Today (7/25/15) is the last day to see the Pontus Willfors exhibition Homeland at Edward Cella Art + Architecture in Culver City.
Jul 252015
Apr 192015
Today (4/19) is the last day to see both Robert Williams’ exhibition Slang Aesthetics! and 20 Years Under the Influence of Juxtapoz, a group exhibition by guest curators Andrew Hosner of Thinkspace Gallery and Gary Pressman of Copro Gallery at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), in Barnsdall Park.
Robert Williams has had a long career, from working on famous 60′s comic book Zap Comix to later helping to create Juxtapoz Magazine in 1994 to provide exposure for underground artists. His paintings are highly skilled and detailed and each one has a story explaining the meanings behind the work.
The Juxtapoz exhibition has a diverse range of artists including Mark Ryden, Margaret Keane, Triston Eaton, Brett Armory, Andrew Schoulz and too many others to list here. Also drawing crowds are two of Kazuhiro Tsuji’s eerily lifelike sculptures of Dali (pictured above) and Andy Warhol.
Apr 182015
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.
Apr 042015
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.
Mar 222015
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.
Mar 062015
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.
Feb 222015
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.
Jan 242015
Today is the last day to see British artist Gillian Wearing’s exhibition everyone at Regen Projects. The two new video works are especially affecting.
Fear and Loathing, the artist’s first work produced in the US, presents a split screen with two people wearing masks, one on each side, alternating monologues about either a fear or a loathing from their personal lives. In the second, We are Here, residents of the West Midlands of England, tell stories of their lives as if they have returned from the dead. This piece was inspired by the American poet Edgar Lee Masters’ 1915 book Spoon River Anthology.
The artist also includes portraits of herself within the exhibition, including a portrait of herself in a mask of her younger self, a large necklace with a pendant that is a mask of her face, and a series of sculptures of her hand with different fortune teller readings written on them.
There’s a certain sadness to the exhibition as Wearing examines lives caught in circumstances that are often beyond their control. This ties in to the idea of the fortune teller, who is sought out for the feeling that life is predestined. Yet the various fortune tellers here tell different stories for the same hand. Perhaps these are like the different stories we are presenting to the world throughout our lives, at times with our true faces masked.
Nov 082014
This has been a great year for sculpture shows in Los Angeles, and this selection of work from artists based in this city is one of the best.
From the press release:
This group exhibition will address representations of the domestic object in fine art, including issues of still life, consumerism, gender, and identity. Exploring destabilization and the transformative shifts in cultural and aesthetic value that elevate the ordinary to art, the exhibition examines how everyday objects can be lifted from the mundane.
Today (11/8) is the last day to see this impressive show at Angles Gallery.
Oct 042014
Doug Aitken- Still Life (images via Regen Projects)
From the press release:
Spanning a variety of media encompassing photography, sculpture, publications, sound, and single and multi-channel video installations, Aitken’s work explores the modern landscape and posits possibilities for new uncharted frontiers. This exhibition, the artist’s fourth solo presentation at Regen Projects, will feature an installation of new sculptural objects within a labyrinthine space designed to create an experience of unexpected encounters and a sense of mystery and discovery for the viewer to navigate.
This is a really fun show. Tomorrow (10/4), there will be a performance by Doug Aitken and then he will be signing his book. This event begins at 4pm with the book signing from 6-8pm.