Karen Carson– Big Job (Case International Combine)
Karen Carson’s paintings of farm machines are dramatic, beautiful and at times, huge (the ones on unstretched canvas are between 9 and 12 ft high). Her current show at Rosumund Felsen Gallery, will have you looking at tractors in a whole new way. It is on view until Saturday, 1/4.
Mark Stock- “HOLLYWOOD: UNCOVERED”
Currently at Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Mark Stock’s show is built around a film noir-like story. Images of famous Hollywood figures are embedded in paintings of the Hollywood sign; a woman is seen digging up a mysterious box; and trompe l’oleil paintings of postcards and notes taped to chalkboards are on another wall of the gallery.
Mark Stock has his own connection to Hollywood- his paintings have appeared in films and he also created a poster for the Telluride film festival.
From the press release-
Blum & Poe is very pleased to present our first solo exhibition with Los Angeles based artist Jim Shaw. Spanning two decades and covering the entire gallery, Shaw’s fantastical, humorous, and psychologically laden explorations into esoteric, as well as popular, cultural phenomena coalesce to render a tale of Biblical proportion. Combing historic texts, artworks, comic books, and his dreams, Shaw’s flood of imagery is an essential tool in conveying his imagined histories and fables. Rivers, houses, and hair are but a few motifs repeated throughout the exhibition. Seemingly disparate, they mnemonically serve each other in depicting over-arching themes of fallen heroes, collapsed economies, concepts of sin, and general doomsday destruction.
This show closes 12/21.
Frank Ryan– “Figure in a Tunnel” from Liminal View at Walter Maciel Gallery
From the press release:
In Liminal View, Ryan draws inspiration from a broader scope of the greater Los Angeles landscape accumulating an eclectic grouping of diaristic observations through the use of drawing, digital still and video images that serve as source material for his paintings. Ryan minimizes the expression of banality by laying the groundwork for an experience of the uncanny. In these moments, familiar subjects are perceived as foreign in the same way that a word will suddenly sound strange. Ryan explores how this inversion allows access to an existence beyond the visible order.
Really interesting paintings by this Los Angeles based artist, including two of the Second Street tunnel. The show is up until 12/21.
Jordi Alcaraz- Ideas of Sculpture
The works in Altered States, Jordi Alcaraz’s current show at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, consistently challenge viewers perceptions. The glass frames surrounding drawings, paintings and sculptures are often broken or warped, where objects may have tried to get in or out. In others, it is the object itself that is being altered. The works get more intriguing as you progress through the gallery.
The show closes 12/21/13.
From Betye Saar’s :The Alpha & Omega-The Beginning & The End
Betye Saar’s installation at Roberts & Tilton contains many objects all coming together to contemplate time, identity, nature and the world around us. Unlike her previous show at the gallery, Red Time, which challenged the viewer with both its imagery and the power of the color itself; The Alpha and Omega, creates a feeling of calm, both in its color palette of blues and grays but also in the objects chosen like clocks and ships. In both shows, history is an important theme. This can be seen most clearly in The Challenges of Fate, a sculpture within the work, made up of a black bird perched on a cage housing a ship, which is above a globe resting on a glass box of bones, all set upon a stack of books.
Also at the gallery is Projections Part II: Film As Painting, curated by Aaron Rose. Multiple films by various artists are presented through different projections and monitor displays. The films are very different in content but work together to present the concept of film as not just film, but moving painting. There are thirteen films within the show and their creation dates range from the earliest, Len Lye’s A Colour Box (1935) to Rose’s own The Dress (2013). One standout is Marie Menken’s Go! Go! Go! (1962-4) a frantic speeding up of footage of life in the 1960’s in New York.
Both shows close tomorrow, 12/14.
One room from Pet Shapes at China Art Objects Galleries
If you are in Culver City, tomorrow (12/14) is the last day for this group show. All the works are pet related, and there is even a purring chair (not shown). It’s worth checking out if you are in the area.
Image from Agnés Varda in Californialand at LACMA
Tonight (12/7) at 7:30pm, LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) is playing at LACMA along with Black Panthers.
Info from LACMA’s website for this event:
Agnès Varda’s first-ever American feature film was shot while she was living in Los Angeles with husband Jacques Demy (his own U.S. debut, Model Shop, was released the same year). LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) finds Warhol superstar Viva joined by Hair cocreators James Rado and Gerome Ragni as the trio, in various states of undress, play host to visiting cinéma vérité luminary Shirley Clarke (The Cool World, Portrait of Jason) in a Hollywood bungalow. Sunsoaked Southern California counterculture, New York bohemia, and Left Bank abandon all intermingle in this film about a film. LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) graced the debut cover of Warhol’s Interview magazine and is Varda’s anarchic paean to the age of aquarius and Tinseltown transience with guest spots by everyone from Eddie Constantine to Peter Bogdanovich. This is an encore screening of the brand-new, LACMA-supported restoration of this film—in partnership with the Annenberg Foundation and The Film Foundation—which is also the inspiration for the filmmaker’s LACMA exhibit Agnès Varda in Californialand.
Also screening, Black Panthers (1969, 30 minutes, color, DCP)—another film newly restored by LACMA, the Annenberg Foundation and The Film Foundation—and Varda’s American debut: a powerful document of the eponymous Oakland movement’s efforts to free activist Huey Newton.
Some interesting facts about Viva– aside from being one of the stars of this film and Warhol’s movies, she also had small parts in Paris, Texas; Midnight Cowboy; and Play It Again, Sam. Both her daughters, Alexandra Auder and Gaby Hoffman, are actresses as well. She currently lives and paints in Palm Springs.
Definitely two films worth checking out. If you miss this screening, clips from the LIONS LOVE(…AND LIES) are playing in the exhibition as well.
Joel Otterson- Bottoms Up #2
Joel Otterson’s current show is “Chandelier Queer” at Maloney Fine Art. This title references the slang term “chandelier queer” defined as- “a homosexual with exquisite and/or expensive taste” or a “self-spoiled fruit”(according to Urban Dictionary). The show consists of sculptures made from found glass wear. The chandeliers are beautiful and seemingly fragile creations which take take what most consider trashy objects, and turns them into something glorious.
Otterson is one of the artists selected to be in the Whitney Biennial 2014.
One of the paintings from the series The Women by Sarah Awad
Currently at Diane Rosenstein Fine Art, this show closes Saturday (11/30).