Jun 282014
 

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There’s a lot going on at Mark Ryden’s show at the Kohn GalleryThe 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 282014
 

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For Gabriel Kuri’s current sculpture show at Regen Projects, he has taken ordinary objects and combined them in interesting and often humorous ways.

From the press release:

Regen Projects is pleased to announce its first exhibition with Gabriel Kuri. Bringing together the artist’s recent explorations into the form, function, and materiality of everyday utilitarian objects, the show will feature a series of new sculptures composed of consumer materials and found elements that touch upon the relationship of value and exchange in contemporary global society.

He is also a part of Made in L.A. 2014 at the Hammer Museum. His show at Regen Projects closes 6/28/14.

Jun 212014
 

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Augusta Wood- The Last Autumn, Self Portrait with Andy Sleeping

For her show at Angles Gallery, Whether it happened or not, Augusta Wood has combined photos from old family slides, and sometimes more recent ones she has taken herself, to form singular images all taking place in and around the house she grew up in. The result is images that question the nature of memory and personal history.

From the press release:

Whether it happened or not is an act of organizing chaos and composing a view that asserts the way things exist in the artist’s mind. These are works that reflect what she remembers and wants to stabilize, complete, and believes should not be forgotten. Wood is resisting loss. This happened, this is real, and these images exist now, whether it happened or not.

This show closes on 6/28/14.

Jun 132014
 

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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
 

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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.

Jun 072014
 

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Photo by Robert Capa of Private Huston S. Riley at Omaha Beach

Today, June 6, 1944, is the 70th Anniversary of D-Day, when Allied (American, British and Canadian) troops invaded a 50 mile area of the Normandy coast in France. The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history and contributed to the Allied victory in the war.

Photojournalist Robert Capa was there, and took one of the most famous pictures from that day. It was one of only eleven images from the ten rolls of film he was able to bring back that survived, due to an accident in the darkroom when they were being processed.

This Vanity Fair article is a great portrait of Capa and also details his experience on D-Day.

For more information on Capa and a collection of his other images, Magnum Photos (which he helped to found) is worth checking out.

Artsy is also a good source for artist information and lists current exhibitions and related artists for further exploration.

May 242014
 

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Maren Hassinger’s current show Almost Weightless at Reginald Ingraham Gallery uses everyday materials like newspapers and plastic bags to create larger sculptures which are concerned with the human condition.

The pink bags of Love (seen above) were inflated with “human breath” and contain “love notes”, tiny papers printed with the word love, within. In Wrenching News, (also pictured above), the harsh stories from newspapers are twisted into a knotted sculpture. Hassinger’s use of these materials with their alternating heaviness and light, grayness and color, enable the viewer to feel the weight of the emotions the sculptures are conveying.

May 102014
 

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Melanie WillhideT and V, Mesa Elks, 2008

Farrah Karapetian has put together a wonderful collection of photographs from various artists for Von Lintel Gallery’s inaugural exhibition in Los Angeles, Lay of the Land. Many of the artists in the show, including Zoe Crosher, Ed Ruscha, and Catherine Opie, are primarily based in Los Angeles and many of the photos are connected to Los Angeles in some way.

Farrah Karapetian is both an artist and a curator. She also recently curated the excellent Unsparing Quality at Diane Rosenstein Fine Art.

This show closes 5/10/14.

May 032014
 

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Irit Batsry- Altered Sites

Currently at Shoshana Wayne gallery is Irit Batsry’s fourth solo exhibition. From the press release:

Altered Sites is a partial survey of Batsry’s photographic work from the last two decades illuminating key themes for the artist: the fragmentation of space, the construction of virtual space, and the dissolution of borders between photography, painting, sculpture, and the moving image.

Three different series of photographs are presented in the show. Neither There Nor Here is a series of photos taken from video material shot in Southern India. The Through the Looking Glass series, taken in Northwest Brazil, includes fun house mirror images of the sky and buildings, like the one seen above. Also shot in Brazil, the images from the third series, Caution, incorporate sculptures she built with security caution tape that she places within a coastal landscape.

This show closes 5/3.

May 032014
 

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Daniel Arsham- Kick the Tires and Light the Fires

For his current show at OHWOW gallery, Daniel Arsham molds familiar American cultural objects out of rocks and minerals, such as obsidian, quartz, volcanic ash, or glacial rock dust to create work that feels like its been unearthed from a time capsule.

This show closes 5/3/14.