Today (9/7) is the last day to see Hammer Museum’s Made In L.A. 2014, their second biennial exhibition consisting of Los Angeles based artists.
Sep 072014
Jul 262014
Tonight (7/26/14) is the closing party for Mike Kelley’s exhibition at MOCA. It is free from 6-10pm. There will be DJs, food trucks and a cash bar.
Jul 102014
This mural was created by Jean André for his exhibition Gauloise at HVW8 Gallery.
Jun 282014
There’s a lot going on at Mark Ryden’s show at the Kohn Gallery– The Gay 90s:West. The paintings are incredibly detailed as are the frames. In one room there is a diorama-like sculpture that for a penny becomes an active parade through an intricately created town. There are also listening booths for a record created for the show in which several pop artists, including Katy Perry, Tyler the Creator and Nick Cave recorded versions of Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two).
From the press release:
In the inaugural exhibition Mark Ryden, underscores his aesthetic forays into cultural kitsch through his exploration of the lost but not forgotten “Gay 90s”. Employing the visual trappings of the formally idealized 1890s in America—women dressed in satin skirts with large bows, large wheeled bicycles, Main St. USA, vaudevillian stages—Ryden recreates scenes from this marginalized slice of pop culture. This important new body of work—which includes paintings, works on paper, installations, and sculpture—negotiates the aesthetic value of clichéd nostalgia through the lens of polished neoclassic painting, and will include Ryden’s largest and most ambitious work to date, The Parlor (Allegory of Magic, Quintessence and Divine Mystery): a 96 x 120 inch painting with a wooden frame hand-carved in bas-relief.
It’s hard to tell what it all means, but it is certainly worth checking out for the spectacle. This show closes 6/28/14.
Jun 132014
The Wanderers (image via Greg “Craola” Simkins site)
Tomorrow (6/14) is the last day to see Greg “Craola” Simkins’ show Good Knight at Merry Karnowsky gallery. His work may look familiar from his mural on La Brea.
Jun 082014
Today (6/8/14) is the last day to see Jacob Hashimoto’s stunning Gas Giant at MOCA Pacific Design Center. Thousands of paper sculptures in color and black and white (on the first floor) combine to create the feeling of walking into another world.
From the artist’s website about the work-
In its third and final edition at MOCA Pacific Design Center, Gas Giant begins its voyage subverting the grid of the white cube on the first floor by tangling the black and white elements of the installation while directing the viewer to the second floor, where an open, atmospheric, and colorful emphasis on the verticality of the space is the climax of the piece. Influenced by ample sources that range from sacred architecture, post-war abstract painting, the Light and Space movement from the 1960s in Southern California, and the 1990s generation of Los Angeles painters, Hashimoto expands painting and collage strategies in an ongoing exploration of abstraction and landscape through color, repetition, association, and even simple marks and gestures that when combined together, result in the infinite layers of complexity that characterize his work. Becoming a mirror of human experience, Gas Giant is a metaphor of possibility and temporality—the viewer encounters the beauty of an encompassing landscape, through vastness and detail in equal manner, but also with the idea of loss, since the work also reflects on the intensity of human labor in its creation, and considers the temporality of the viewing experience, and of the piece itself. This exhibition marks Hashimoto’s first solo museum exhibition in California.
Apr 262014
If you are in Culver City make sure to look up on La Cienega (near Washington) to see the billboard of Rebecca Morris’s cats, an addition to her show at LA><ART, Fantastic LA, which consists of abstract paintings named after popular songs. Morris is also currently included in the Whitney Biennial.
Also at LA><Art is Patricia Fernández’s multimedia installation Paseo de los Melancólicos, which explores the history of Spain during the time of the Spanish Civil War.
These shows both close 4/26.
The outside of the gallery has a mural by Fritz Chesnut (seen above in silver) which will be on view until 4/30.
Apr 192014
At Dorielle Caimi’s first solo show Complex Candy at Gusford Gallery, her colorful oil paintings feature nude women in various (and at times surreal) situations, all exploring issues concerning women today.
From the press release:
Examining the idea of innocence as a virtue lost too soon, Caimi’s nude figures resist vulgarity and sexualization. The bright, vivid colors serve to draw the viewer in closer to the women, whom the artist imbues with psychological complexities. Incorporating a dark sense of humor and a vision of what an authentic self might look like, Caimi lays bare her own personal psyche, creating bold paintings that speak to, and for, a larger generation.
This show closes 4/19/14.
In this interview with Caimi from Combustus, she goes into more detail about her creations as well as the issues behind them. It’s a really interesting read and also mentions other artists including John Currin, whose painting style immediately came to mind when I saw these works. Her content, however, is delivering a very different message.
Apr 162014
Currently at Stone Malone Gallery on Melrose, two well known Los Angeles street artists, Gianni Arone and Cecilia Romero are showing their work. Arone’s work (seen above) is a combination of writing, sculpture, painting and assemblage, while Romero’s paintings are brightly colored and filled with energy.
This show closes on 4/16.
Apr 122014
Yoshitomo Nara’s solo exhibiton at Blum & Poe (closing 4/12) is filled with new works by the artist on a large scale including a room of bronze sculptures and some of his large paintings in others (an example of both pictured above). On the second floor of the gallery is a retrospective look at the artist’s drawings throughout his thirty year career. Whimsical and at times melancholy, the wide eyed figures fascinate.
Also in Culver City and closing 4/12/14-
Angles Gallery in collaboration with Hinge Modern presents THE ARTIST’S HANDS CONTINUUM by Rena Small. Small has been photographing her friend’s hands since 1984, and each black and white photograph represents the person in a unique way. Several of the hands included belong to familiar names.
The group show at Maloney Fine Art includes work by Joel Otterson, and some unique ceramic creations which look like bizarre vinyl toys by Maberry + Walker.