Looking back at 2018, here are 10 exceptionally memorable shows among the 50 I’ve selected for Artillery’s online Pick of the Week throughout the year. Full reviews, and all other Picks, can be found in the column’s ongoing archive: artillerymag.com/pick-of-the-week/

 

 

Melanie Pullen, Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries (The Cliché Series), 2003. C-Print, Framed. Courtesy Leica Gallery LA.

1. Melanie Pullen: Unseen Stories
Leica Gallery LA
Molotov cocktails and stalkers and murders—oh, my! Pullen combines fashion photography with forensic files to investigate society’s romanticization of brutality and suffering. There was plenty to see in this wide-ranging survey of her glamorously gruesome bodies of work bound by the timelier-than-ever subtext that looks are too often given more weight than acts.

 

Eduardo Carrillo, Testament of the Holy Spirit (1971). Oil on panel, 47 3/4 x 60 inches. Crocker Art Museum Purchase with funds from the Maude T. Pook Acquisition Fund, 1972.24.

2. Eduardo Carrillo: Testament of the Spirit
Pasadena Museum of California Art
Encompassing over 60 paintings, this engrossing 40-year retrospective presented a panoptic view of the visionary Chicano painter’s quotidian life and imaginary worlds; in case you missed it, it’s still traveling, so catch it if you can this year in Santa Clara or Washington, D.C.

 

 

Mondongo, “What are we gonna say after HELLO?” Installation view. Courtesy of Track 16, Los Angeles.

3. Mondongo: What are we gonna say after HELLO?
Track 16 Gallery
Like a grim mishmash of fairytales gone wrong, this immersive installation felt as though you weren’t supposed to be there—unless to be sacrificed.

 

 

Xylor Jane, Magic Square for Earthlings (2017). Oil and ink on board, 19-3/4 x 19-3/4 inches. Courtesy of Parrasch Heijnen Gallery.

4. Xylor Jane: Magic Square for Earthlings
Parrasch Heijnen
Adhering to optical logic so bizarre as to have issued from outer space, ten enchanting abstract paintings appeared as magical shape-shifters.

 

 

Jay DeFeo, Untitled (1983), oil on paper, 14 x 16 3/4 inches. Courtesy of © The Jay Defeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NYU and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

5. Jay DeFeo: The Texture of Color
Marc Selwyn Fine Art
Over 20 lyrical small-scale abstractions could be fancied as X-ray visions into facets of The Jewel or crevices of The Rose, as if the opaque, muted impastos of DeFeo’s more famous paintings harbored hidden realms of vibrant color.

 

 

Judith Linhares, Slope, 2011. Oil on linen, 60 x 84 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles.

6. Judith Linhares: The Way She Goes to Town
Various Small Fires
Linhares teases latent absurdity and uncanniness from hackneyed painting genres; as though cognizant of their liberty’s precariousness, her frolicking female protagonists live in the moment, enjoying themselves considerably more than any of Picasso or Manet’s stultified painted ladies.

 

7. Martin Soto Climent: Temazcal
Michael Benevento
Titled after the type of Aztec and Mayan ceremonial steam bath that inspired this body of work, the Mexico City–based artist’s installation was a meticulously orchestrated visual symphony of photos, videos and sculptures in a loose narrative sequence insinuating spiritual progression for a metaphysically impoverished world.

 

Alexandra Carter, “All gods are hot,” installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Radiant Space.

8. Alexandra Carter: All Gods are Hot
Radiant Space
Carter’s brushwork and stylization are so graceful that even fleshly seepage assumed curious elegance in her maze of translucent double-sided paintings addressing existential paradoxes through lenses of mythology, fairytales and female surrealists.

 

 

William Lamson, “Badwater,” installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Make Room.

9. William Lamson: Badwater
Make Room
Channeling Death Valley into downtown LA via an elaborately contrived abiotic microclimate, Lamson’s ecologically themed installation was as poetically evocative as it was scientifically ingenious.

 

 

Max Hooper Schneider, “Tryouts For The Human Race,” Jenny’s, Los Angeles.
Photo Credit: Michael Underwood. All images courtesy the artist and Jenny’s, Los Angeles.

10. Max Hooper Schneider: Tryouts for the Human Race
Jenny’s
Hooper Schneider also creates ecosystems addressing environmental issues; but in contrast to Lamson’s abiotic atmosphere, his show featured outré aquariums full of live fish and other marine life surrounded by underwater reef-like sculptures fashioned from human junk.