ravens and hummingbirds and paper wisteria flowers, which work to ground an atmosphere for the sculptures. It really feels as though the neighborhood surrounding the gallery has seeped within its walls.
The cardboard houses, emblematic of much of Serrano’s career, are simple at first glance, but their pastel colors entice you in like a bakery display case. And once you’ve been drawn in, the exquisite detail in the sculptures shines through. The wrought iron gates, the door ornaments, even the basement vents are expertly placed and crafted, demonstrating a real care not only for the objects themselves but for their real world analogues.
And this push for close inspection defines the show. Serrano, more than many artists, wants you to take lessons learned in her show out into the world. The real houses – often the homes of LA’s working, immigrant population, whom Serrano identifies her work with – are frequently ignored, and even maligned. So after you visit, take a few moments to walk around Los Angeles, look at the houses, and the birds, and the wisteria trees, and take in what Serrano is really trying to show us: the beauty all around.
Bermudez Projects
1225 Cypress Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90065
Thru May 15th, 2021; Tues-Sat. noon-6 pm -
Pick of the Week: Amy Sherald
Hauser & WirthThe Impressionists, at the end of the 19th century, turned away from traditional muses and academies and became chroniclers of their contemporary era. They were described as flaneurs, self-styled spectators of modern life and people in leisure. But throughout their work – and throughout the art historical canon – there is a notable exception: people of color. Even the few that were depicted were ignored for decades, such as Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Laure, which was originally named La Négresse, a reductive title which obfuscates any true identity. This historical mistreatment is why Amy Sherald’s first solo west coast show, “The Great American Fact,” is so vital.
Sherald’s show illustrates Black Americans at leisure in Sherald’s signature style. Whether they’re posing with surfboards or leaning on bicycles, the monochromatic models exude a powerful peacefulness amid vibrant colors. Unlike some of her more famous subjects, like Michelle Obama or the late Breonna Taylor, the figures of “The Great American Fact” are intentionally ordinary. They could be anyone, a fact reinforced by their gray-scaled skin – there is not even an emphasis on the color or shade of their skin, but rather their beauty as human beings.
This is not to say that Sherald treats these people as ordinary. In As American as apple pie (2020), two figures stand in front of a ranch-style home and a vintage Cadillac. The woman wears all hot pink with a beehive haircut, the man cuts a spitting image of the iconic James Dean. It is as Americana as you could imagine, yet features two people whom America forgot – but were always there.
Sherald’s layers of nuance seemingly never end. In a portrait of a young woman entitled Hope is a thing with feathers (2020), Sherald emblazons the too frequently violent arena of a Black woman’s body with the universal symbol of peace: a dove. The relaxed repose of the model, arms loose at her side and face neutral, underscore that resilient vulnerability which is necessary for peace. To borrow from the Dickinson poem which Sherald references in the title, her work “sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.”
Hauser & Wirth
901 E 3rd Street, LA, CA, 90013
Thru June 6, 2021; Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Patrick Wilson
Vielmetter Los Angeles[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]There’s no such thing as an alright abstract painting. They fall, without exception, into two categories: great and garbage. And for whoever’s looked at an abstract artwork, smugly harrumphed and muttered, “I could do that,” I’d point to any of the works hanging in Patrick Wilson’s “Keeping Time,” and ask, “Could you really?”
Abstraction is difficult enough to get right, but hard-edged, color-field abstraction? Doubly so. There’s a reason why the critic Clement Greenberg, by the late 1950s, had more or less eschewed the works of the “action” painters like Jackson Pollock in favor of color-field abstraction (what Greenberg called “post-painterly abstraction.”) Color-field abstractions, like the works of Patrick Wilson, boom or bust on the artist’s ability to convey through color and balance alone.
In this regard, “Keeping Time” is a stroke of mastery. Wilson’s frame within frame style always manages to keep you on your toes as the works, never culminating, constantly build and subtract within themselves. We can see this effect in a work titled Afternoon Breeze (2020). A patch of blue, in one place vibrant, melts into the red background with a mild transparency, and is harshly bisected by a think pink frame. Nearby, a pink and orange frame overlaps a field of subtly gradating maroon and sienna, capturing on one end a shred of the hot pink background. Finally, the offset canvases abutting at a hard right angle throw the entire work into a rectilinear staccato.
But the peak of the exhibition lies at the end of the gallery, with a work titled Night Bloom (2020). Here, Wilson does it all. While the blocks of color – pink, lilac, sky blue, maroon, merlot, etc. – form a brilliant and vivid cascade, the triumph is in the detailing. All throughout the painting, Wilson uses millimeter thick lines to create boundary after boundary, stacking them one atop another, obscuring some with the fields of color and cutting straight across others with reckless abandon. But still, it all stays within the canvas. That final boundary remains unchallenged, and everything you need to see is within it.
“Keeping Time”, on view at Vielmetter Los Angeles until April 24th, is a high-wire act – and Patrick Wilson doesn’t stumble.
Vielmetter Los Angeles
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1700 S Santa Fe Ave #101, LA, CA, 90021
Thru Apr. 24, 2021; Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Alissa McKendrick & Diane Kotila
de boer galleryEveryone has a fascination with the more macabre parts of life. Not that everyone is John Waters, but there’s a reason we all slow down to look when we pass an accident. It’s just human nature to be transfixed by the dark and the deadly, to find it not only shocking but enchanting. Our morbid curiosity (and the accompanying absurdity) is explored at de boer gallery until April 17th with a pair of shows by artists Diane Kotila and Alissa McKendrick: “Boy Kings” and “Electric Guitar Players.”
“Electric Guitar Players” is, well, electric. An absurd, almost whimsical energy courses through the color-field landscapes, upon which women serenade skeletons and mermaids with un-plugged electric guitars. The scenes carry a mysterious cadence, drawing inspirations from places as far-flung as Narcissus’s pond and Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World (1948). But instead of a windswept young girl on the prairie, McKendrick inserts a skeleton, lounging and staring off at a distant cityscape. McKendrick experiments with death’s odd familiarity, and her paintings are as finely detailed as they are expressively impressionistic.
“Boy Kings” is a series of portraits of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen, or, affectionally, King Tut. Tutankhamen is a figure that has been perennially fascinating since the uncovering of his tomb, having taken the throne at just eight years old. The Pharaoh in Kotila’s painting is just about that age, a young boy just at the precipice of his reign.
The paintings Kotila has rendered of the Tutankhamun illustrate her fascination with the ruler. They are somber, even haunting, with one’s face wrapped in gauze and another just a limbless torso, covered on one side in stab wounds. The boy kings appear as Tutankhamen did in real life: frail and anxious.
Kotila works to bring back the Pharaoh, but the most striking portrait is not of Tutankhamun, but of the boy who rediscovered him. Hussein Abdel Rasoul, the boy who discovered the first step to Tutankhamun’s tomb and once wore the jewelry of the Pharaoh, is recreated by Kotila. But with those shadowed eyes and the sensation of weight upon his shoulders, the line between Rasoul and Tutankhamun blurs.
de boer gallery
3311 E. Pico Blvd, LA, CA, 90023
Thru Apr. 17, 2021; Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Caitlin Keogh
Overduin & Co.With spring just ahead, we are on the precipice of a momentous transition. Rays of hope are beginning to warm the cold landscape of our world, as they have again and again throughout humanity’s existence. Caitlin Keogh explores this cyclical nature of history (and our position within it) in her new show, “Waxing Year,” on view until April 3rd at Overduin & Co.
Keogh centers her show around the pagan traditions of the Oak King, as identified by Robert Graves’ book The White Goddess. The “waxing year” is the time between spring and autumn equinoxes, during which the Oak King spreads new life and revives the old, peaking in his strength at Midsummer. While Keogh cites a collection of muses, from Piet Mondrian to her therapist, the bulk of her art strongly feature collected and collaged images and items from her studio and previous works.
Keogh channels this pagan vivacity and strength through a series of large, ethereal paintings (Waxing Year 1-7 (2020)) which are linked compositionally in groups of two to three. She fills her works with personal aesthetic references and, with elements painted as if literally tacked onto the canvas, they act as a mood-board for art history and Keogh herself. The works lack a strong grounding in any reality, but occupy an unreal, underground space. With roots hanging down from above, one can even find Persephone and her pomegranates traversing in Hades below the mantle.
But despite the relative chaos of these paintings, there is a vitalizing energy which courses through them. It belies a growing momentum below the surface. As for Mondrian (who himself lies deep below the ground), we can see his influences in the lattice motif which extends across the paintings, uniting together. Are these lattices forming, or dissolving? Are they the building of new connections, or the cage now being torn asunder?
The waxing year is upon us all in just a few days more and Keogh’s “Waxing Year” reminds us not only of the energy waiting to be released when the Oak King presides again, but also the importance of wielding this power to create and heal.
Overduin & Co.
6693 Sunset Blvd., LA, CA, 90028
Thru Apr. 3, 2021; Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: John Waters
Sprüth MagersSprüth Magers is currently exhibiting two shows by two of the most notable creatives of the last forty years: Cindy Sherman’s “Tapestries” and John Waters’ “Hollywood’s Greatest Hits.” Though, if you’re anything like myself, one will leave you elated, and the other, deflated.
If you were hoping for a glowing review of Sherman’s new works, I’m sorry, because honestly, I’d recommend walking straight through it, up the stairs, and right into Waters’ exhibition. Sherman rehashes the same disguised self-portraiture concept she’s explored since the 1980s, this time “elevating” her Instagram posts by weaving (or having Flemish tapissiers weave) them into large tapestries. They’re works that—while stunning in their craftsmanship—are more clumsy than clever, though sure to thrill the postmodernist diehards.
“Hollywood’s Greatest Hits,” by contrast, holds some of the most engrossing art showing in Los Angeles today. The perpetual outsider, John Waters takes jabs at filmmaking, the art world, and his life throughout an array of sculptures, photographs, films, installations and more.
There are, as to be expected, the numerous references to death—a familiar theme for the noted provocateur. There is the darkly humorous In Shoulda! (2014), a piece which pairs photos of deceased starlets like Princess Diana and Whitney Houston with a movie poster declaring “She Shoulda Said ‘NO’!” There’s also the tragic and macabre Stolen Jean Genet, a copy of early activist and writer Jean Genet’s headstone.
But what’s most interesting is Waters’ exploration of his own life through his work. In 45 Days (2003), Waters assembles notecards on which he wrote daily to-do lists and the number of days since his last cigarette—now scratched through and completed. Organized in a massive collage, the note cards are not only the representation of Waters’ tireless creative efforts, but also become a chaotic, Twombly-esque abstraction. One can feel periods of greater stress and tension emanating from certain areas and times over others, the ink darker and obliteration more complete.
Overall—and as always—John Waters is not to be missed. He dances through the darkest parts of life with charm and wit, exchanging the deathly somber for the dearly sensitive.
Sprüth Magers
5900 Wilshire Blvd., LA, CA, 90036
Thru May 1, 2021; Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Michael Henry Hayden
Moskowitz BayseA painting requires nothing more than a painter. Everything else is malleable. Once a painter has been established, that which they create are paintings no matter the form. Michael Henry Hayden is – as he has been throughout his long career – a painter. But in the sculptural works in his new show at Moskowitz Bayse, “Waiting for the Canyon’s Echo,” Hayden pushes the boundaries of painting and explores new, mixed media compositions.
The works throughout the show are generally inspired by natural scenes and imagery: broad leaves, granite mountain ranges, tree bark, and more. In some paintings, these sculptural natural elements take center stage, such as in Leaflet (Anthurium) (2021), where an aquaresin leaf acts as the canvas for green and white acrylic. In others, a traditional linen canvas acts as the stage where natural elements find their footing.
The most striking example of this canvas-sculptural mixed painting is Plein Air (2019). In this work, a canvas painted with a soft sunset gradient is flanked on both sides by aquaresin granite slabs. Hayden mixed the aquaresin and Sierra mountain granite dust to create a highly realistic analog. Even upon close examination, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference.
“Waiting for the Canyon’s Echo” questions not only what qualifies as painting, but what qualifies as natural. The leaves, the rocks, the bark; these all appear as if they were plucked straight from a botanical garden, and yet are all fabrications. In his role as painter, Hayden strives not only to create art, but to create nature – or rather, to recreate it.
But in this effort, there is a conflict. Of course, no matter how realistic the recreation is, it isn’t strictly speaking natural. It did not arise by natural means, but by the careful, calculating effort of a human being. Hayden himself explores this tension himself with works like Greenhouse (2020), in which the leaf motifs are bound and locked behind wrought iron gates. Here, the difference between manmade and naturally occurring are placed in direct conflict, and we the viewer are left to interrogate the uneasy balance, and whether there truly is any difference.
Moskowitz Bayse
743 N. La Brea Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Doug Aitken
Regen ProjectsIn the 1950s-60s, Jasper Johns created two works – Flag (1954-55) and Target (1961) – which both carved his place in the art historical canon and established a new conceptual framework for art. These encaustic versions of instantly recognizable icons (an American Flag and a simple series of concentric circles) represent a dramatic shift in art theory. Simply put, before Johns, a flag wasn’t art. Neither was a target. And without Johns, we would not have the newest show from Doug Aitken, “Flags and Debris,” on now at Regen Projects until March 13th.
The show consists of large fabric tapestries and a video installation which uses those tapestries to garb dancers performing throughout Los Angeles. The first connection from Aitken to Johns is with Aitken’s own Target (2020), a tapestry composed of scavenged mixed fabrics. Not only is this piece visually inspired by Johns’ work, but its material and the way it flows off the wall inspires the feeling of a flag.
And from this initial connection to Johns, we can see the conceptual diversion from Johns that Aitken takes with the rest of the show. While Johns suggested that a flag could be art, Aitken suggests a work of art could be a flag. Other than Target, the rest of Aitken’s tapestries and banners contain some kind of textual element — mostly phrases or slogans. Some phrases are uniting (almost to the point of being banal, such as We The People (2020)), while others are simply referential of our era, like Digital Detox (2020). But a flag is more than a rallying commonality, and certainly more than an inert object which hangs on our walls.
Aitken’s video work, Flags and Debris (2020) uses choreography developed with LA Dance Company in order to explore the conceptual power of flags. Aitken uses dancers completely enshrouded in his flags to show how they may act like suits of armor. The flowing, expressive movements of the performers highlight the malleability of a flag’s material and essence, but their inability to escape the shrouds illustrates the danger of covering yourself in ideology. While it can protect you, it can just as easily trap you.
Regen Projects
6750 Santa Monica Blvd, LA, CA, 90038
Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Ludovica Gioscia
Baert GalleryThe artistic process is often private. Artists seldom actively show the steps taken to craft an end product, but to some, like Ludovica Gioscia, revealing all is vital to their work. In a large, multi-faceted installation at Baert Gallery entitled Arturo and The Vertical Sea, Gioscia displays every detail of her process.
The installation is principally composed of three large, wooden structures, upon which hang various works: dream robes, portals, double-sided wall papers, and papier-mâché. The first time walking through the space is disorienting, seemingly intentionally so. The wooden structures stick out at odd angles and carve the gallery into diagonal sections. The large, eye-catching works are so diverse in material and inspiration that it overwhelms even your sense of direction.
But slowly, the intricacies of the show appear. Detailed plans for the dream robes and the wallpaper and trial attempts for the brilliantly colored papier-mâché works are also on display, tacked to the wooden structures. They act as narrative markers for the show, a road map through which an understanding of the story can be explored.
This initial stage of the process is vital for grasping Gioscia’s vision. Using, for example, the list of ingredients for her papier-mâché, we gain an understanding of her inspirations. Gioscia details not only the kind of paper and color of dye, but also makes use of less traditional ingredients, like cat hair and joy.
And from those early drafts, we can snag the central thread of the installation: Gioscia’s cat, Arturo. The key inspiration for the works, according to Gioscia herself, stems from a dream in which there were “many Arturos floating in the sea, floating in an incredible mass of vertical water.” This description ties many of the seemingly disparate elements of the show together: the aquamarine robe which Gioscia used to harness her dreams, the wallpapers which flow like waterfalls, and the many Arturo effigies in ceramic, papier-mâché and watercolor.
Arturo and The Vertical Sea is a beautifully orchestrated installation exploring the dreamy and delightfully surprising mind of Ludovica Gioscia and her beloved Arturo.
Baert Gallery
1923 S SANTA FE AVENUE
LOS ANGELES, CA 90021
Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Jeffrey Gibson
Roberts ProjectsI am certainly not alone in feeling that their idea of the American identity has changed drastically in recent years. The “American Dream” has proved itself to be as fanciful as the name suggests. It simply never existed for the majority of Americans. Even the American flag, at one time unifying, has been so thoroughly tainted by the racist, fascist, far-right nationalists that it inspires more hatred than harmony. But, a hopeful, progressive American identity can still be found at “It Can Be Said of Them,” the newest solo exhibition by Jeffrey Gibson.
Throughout his career, Jeffrey Gibson uses his art to explore his identity as gay man of Choctaw and Cherokee heritages, particularly in relation to the broader American identity. Principally, Gibson utilizes bold geometric patterns, traditional Native American craft materials such as beads, precious stones, and fringe, and a Post-Modern use of language to challenge ideas of gender roles and heteronormativity.
The mixing of material and meaning shines with the pair of punching bags suspended in the main hall. With them, Gibson transforms traditionally masculine objects into brilliant, beaded works, labeled with declamatory statements like “CAN THEY SHE HE DO IT? YES WE CAN!” The fusing of stereotypically masculine and feminine activities (boxing and bead craft), adorned with the gender-inclusive rallying cry, presents a powerful, progressive perspective of identity and unity.
Alongside these inspiring rallies, Gibson also recognizes our current cultural crossroads in the hanging bead tapestry, ONE FOOT IN GLORY, ONE FOOT IN HELL. This work again uses Gibson’s customary bright colors and strong geometric patterns and is roughly the size and shape of a flag. It is a new banner to unify under in a time that feels on the edge of immense progress or imminent disaster.
Finally, we come to the paper works, which are some of the strongest and most historically conscious in the show. These collages mix abstract fields of color with advertising, propaganda, and other material surrounding Native American experience throughout the 19th and 20th century. They describe a history that is not at all distant from today and reflect that the histories we’ve been taught are seldom the whole truth.
Roberts Projects
5801 Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA, 90232
Appointment Only -
Pick of the Week: Tiffanie Delune & Kaye Freeman
Band of VicesIt is no stretch to say that the COVID-19 pandemic – principal among several other tragedies, injustices, and horrors over the past year – has fundamentally altered the way we see our world. It has revealed inequities more sharply than any other time in recent memory, and has left in it’s wake unimaginable anger, fear, and death. In The Midst of All That Is, the newest show at the gallery Band of Vices from artists Kaye Freeman and Tiffanie Delune, portrays the only two perspectives that seem to exist in the world of pandemic: the broadly global and the intensely personal.
Freeman’s work catches the eye with her frenetic, expressive style. The paintings appear like snapshots, capturing a brief instant of chaotic energy and motion. They move quickly, and won’t wait for you to catch up. There are recognizable landmarks in her works, from cranes and skyscrapers to the Capitol building, boasting shadowy figures in front of the landmark in an example of artistic clairvoyance.
What shines through most in Freeman’s work are the elements of construction or reconstruction (perhaps even deconstruction.) It’s reflective of the transitory period in which we find our country. There has been an unimaginable amount of loss in this past year, and yet for those of us who remain there exists the incredibly important task of building ourselves up to what we’ve believed ourselves to be for so long.
Delune’s work is, by contrast, introspective to the degree of being auto-biographical as she draws on her Belgo-Congolese heritage. In her absolutely enchanting paintings, figures, such as the young black girl in Hot Pepper, are lost in a mystical land. Some are cautiously present, or else composed of something entirely different to their environment and thus set apart. This is the case for the figures made of embroidery floss, which unravel themselves for their own amusement.
As opposed to Freeman’s chaotic aesthetic, Delune’s works are remarkably structured. In its Kandinksy-esque freedom, elements appear to have settled on the canvas in the most natural of orders, and not a leaf or flower is out of place. This month in Los Angeles, there is hardly better painting to see than works from Tiffanie Delune.
Band of Vices
5376 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016
Appointments can be made by email -
Pick of the Week: Andy Moses
William Turner GalleryNature has been the font from which many artists have taken their inspirational sacrament. And it is a pleasure to see an artist who takes that inspiration and so masterfully manifests the power and majesty of our natural world into something entirely new, which is what you will find at Andy Moses’ solo show of recent works at the William Turner Gallery.
Andy Moses is not new on the scene. He has worked as part of the cadre of post-modern greats for most of his career, and has maintained his unique aesthetic sensibility and only ever refined it further. While previous works appear other-worldly, Moses’ collection on display now is far more grounded.
The first works of note are the collection of honeycombed smaller canvases that sit in the back left. They harmonize wonderfully with one another, and offer a natural starting point to the rest of the show. The paint churns and spins, rebounding off one another and appearing like brilliant geodes or St. Elmo’s Fire. These are the groundwork, so to speak, and from here the canvases get larger and take on lives of their own.
The large hexagonal and circular paintings really illustrate Moses’ desired swirling and spiraling effects, drawing the viewer into the whirlpool of brilliantly vibrant color. The gold in particular appears to leap off the canvas like a great whip of light. Here, the lines ebb into and around one another, colliding and crashing like lava flows and ocean waves.
But finally, the true gems of the show are the landscapes. The curved canvases create a panoramic effect, as if looking over a misty marsh or rainbows dancing lightly over rivers. The colors are hypnotic, and the lines which stack and flow one on top of another give the works both height and breadth.
Many words describe the paintings on display at William Turner Gallery: iridescent, geodetic, entrancing, to say just a few. But no words do Andy Moses’ works true justice, as just like in nature, to truly appreciate their beauty you must immerse yourself in them.
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Pick of the Week: Hosai Matsubayashi & Trevor Shimizu
Nonaka-HillThere is a natural tension drawn between old and new, conservative and progressive. Often times, it can feel that between those two positions there can be no resolution. Even in art, it can be difficult to fit the opposing ideals together; though when it happens, the results are mystifying. One such confluence of tradition and modernity is the group painting and ceramics show of Hosai Matsubayashi XVI and Trevor Shimizu, on view at Nonaka-Hill.
For those who haven’t seen a roman numeral that large since the French Revolution, our era’s Hosai Matsubayashi is the sixteenth in his family to run their kiln in Uji, Kyoto. Since the year 1600, the Matsubayashi family has produced some of the finest ceramics in all of Japan, most notable for their tea ceremony sets – and every ounce of the centuries of creative ability and technical mastery is on display in dozens of precious objects, from waved vases to earthen tea kettles.
Trevor Shimizu, by contrast, does not stand on a mountain of history but rather at the forefront of contemporary art. A painter and video artist based out of New York, Shimizu is known primarily for his sardonic and comedic works, like his exhibition of fart paintings in 2015. His work is deeply expressive, drawing on modernist influences to paint rapidly and with decisive brushstrokes.
Here in Nonaka-Hill, they have been brought together. Matsubayashi’s ceramics (which draw on a wide variety of traditional Japanese technique, most prominently wabi sabi and blue-washes) sit peacefully on low tables, as if they were set out for use in a tea ceremony. And while still in his abstract style, Shimizu’s large landscape paintings take on a new life when hanging alongside the historic ceramics. One begins to notice the influences of calligraphic styles in Shimizu’s work, and an allowance of negative space not unlike that of ink painting. Likewise, Shimizu’s expressive paintings lend their sense of freedom to the pottery, in turn lifting and re-contextualizing this tradition.
Together, Shimizu and Matsubayashi breathe new meaning into one another’s works, creating an entirely unique experience out of their individual brilliances.
Nonaka-Hill
720 N. Highland Ave.
Los Angeles, CA, 90038
Appointment Only
