In Wonderland at LACMA is the first exhibition dedicated to Surrealism as practiced by women artists. Featuring 47 artists from the U.S. and Mexico, the curators examine the relationship between Surrealism and the emergence of gender politics. Previous Surrealist surveys excluded or minimized the role of female artists. While I acknowledge the monumental significance of [...]
–Nancy Monk at Craig Krull Gallery– When visual intelligence is made manifest through equal measures of wit, invention and discovery it is a welcome event. Nancy Monk’s solo exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica is just such a salve. Intense patterns inhabit every work on exhibit. And for Monk’s particular [...]
–Charlotta Westergren at Patrick Painter– Charlotta Westergren displays a prodigious amount of talent and tenacity in her solo exhibition with Patrick Painter in Santa Monica. Westergren is a painter of remarkable touch and facility. Over the years her renderings of animals, flora, trees, oysters and fungi have coupled the precision of Dutch still life [...]
–Urs Fischer at Gagosian Beverly Hills– Is Bigger Better? In certain echelons of the art world scale is the index to importance. No one can argue with the Gee Whiz double takes that big ass art induces. It verges on entertainment or maybe sometimes a carnival sideshow. And it takes a particular brand of gallery [...]
–Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks, LA and LACMA– Ellsworth Kelly’s stunning show at the newly minted Matthew Marks Gallery in Los Angeles is sublime. Flat color and form dance on the walls with natural light bathing the space like a Bonnard Nude. The Gallery facade itself is a work of art by Kelly proving art [...]
Mike Kelley’s untimely death sent a shockwave throughout the art world. It seemed unthinkable that L.A.’s subversive “bad boy” artist was gone. Within two weeks of his death, MOCA L.A. organized a special tribute exhibition celebrating Kelley’s work. Knowing how far in advance museums plan exhibitions, this is nothing short of miraculous. The 23 exhibited [...]
–Frick Byers at Sam Lee Gallery– A good work of art can impress upon first sight. An even better work of art follows you out of the gallery and keeps you thinking weeks after the gallery visit. Frick Byers‘ Tennis Courts affects the latter’s subterranean magic where it is on view at Sam Lee Gallery [...]
My former landlord in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a sphinx-like Teutonic manchild who sublet me one of the ad-hoc drywall sleeping lofts in the colossal warehouse he leased near the Bedford Avenue subway stop—still owes me $1200. It was my security deposit from 2008 and I don’t expect to get it back. I don’t mean this story as revenge [...]
One of the best things about Pacific Standard Time is that it invites visitors to get off the beaten track of official, greatest-hits surveys of art made in Southern California from 1945 to 1980 and, instead, to see how messy, complex, and multi-layered history is (and art scenes almost always are), particularly ones that come [...]
“Roland Reiss, Personal Politics: Sculpture from the 1970s and 1980s” at the Pasadena Museum of California Art is not part of “Pacific Standard Time.” The Getty-funded project, advertised as a “region-wide initiative encompassing every major L.A. art movement from 1945 to 1980,” includes upwards of 150 exhibitions at upwards of 125 institutions, from Venice to [...]
