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Los Angeles Street Art- Police State

 California Street Art, Los Angeles Street Art, Politics, Street Art
Jun 042020
 

Police actions against peaceful protesters during this time have been horrific. People have been tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets, shoved to the ground, thrown, beaten with batons, driven into with SUVs, pepper sprayed, and more.

We should not live in a police state. The military should not be called in to further terrorize the people of this country. Curfews should not be used as a way to silence protest and encourage harassment, fines, and arrests.

The police need to be held accountable for their actions in the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others. The continued use of unnecessary and often lethal violence, in addition to the targeting of black people by police around the country, must be stopped. There need to be strong legal ramifications put in place to prevent these actions from continuing to go on unpunished.

ACLU Southern California sent letters County and City of LA requesting that the Curfew Order be rescinded or substantially restricted as it is “neither authorized by state statutory law nor consistent with the United States Constitution, including the Constitution’s prohibition on restrictions of speech and assembly, its protection for freedom of movement, and its most basic notice requirements.”  It looks like their actions succeeded and Los Angeles County no longer has a curfew. Now hopefully other cities will follow their lead.

If you are a New Yorker- support the Safer NY Act and #repeal50A- both of which would increase accountability for officers who engage in misconduct in the NYPD.  Check out Change The NYPD for more info.

Also make sure to check out and support the actions of the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, and Equal Justice Initiative’s work for criminal justice reform.

(This photo is from 2015 and shows work by @esoteric_tcf)

Nina Chanel Abney at Mary Boone Gallery NYC

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
May 302020
 

Nina Chanel Abney’s In the Land Without Feelings (2017) from her 2017 exhibition Safe House at Mary Boone Gallery in collaboration with Jack Shainman Gallery.

From the press release-

Safe House is so termed for being a place of refuge. It is also a phrase used more colloquially as a space where one escapes the dangers affiliated with the law. With these eight single-panel paintings, Abney invites us into a place of reprieve, showing us people partaking in everyday activities. Abney’s scenarios offer sincere portrayals that counter how black life is represented in the mainstream media. The decision intentionally explores black joy as a means of resistance.

A deeply accomplished artist associated with innovating history painting, Abney took a multipart strategy to reclaim a space for creativity for this exhibition. To begin, she sourced graphics from posters dating from the 1960s that addressed aspects of safety for occupation, home, and leisure, abstracted these, and made them grounds for large-scale compositions. Then, against this backdrop Abney painted figures, objects, and letters to articulate the complex dynamics of contemporary urban life. She unequivocally is in pursuit of a depiction of commonplace activities and things. With each intuitively developed composition, each element such as the figures is often obfuscated by another element such as text, which in turn is challenged by a direction, such as an arrow. The imagery is reminiscent of sign painting, and each move made by Abney necessitates another. This chain of forms turns each element over to a type of writing, which opens a narrative and its reception to many readings. The abstracted source material (safety posters), combined with the abounding narratives from the detailed scenes, returns us to the title of the exhibition. The phrase prompts us to ask directly or obliquely: What caution and care are these narratives invoking and advocating? What danger might not be readily apparent to the viewer here?

David Hockney at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (plus COVID-19 Online Programming)

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
May 292020
 

Pictured above is David Hockney’s Rubber Ring Floating in a Swimming Pool (1971), from his excellent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018.

From the show’s wall caption-

Hockney was impressed with how a photograph he had taken of a red pool toy floating in the water in Cadaqués, Spain looked nearly abstract, “like a Max Ernst,” he said. “I thought, it’s marvelous, I could just paint it.” He pointed out later that while the picture may look completely abstract at first glance, once the viewer reads its title, the work changes completely.

The Met has a lot of great online programming due to the closures for COVID-19, including virtual tours of iconic spaces in the museum and their current exhibitions; talks, performances, and concerts; over 500 free books; art instructions; six seasons of The Artist Project- short videos from contemporary artists discussing art that inspires them; coloring pages; a full length feature documentary film on Gerhard Richter (he has an exhibition currently at The Met Breuer) and more.

 

 

Ryan Brown at Steve Turner

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
May 252020
 

Ryan Brown’s Praia do Sancho (2015), from the 2015 group exhibition Extraction at Steve Turner in Los Angeles. For this work he used the structural components of stretched canvas to create this large work that resembles a beach chair.

Yayoi Kusama’s Room at Marciano Art Foundation

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture
May 212020
 

A section of Yayoi Kusama’s installation at the now permanently closed Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles.

NYC Street Art-Joey Ramone Mural by Solus Art and John “Crash” Matos

 New York Street Art, Street Art
May 192020
 

Happy Birthday Joey Ramone!

For more of Solus Art’s work, check out his website and Instagram

For more of John Matos work, check out his website

International Museum Day- Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA)

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
May 182020
 

 

Two works from Museum of Latin American Art’s outdoor sculpture garden, just one of the great things about this Long Beach museum.

Currently they are showing Arte, Mujer, y Memoria: Arpilleras from Chile; Dreamland: A Frank Romero Retrospective;  En Vision: Picturing the Self -selected pieces from MOLAA’s Permanent Collection in conversation with self-portraits by students of Las Fotos Project, a community-based nonprofit organization that inspires teenage girls through photography, mentorship and self-expression; and the work of Afro Cuban artists José Bedia and Belkis Ayón; in addition to work from the museum’s permanent collection, as part of their Museum en Casa online programming.

Jamie Isenstein at Andrew Kreps Gallery NYC

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
May 172020
 

Jamie Isenstein’s Onions (Mario to Clown Mouse), 2015, from her exhibition Para Drama at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York in 2015.

From the press release–

… And on the wall are a series of photographs of masks wearing masks. By putting on masks the support masks become anthropomorphized into faces so that these inanimate objects come alive. At the same time, the layering of these masks emphasizes their emptiness. Behind the illusions there is nothing. Absurdly, the more masks the masks wear, the deeper the layering of nothingness becomes. Onions, 2015, is a sculpture of many masks layered over the hollow head of a mascot costume. The title of the work refers to a monologue in the Henrik Ibsen play Peer Gynt in which Peer peels away the layers of an onion as he examines the various roles he has played in his life. Eventually he comes to realize there is nothing substantial at the core.

 

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