The first conspiracy theory I got swept up in had to do with a movie that a few of us caught on television in eighth grade. After the summer of 1968, it felt like big changes were afoot. The movie that captured our imaginations was the story of a pandemic that caused...
The Feel-Good Pandemic
Letters in Exile, No. 6 By Maria Agureeva
Since March I have edited Letters in Exile with Maria Agureeva. Artillery generously offered Maria and other artists who had fled Ukraine and Russia an important platform from which to express their feelings, voice their grief and protest, and to share stories of...
LINCOLN, NE: Santiago Cal POLITICS ON PAPER
Santiago Cal is a humble man with a demeanor that challenges traditional Western conceptions of artistic genius. His subtlety and humility are visible in his works, which are usually small or medium-sized carvings of fragile children. His visual narratives don’t hit...
Hungarian Rhapsodies Bunker Vision
Early success in any of the arts comes with a certain peril. This is especially true for artists whose art is rebelling against something like an authoritarian government. Filmmakers tend to require a lot of resources, so they are especially prone to censorship by...
Letters in Exile, No. 5 By Maria Agureeva
Artists are experiencing a sense of gratitude for the unexpected support and basic kindness shown to them. In the midst of exile and displacement, often the best of humanity reasserts itself. As Maria says in her fifth blog, “So many of my friends and colleagues who...
Letters in Exile, No. 4 By Maria Agureeva
As Maria was working on Blog 4, I happened upon an article about photographer Edward Burtynksy, who is of Ukrainian descent and still has family there. He was scheduled to photograph in Ukraine this year for other reasons than the war. His work has been postponed. He...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Barbara Kruger Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Me You "Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You." is a classic Barbara Kruger experience. The exhibition serves as an introduction to those who may be unfamiliar with her work, yet also engages with seasoned viewers by re-presenting older works in grand, high tech and...
Letters in Exile, No. 3 By Maria Agureeva
In her third blog, Maria considers the testimony of four artists from Ukraine and Russia. Each speaks powerfully about how the war is impacting them. We like to say artists speak truth to power. Courageous artists do this, yet often with severe consequences. Some of...
Letters in Exile, No. 2 By Maria Agureeva
The soul of the arts in Russia is withering. In Ukraine it is being obliterated, literally. In this second blog, Maria is speaking to the loss of personal freedoms occurring in Russia that is deeply disturbing, and another fall out of the war. In Ukraine, the loss of...
Letters in Exile By Maria Agureeva
Since her residency at the 18th Street Arts Center four years ago, artist Maria Agureeva has been based in Los Angeles. Born in Ukraine and attending art school in Moscow, she travels periodically to Moscow, where a gallery supports her work and various collaborative...
Laurie Anderson at the Hirshhorn Museum Unnervingly Prescient
“Laurie Anderson: The Weather” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the largest US exhibition of Anderson’s work to date. At 74, Anderson continues to be immensely creative as multimedia artist, performer, musician and writer—the show includes more than a...
The Digital Mob Bunker Vision
It’s a familiar story these days: somebody is killed in broad daylight in front of witnesses. After the lawyers (and judges) perform their machinations, the killer walks. A new round of comments and editorials appear about how there are two justice systems. The...
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...
Black Grief Examined at New Museum, NY "Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America" By Okwui Enwezor
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, 2020 By Okwui Enwezor 264 pages Phaidon/New Museum, New York In a pivotal scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather a Mafia don grieves over the body of his dead son. “Look how they massacred my boy,”...
Suitcase Joe and the State of Homeless Photography Sidewalk Champions
Sidewalk Champions By Suitcase Joe Burn Barrel Press In the wake of the unprecedented court decree issued in April by a federal judge ordering the city of Los Angeles to provide shelter for the 4,600 souls currently living in downtown skid row by this October, the...
Käthe Kollwitz; Jean-François Millet
At the Getty, two exhibitions of works on paper examine process and technique while presenting disparate views of peasantry. The Getty Research Institute's "Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics" comprises over 50 prints, preparatory drawings and studies by...
China: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz
On a clear sunny day there’s a press preview for the ambitious “@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz” exhibition. Famous for its former use as a prison, with notorious inhabitants such as Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Robert “The Bird Man” Stroud, its layered...
Fred Lonidier
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Or not. Fred Lonidier’s recent show of photographic work provides a telling demonstration of two inextricably interconnected facts. First, that a vast cultural chasm has opened up between the present world and that of the...