The honey poured on the subjects of Blake Little’s portraits, at his current exhibition Preservation at Kopeikin Gallery, creates a strange effect. With their eyes forced closed they become frozen in time, transformed from their former selves into something completely different.
Check out the exhibition before it closes 4/18/15.
(images via Kopeikin Gallery)
Alex Chaves
Currently at Roberts & Tilton, the exhibition And There Is An End is a wonderfully eclectic mix of painting and sculpture.
From the press release-
A search for poetic truths entails a search for art that not only has a dialogue with contemporary issues, but talks back to us. This exhibition brings together disparate voices to convene in a context spanning multiple generations and varied identities. With a range of works that acknowledges the individual via paintings and sculptural works with an unabashed display of the personal, the hand and the intuitive, implementing autonomous figuration and tactile expressions of materials that question the act of production and active image making.
This show closes 4/18/15.
There is something pleasingly disorienting about Mernet Larsen’s paintings, currently at Various Small Fires (VSF) Gallery until 4/18. The once familiar objects take on new shapes and forms through her unique perspective.
This is the first show in Los Angeles for the artist who, though painting since the 1960′s, primarily showed in her home state of Florida, where she also taught painting at the University of South Florida.
The three person show currently at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, includes the artist collaboration of Devin Liston and Gosha Levochkin known as devNgosha (seen above), Glenn Barr, and William Wray. Barr’s collection of paintings of women on the phone have a dreamy film still quality, while Wray’s portraits of down and out superheroes will seem familiar to anyone who has seen the Hollywood Boulevard characters when they drift away from the strip. DevNgosha’s brightly colored creations address the concept of drought and thirst in the California landscape.
See it before it closes on 4/11/15.
For Los Angeles based artist Christine Frerichs’ show at Klowden Mann she has painted in two sizes, large and small. There is an incredible energy to the large paintings, with their waves of motion moving over dense layers of colorful paint. In her smaller paintings there is a more concentrated imagery, often seeming like paintings of the memories of photographs.
From the press release:
The show is Frerichs’ second with the gallery, and continues her focus on memory, relationships and the construction of personal identity, as expressed through abstract painting. The exhibition centers around a series of paired canvases layered with thick oil paint, acrylic and wax, using subtle, bold, light and dark colors, and curving textured lines which ripple across each of their surfaces. These formal qualities describe an abstracted representation of two figures, and the visceral experience of different landscapes as they relate to the physical and emotional self.
This show closes 4/11.
Kenny Scharf’s current show at Honor Fraser is a fun mix of collage, painting, and video, with many of the works making their debut.
From the press release:
Though Scharf is best known for his exuberant iconography, his work also contains underlying themes that reflect his ongoing commitment to social and environmental concerns. For Scharf, the embrace of fun is an act of defiance, his considered use of unconventional materials, bright color palette, and playful shapes a protest against restrictive cultural conditions. In his latest body of work, the Born Again paintings, Scharf encapsulates this notion of transforming the mundane by inserting his familiar characters and motifs into found amateur paintings. Akin to his earlier customizations of mass-produced objects like phones, washers, and televisions, here it is the discarded artwork that is repurposed.
His famous characters also make an appearance all around Davis Bros Tires on Washington and La Cienega nearby.
Today (3/23) is the last day to see Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting at LACMA.
From the press release:
In an attention-compromised age when images are instant and prevalent, abstract painting serves as a contradiction, acting as a conduit for the mark of the original, individual artist. While most of the work in the exhibition has been recently created and acquired, additional paintings culled from LACMA’s collection illustrate how artists have reanimated techniques and forms using other sources that are appropriated from popular culture, photography, and collage, essentially creating a new variation of abstract painting.
It’s also a good day to visit LACMA because they are having a full day of activities and performances to celebrate Nowruz, the Iranian New Year and the first day of spring.
Tomorrow (3/7) is the last day to see the Ei Arakawa and Karl Holmqvist exhibition Y.O.Y.O.G.A.L.A.N.D. at Overduin & Co.
From the press release:
The exhibition features sculpture, drawing, poetry, and video in an installation addressing a range of subjects from global energy production-nuclear power and the potential of geothermal energy-to utopian ideals and the relationship between art and social issues.
Also closing 3/7 is London based artist Anish Kapoor’s sculpture show at Regen Projects.
From the press release:
A series of monumental works feature organic, terrestrial forms made from resin and earth. In contrast to their raw, earthly matter, a series of highly polished stainless steel sculptures reflect and refract an illusion of the world onto their mirrored surfaces and confound the viewers’ relationship to the space around them. Similarly, several monochromatic voids appear to float on the gallery walls, their concave interiors play with the viewers’ perception of surface and depth and create the illusion of infinite space reflected in their void like interiors. A trio of amorphous wall sculptures entitled Keriah (I, II, III) refer to the Jewish mourning practice of clothes tearing. Visceral and raw, their shapes hang on the wall as if in a perpetual state of decay.
Today (2/22) is the last day to see Pierre Huyghe at LACMA. There is so much to see within the show and it is, at times, overwhelming. You enter the exhibition with your name announced by a live announcer and then proceed through the maze like space to find aquariums with live sea creatures in them; video work, including a film with a monkey walking around wearing the mask of a girl; sculptures including the one pictured above with a head of live bees (Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt)); and Human, a live dog who is around the gallery at various times. It’s Huyghe’s first retrospective in his twenty-five year career and well worth a trip into his unique visual world.
Today (2/22) is the last day of exhibition LOUIS VUITTON SERIES 2 – Past, Present and Future in Hollywood.
From their website:
The Series 2 exhibit is a modern and unexpected interpretation of a fashion show that contextualizes the Spring 2015 Women’s Ready-to-Wear collection, conceived by Women’s Artistic Director, Nicolas Ghesquière. The exhibit allows visitors to explore the creative process behind the collection through a “series” of distinctive rooms that thematically share his influences and inspirations as well as the excitement of the fashion show experience.
It is an interesting exhibit and does immerse you in the fashion show world. There is even a video section where you learn about the process of creating the items themselves. And free stickers at the end!
