Oct 232024
 

Aliza Nisenbaum’s paintings for Altanera, Preciosa y Orgullosa, her current exhibition at Regen Projects, fill the gallery with colorful portraits depicting dancers from dance troupes and studios local to Southern California- including Teresita de Jesús of Studio 10, Folklorico Revolución, Mariachi Tierra Mia, and Amelia Muñoz Dancers.

From the press release-

An early, leading figure in the centrality of representation and portraiture in the preceding decade, Nisenbaum develops vibrant, figurative paintings through a form of participatory observation. She forges relationships with her subjects and connects meaningfully to the complex communities they create together. Informed by a diverse array of artistic and political traditions, Nisenbaum’s pictures (and the process through which they are made) recall forebears such as Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh, and Diego Rivera.

From mariachi to salsa, the works give painterly shape to the fleeting festivity of these traditions. Exploring connections between sight and sound, they evoke music and movement in an otherwise static, silent medium by way of color, contour, and pattern. As such, they recall modernist experiments and visionaries such as Sonia Delaunay and Florine Stettheimer. Mindful of the ever-intensifying specter of technology that shapes our daily lives and recalling sociologist Émile Durkheim’s theory of “collective effervescence,” Nisenbaum’s paintings celebrate these spaces and occasions for dancing as consecrated moments apart from our screens and devices, reminding us of the pleasure of being more fully of and with our bodies and each other.

The exhibition’s title, Altanera, Preciosa y Orgullosa, draws from “La Bikina,” an iconic Mexican ballad, and describes the song’s namesake subject, a “haughty, gorgeous and proud” woman. As such, it alludes to the sounds and sentiments that might accompany the dancers and musicians pictured throughout Nisenbaum’s paintings, as well as her overarching interest in depictions of female power, independence, and self-assuredness. These themes recur in La Bruja, a painting of dancers learning to carry lit candles safely atop their heads as they dance to lyrics that describe a witch, or “bruja,” at work in the middle of the night. For Nisenbaum, La Bruja, like “La Bikina,” evokes a powerful mythology of strong women, informed by their own agency and control as they move through the world.

Poised and focused, Shine Arm Styling, on 1, introduces us to a duo especially attentive to the most decisive details. Likewise, Nisenbaum’s paintings orchestrate a carefully calibrated concert of humming patterns and colors, from the rhyming latticework of tights to the gauzy curtains that drape and cocoon the rooms, the lacey fretwork of leotards and costumes, and the pronounced grain of the wooden floors. Animating and unbridled patterning recurs across the canvases, a painterly translation of the energy of the dancers and the spirit of their music. Just as the women tap more and more frenetically in La Bruja—building and accelerating—the pattern that frames them expands through and beyond the figures, likening the sonic experience to this visual effect, as well as the pace of paint handling that produces it.

Similarly, as dancers slide and screech to a halt, the undulating motion of the wooden floors mirrors the movement of the figures via painterly gesture. Rehearsal mirrors and elevated bars occasion playful angles, geometries, and juxtapositions, expanding and suturing spaces and passages. They punctuate, frame, divide, and at times provocatively double or even triple figures and forms, creating and implying pictures within pictures. Such reflections liken Nisenbaum’s activity as a painter to that of the whirling dancers. Her complex tableaux reveal her deep awareness and clear delight in the possibilities of painting to narrate human experience and the relationships that sustain us.

This exhibition closes 10/26/24.

Oct 232024
 

magnetic instinct, Liz Larner’s current exhibition at Regen Projects, balances the textures and colors of her unique ceramic sculptures with the simplicity of her 1989 work Rubber Divider. The show is also part of the Getty’s PST ART: Art and Science Collide programming.

From the press release-

“…for wander is a verb that needs no object…My aim is to limit myself to the ingenuity of innate action, to be awed by it, and not to try and clear up its mysteries.”
—Fernand Deligny, The Arachnean and Other Texts, 2015, pp. 37/46

The exhibition presents new ceramic works surrounding Larner’s “Rubber Divider, 1989—two sheets of pure gum rubber connected to steel rods attached to two flame-cut, solid steel blocks that hold the tension of the opposing pull of weight and elasticity of the rubber sheets. Their opposition and mutual dependence underscores Larner’s longstanding interest in the relationship between structural support and the attitude of the object.

Engaged with the many possibilities of sculpture and abstract form, Larner uses material to encourage discoveries led by an intrinsic link between impulse and perception. Polished to a mirror finish, the brass and aluminum of these sculptures allows them to be positioned on the wall, as the side of the glazed ceramic facing the wall is reflected in the cool light of aluminum and the warm glow of brass. Each surface has its own quality, from the extremely reflective to a textured matte, and these differences create a varying vibrancy of reflected light. Larner’s ceramics highlight a symbiotic continuity that troubles definitions of art and environment, object and subject.

Larner’s morphological research thinks likewise with ecological networks, as described in the writings of Fernand Deligny, or by the botanist Anne Pringle, in “Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham.” The dialogue between these new works and Larner’s more historic sculpture, Rubber Divider—which debuted in the 1989 Whitney Biennial—underscores the interplay between support, form, surface effect, and infrastructure, that has often animated her practice, exploring how our observed experience of the world is innately personal but based on connection. Mindful of the specter of the Anthropocene, it also occasions a meditation on how we distinguish past and present, wondering what forms, what artifacts of human action and intelligence will last, and outlast us.

Distinguished by the unique physical rules that govern its transition, from soft to fragile to almost indestructible, Larner engages clay in part because of its apparent self-determination and pliancy, a kind of material agency and chemical intelligence distinct from our own. The ceramic forms in this exhibition are molded by impressions with ubiquitous forms made with a precision that often goes unnoticed. These forms are softened by the contact of the clay being shaped by them. The consequence of this method of forming is ghostly and transpositional. Among many other potential interpretations and resonances, the exhibition’s title points to these principles, and likens them to the same encodings that inform human perception and the activity of many other life-forms, as we are learning to be of and with.

Larner’s work is also currently on view as part of Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean at the Orange County Museum of Art and For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego . Both shows are also part of PST ART: Art and Science Collide.

For more on her creative process, and earlier work, check out the video below from Art21 in 2016.

 

 

Feb 272020
 

Prism Tats- Big Blue

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (2/27-3/1/20)-

Thursday

Lower Dens are playing at The Roxy Theatre with Ami Dang

Bootleg Theater is hosting Los Angeles College Radio Night with musical guests É Arenas, Fell Runner, Carter Ace, Your Angel, Ryan Pollie and Dylan Meek and Q& A panels with radio DJs

For Freedoms Congress (FFCON) is happening around Los Angeles starting tonight and running through this weekend with artist led town halls re-imagining Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms project: Freedom from Fear, Freedom From Want, Freedom of Worship, and Freedom of Speech. Tonight MOCA is hosting Freedom from Fear- facilitated by Brent Blair with Aloe Blacc, Donna Hylton, and Skipp Townsend, with attendees invited to explore the inequities of privilege and access through an interactive Theatre of the Oppressed performance.

Reckling, Shutups, Niis, and Gustaf are playing at The Factory

Dr. Dog are playing at The Novo with special guest Michael Nau

The first gay country band Lavender Country are playing at Zebulon with Sam Buck opening

 

Friday

Prism Tats is playing a free early show at Gold Diggers with Dumb Thumbs

Actress Rachel Redleaf (Mama Cass) will be in person to discuss Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood after its screening at the Beverly Cinema

Imperial Teen are playing at Zebulon with The Ballet opening

Anamanaguchi are playing at the Fonda Theatre with Saint Pepsi, HANA, and Cowgirl Clue

Best Coast are playing with Mannequin Pussy at The Novo

 

Saturday

Artist Farrah Karapetian is hosting An Infrequent Day: Readings on time, timing, loss, and memory at 12pm at Diane Rosenstein Gallery with readings by Martha Ronk, Janet Sarbanes, Gabrielle Civil, Nylsa Martinez, and Anthony Seidman

Artists Catherine Opie and Lawrence Weiner will be in conversation at Regen Projects at 2pm, moderated by Dagny Corcoran (free but RSVP)

The 6th Annual All Day Carnival Celebration for Bob Baker Day is free and taking place at Los Angeles State Historic Park with musical performances, puppet shows, workshops, games, and more

Zebulon is hosting a free night of Live Readings and Music with Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks), Patty Schemel (Hole), and Rob Zabrecky (Possum Dixon) and accompanying music by Midget Handjob, Matt Devine and special guests

Raphael Saadiq is performing at The Wiltern with Jamila Woods

Vacationer is performing at the Bootleg Theater with Foisey. opening

Death Lens and The War Toys are playing at The Smell

Gold Diggers is hosting the Music Videos and Shorts Night Vol 4 (free but RSVP)

 

Sunday

Public Enemy are playing as part of the Bernie Sanders rally at the Los Angeles Convention Center

Paul Reubens will be telling stories about the making of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure following a screening of the film for its 35th Anniversary at The Wiltern (also Thursday)

Froth are opening for Duster at The Regent Theater

Zebulon is hosting a free screening at 3pm of the music documentary 40 Bands/ 80 Minutes! and the documentary featurette Sean Carnage Parking Lot. There will also be a DJ and a Q&A led by Voyager’s Bret Berg.

Later in the evening Kim Gordon will be playing at Zebulon with Sam Rowell

iLe is playing at the Echoplex with Francisca Valenzuela

 

Nov 012019
 

It’s the last weekend to see Theaster Gates’ exhibition Line Drawing for Shirt and Cloak at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, closing 11/2/19.

From the press release

Line Drawing for Shirt and Cloak presents a complex reflection on desire, consumption and surrender using contemporary activations of the storefront as a vehicle for expressing both emotional and aesthetic intent. With a highly honed metal strategy and the artist’s entire wardrobe, this multi-faceted installation represents a conscious movement toward the freedom found when one’s appetite and the world’s insistence asks for everything, and a moment of clearing when emotive freedom is found.

Referencing the exhibition’s title, the gallery will be transformed by a series of free-standing and wall-mounted metal structures that demarcate the interior of the space, forming a series of line drawings onto which varying sculptural and quotidian works will hang. Additional sculptural forms supported by large stone pillars and large metal and wood platforms form the basis of an extant atelier. In preparation for the exhibition, Gates will transform his entire wardrobe into many smaller symbolic works, which will be placed en masse as a large sculptural work. This body of work, while a departure in material motif, underscores Gates’ ongoing interest in both the transcendental acts of reclusion and denouncement, and his inability to totally reconcile his appetite for spiritual truth with his competing desire for the things of this world. Through painting, sculpture, sound, and up-cycling, Gates continues to find truth in the unseen and evidence growth in ways unexpected.

A new vocal score conceived of and performed by Gates punctuates the exhibition space. The lyrics of the piece playfully riff on the biblical verse from which the exhibition’s title is inspired, and offer an explication for the artist’s metamorphosis.

“I’ve always been a lover of material things; fashion, antiques, adornment. A believer in the beautiful. But in this moment, I’ve never felt more need to question my own contempt and appetite. This process is not a spiritual attempt; it’s actually quite worldly. I can’t feel growth because I’m weighted by the things around me and people can’t see my growth. The accumulations are a distraction. But the title has much to do with what happens when the world charges you – the outside forces that judge and gnaw and hate. If the world wants to pursue me for this shirt, well, they can have it all.

The sculptural intent of the show is to introduce an unexpected spatial strategy at Regen that gives me permission to be free of conventional gallery tropes and form a set of new sculptural dictates that consider more of the everyday world of fashion and street activity. The project is a minor response to the growth of interest that the fashion world has in art and perhaps my own reckoning with the power of the hyper-public, hyper-everyday considerations that fashion affords. I’m in dialogue with Willie Wear, Girbaud, the Prada concern, retail projects in China, the historic fashions that Chicago House Music produced, and my mama’s church hats. While none of these things need to be immediately perceived, they are no-less present.” –Theaster Gates, 2019

Jun 202019
 

Regen Projects is currently showing Elliot Hundley’s Clearing (pictured above) and Liz Larner’s As Below, So Above (shown below). Hundley’s exhibition includes five panel works as well as three benches with accompanying sculptures. The panel works are incredible, with dizzying amounts of detail and texture. Tiny images, pieces of fabric, tags, and even one flip flop, mix with paint and ink to form the final works. The best way to appreciate the work is by moving close to look at small sections at a time and then pulling back to see it as a whole.

In the video below, that was made for the exhibition at MOCA that Hundley recently curated, he talks a bit about his process. Especially interesting is when he says he tries to leave his creations “in an open ended form so that people who look at them can also imagine making them or interacting with them or destroying them or rearranging them”.

For Liz Larner’s exhibition she has created several new works that “demonstrate her ongoing examination into sculpture, painting, drawing, and ceramics. The environment – the personal and the entrenched – are set together in these artworks that reach for an understanding of vulnerability through what is and has been considered low and directed, made capital of, and endangered.”

Both of these exhibition will close on 6/22/19.

May 032019
 

Peer Amid (Peered Amidst), 2019

Sumday (We Gunna Rest on) Sunday, 2019

Detail of Sumday (We Gunna Rest on) Sunday, 2019

Change Comin’ Round Tha Bend (Right Round, Right Round), 2019

Regen Projects is currently showing But I Woke Jus’ Tha Same, an exhibition of paintings and drawings by artist Christina Quarles. If her work seems familiar, she was also one of the artists featured in Hammer Museum’s Made In L.A. 2018.

From the press release

Quarles’ seductive paintings feature polymorphous figures arranged in contorted positions in space, rendered through expressive and gestural strokes that teeter on the edge of abstraction and representation. Referencing the history and techniques of painting, her work propels forward the limits of her chosen medium, and is informed by her multiply situated identity as a queer woman of mixed race. Dynamic compositions feature bold patterns and decorative motifs such as flowers, latticework, and plaid tablecloths – feminine tropes that reference domestic space. Yet the subjects in Quarles’ paintings simultaneously inhabit interior and exterior space. Perspectival planes both situate and fragment the bodies they bisect, representing the boundaries that demarcate a space from the individual, and expanding the limits and potential for representation.

Similar to her paintings, her drawings deftly combine pictorial elements using economy of line with cross hatching, and other modes of mark making, to create form and depth. Punctuating the picture plane, or outlining a figure, text additions in the form of puns or poetic wordplay often reference pop culture, situating the works in our time.

This show closes 5/9/19.

 

Mar 142019
 

Tashaki Miyaki- Facts of Life

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (3/14-3/17/19)-

Thursday

1720 is hosting 45 Live with performances by Lord Finesse, Peanut Butter Wolf, J Rocc, Prince Paul, and special guests

MOCA Grand Avenue is showing Babette Magolte’s film The Sky on Location with the artist in attendance for the event

Tobe Nwigwe is performing at The Regent Theater

Downtown LA Artwalk returns with open studios and gallery shows

 

Friday

Refest Los Angeles 2019, is a salon that “explores innovative strategies in participatory performance that catalyze social change”. It is being hosted by Navel and CultureHubLA and will have interactive installations, performances and “experiences” by LA artists and artists from CultureHub’s global community (free with RSVP)

Odd Nights at The Autry includes a market, live music, food trucks, and the galleries at the museum stay open until 9pm ($5)

Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach is free on Fridays from 6-9pm for Shark Lagoon Nights

Jeffertitti’s Nile are playing a free show at Zebulon with special guests

 

Saturday

Tashaki Miyaki are playing a free show at the Highland Park Bowl with Magic Wands, The Mercury Wheel, and Miguel Mendez & The Yoga Elite

LAMAG is hosting a free screening of Mariah Garnett’s film Trouble, a documentary about her relationship with her Northern Irish father who she met as an adult. The screening also includes a Q&A with the artist to follow plus snacks and drinks.

There’s a free ten hour Bach Marathon happening at Union Station, with various concerts taking place throughout the station

Artist Silke Otto-Knapp will be in conversation with Darby English, University of Chicago’s Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History and the College, at Regen Projects at 2pm, in conjunction with Otto-Knapp’s exhibition Land and Sea at the gallery

Actor/ Director Alex Cox will be at the Egyptian Theatre to speak between screenings of Repo Man and his recent film Tombstone Rashomon

Sam Valdez and Rodes Rollins are playing at the Moroccan Lounge

New York Night Train with Jonathan Toubin, the all night dance party of uncommon soul music on vinyl, is happening at Zebulon

 

Sunday

LACMA is hosting a free lecture at 1pm by Sarah Kelly Oehler, Field-McCormick Chair and Curator of American Art at The Art Institute of Chicago, and organizing curator of Charles White: A Retrospective (currently at the museum), on the artist’s formative years in Chicago

Zebulon is having a free screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film Barry Lyndon

The Egyptian Theatre is showing a Patrick Swayze double feature- Road House and Point Break

CLAVVS are playing at The Echo with Tigercide and a special guest

 

Feb 162019
 

While we are living in a time where anxiety is prevalent, it’s nice to imagine being as calm as Superchill, the title character of Hannah Epstein’s comic strip, and star of her exhibition Do You Want A Free Trip To Outer Space? at Steve Turner gallery. The show combines hooked rugs, video animation, and a video game that you can play, all creating a fun little world to inhabit for awhile.

Also in the gallery’s other rooms are Jamie Felton’s painting show Parts from an Oyster and Paige Jiyoung Moon’s paintings for Days of Our Lives.

All three exhibitions close 2/16/19.

Nearby at Regen Projects is Glenn Ligon’s exhibition of new work, Untitled (America)/Debris Field/Synecdoche/Notes for a Poem on the Third World.

From the press release

Over the years, Ligon has created neon sculptures that illuminate various phrases or words in charged and animated ways. Notes for a Poem on the Third World, Ligon’s first figurative sculpture, is comprised of a large neon based on a tracing of the artist’s hands that takes its inspiration from an unrealized film project by Pier Paolo Pasolini that was to be shot in India, Africa, the Arab countries, Latin America, and the “black ghettoes of the United States.” Pasolini claimed that it was the “discovery of the elsewhere” that drove his identification with the struggles of non-Western peoples and people on the margins of the West. Ligon’s neon, with its ambiguous gesture of greeting, protest, or surrender, is the first of a series of works inspired by Pasolini’s project.

Also featured in the exhibition is Untitled (America), 2018, a black-painted red neon in which the word “America” is displayed upside down, and Synecdoche (For Byron Kim), a neon showing the date of the next presidential election that will be lit on that day.

 

This exhibition closes 2/17/19.

Apr 052018
 

Wallows- Pleaser

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (4/5-4/8/18)-

Thursday

Wallows are playing a free show at Amoeba Hollywood today at 5pm and signing their debut EP afterwards

The Broad is offering free admission to their Jasper Johns exhibition on the first Thursday of the month- (today and 5/3) from 4-7pm and afterwards you can head across the street for MOCA’s free night

Artist Jennifer Gutierrez Morgan is leading a milagro making workshop for CAFAM’s CraftNight– $10 includes supplies, drinks and snacks

Cherry Glazerr are opening for The Breeders and Elijah Wood will be playing a DJ set at The Fonda Theatre

Vera Sola is playing at the Bootleg Theater with Hush Arbors opening

Friday

Nightmare Air are playing with Draemings at the Bootleg Theater

Natural History Museum’s First Fridays event includes a tour of the History Department, a discussion of oil and its role in the history of LA, DJs, and music by Chelsea Jade and Jamila Woods

The Independent Art Book Fair starts today and runs until Sunday at 939 Studios DTLA

The Breeders are playing at The Theatre at Ace Hotel with Post Pink opening

Friday and Saturday

The Music Center is transforming into a “Disco wonderland clad in gold and mirrors” for its event- Sleepless: The Music Center After Hours. The event begins at 11:30pm and runs until 3 am- with large scale projections, roller skaters (Friday), DJs, pop-up dance happenings, screenings, art installations, live music, a makeup station, and more (plus cocktails and small bites)

Saturday

Artist Walead Beshty will be in conversation with executive director of LAXART, Hamza Walker at Regen Projects

Feels are playing a free show for Hipsville’s 1 Year Anniversary at The Offbeat-A Bar on York, with Cat Scan opening

Melted are having a record release party at The Hi Hat with Awakebutstillinbed, Decent Criminal, and Pancho and the Wizards also performing

Ex Stains and Hit Bargain are opening for DJ Jonathan Toubin’s NY Night Train party at Zebulon

Electric Six are playing at the Bootleg Theater with The Manx and Northern Faces opening

Alice Bag Band is having a record release party at The Echo with Fatty Cakes and the Puff Pastries opening

Saturday and Sunday

The Brewery Art Walk returns with its twice annual event- a great opportunity to check out the complex and the artist’s studios

Sunday

Barnsdall Art Center, loacted in beautiful Barnsdall Park, is having a free Art and Craft Fair

SadGirl are playing at the Teragram Ballroom with Peach Kelli Pop, Healing Gems and Bruiser Queen opening

Loma are playing at the Bootleg Theater with Jess Williamson opening

 

Feb 092018
 

Spendtime Palace- Sonora

Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (2/8-2/11/18)-

Thursday

Roger Guenveur Smith is will be presenting his solo performance Frederick Douglass Now at CAAM (get there early- they are expecting a large turnout!)

LACMA has a free screening of Anna Deveare Smith’s film of her performance piece, Notes from the Field, with a discussion with Smith to follow (free)

Art historian Thomas Crow will be discussing religion in contemporary art at Hammer Museum

Fu Manchu are playing a free live set at Amoeba Hollywood before their show at The Troubadour on Friday

Friday

Dead Prez are playing at The Roxy with Lyrics Born opening

YACHT are playing at the Lodge Room with French Vanilla opening

Writer Laurie Penny will be discussing science fiction, sexual liberation, intersectional feminism and more at The Last Bookstore (free)

The Big Pink, Collapsing Scenery and Palm Springsteen are playing a free show at Zebulon

Saturday

Artist Catherine Opie will be in conversation with architect Michael Maltzan, and deputy director and curator of LAXART Catherine Taft at Regen Projects

Picture This, at The Virgil, is a live comedy show where the stand-ups are drawn live by animators and cartoonists with unpredictable results (free)

For Rock Lottery, taking place this time at The Echo, 25 different musicians meet at 10 am and are divided into groups of five to create and rehearse songs that are then played at a show that night. This event’s musicians include Mikal Cronin, Mike Watt, Patty Schemel, and Kelcey Ayer.

Simian Mobile Disco and Matthew Dear are playing DJ sets for the LAMP 5 year Anniversary party at 1720

Sunday

Spendtime Palace are playing at the Moroccan Lounge with Santoros, The Bash Dogs, and Bear Call opening

Broken Hearts Circus at Angel City Brewery will combine drinks and food with games, a stilt walker, circus performers, live music and more (free)

Froth are one of the bands playing at Part Time Punk’s My Bloody Valentine Nite at The Echoplex