Last year, Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) differentiated itself by making the daring fair leap of dipping a toe into the murky waters of virtuality— remember the VR environments by Jeremy Couillardand at Louis B James (New York) or the ear-bending 6-channel video installation of Matt Stokes…
It may have been a risky if not morbid year to be a celebrity… but it was a great year to be a sensory savvy, ephemeral conscious, and experiential attuned art exhibition in Los Angeles. In order of appearance, here are 16 immersive shows— 12 solos (with…
The term “synthesis” comes from Latin’s “composition,” the Greek root nearly translating as “to put together.” Place “video” before this and it visualizes the stages encountered through the interplay of light, space and point of view. For Suzy Poling and Jennifer Juniper Stratford, video synthesis is…
It seems true that the most gratifying signs of an exhibition’s success lies in its residual ability to inspire other programming. Nine years ago, Connie Butler mounted the first monumental institutional survey examining the relationship between art and feminism at MOCA with Wack! Art and…
Virtualization of experience and the object in the age of the post-digital are dismantled as form and topic in UCLA’s group show highlighting 2016 Design Media Arts MFA’s. Showcasing 6 artists and over 18 pieces, the works on display from this year’s grad students materialize a…
The Italian-born London-based artist creates wearable fractals and limited edition prints evoking mythic archetypes through a dexterous process of affixing and twisting fabric. Combining a tactile sensibility with a mediative and meticulous technique, Marcella Dvsi’s collections and works on paper tie the ancient symbolic practice…
What is after in the age of the image? What follows in a model predicated by post-net culture? What comes “after after” is the object and subject dismantled within post-post— Christian Eckart’s solo show and LA debut standing in its final days at Wilding Cran…
‘What was your first dream?’ —I can’t remember. A precursor and pervading question greeting participants on a quiet, darkened Maple Street prior to the ascent into Think Tank Gallery’s presentation of Rough Sleeper last week. With performances over two days, Rough Sleeper was one of many…
After returning from Mexico City to grace ZsONA MACO and Material for the first— and far from the last— time, I feel the antithesis of what I felt after Miami Art Week… except for sharing a similar perpetual hangover. This hangover, however, is not one ignited from a…
Oh Miami Art Week. A week so overwhelmingly FULL of things to see from debut curatorial marriages… ephemeral habitations… spawning satellites… and of course, the museum-quality prestige making-up the 250+ gallertropolosis that is Art Basel. By the time Saturday rolled around my eyes welled at capacity— tearing…
Drawing on the past to picture a present, Jordan Sullivan presents two projects where fragments combine to create an open-ended whole. Celestial Railroad spans the neighboring spaces of Downtown Photoroom, offering a welcomed interval of clarity between the claustrophobic labyrinth of gaudy decor and glittery…
Houston. The largest city in the southern US and trailing just behind Chicago, New York, and LA as the fourth most populous in the nation. The same can be said for Houston in its trailing— or often oversight— as a major contemporary art center rich…
Neon. Trilobites. Climate change. The Grateful Dead. Body Armors. Body parts. Lord of the Flies. Gun control. David and Goliath. The Abyss. Alien. Re-animator. Eco-horror. Guy Fawkes’ mask. The “Unabomber Manifesto.” Chucky. Derrida… Enter ANXIETY SOCIAL CLUB: a sea embedded with encryption, reproduction, the mythological, the unknown… a show born within the…
Conceptualizing space as collaborative and fluid, Christopher Füllemann and Daniel V. Keller transform the narrow walls of VACANCY into a conduit transcoding a simulated stream of natural wonder. A sculptural installation created on-site in a mere two-weeks, Suddenly I See Crystal Clear is first in a…
Pee-wee’s Playhouse… Salvation Mountain… Disneyland… Instagram… edible make-up… cartoon adverts… stop-motion cigarette-smoking stilettos… plastic… plastic… plastic! All shiny anecdotes welcoming us and referenced in the land of The Seth Bogart Show. A world where mundane plasticity, whimsical ‘tantazy’ and fictional consumer products— from Legg’s control top…
Rewind to 2010, to the site of a former artist collaboration conceived to inaugurate the walls of the then ‘new’ Ibid. space in East London. A homage to Yves Klein created in tandem with Harold Ancart, Amir Mogharabi presented Material Perdu, a project built utilizing materials left…
Non-places, land politics, postcolonial ecologies, spatial memory, and the origins of experience, permeate the visceral site-specific installations and photographic works in Jane Chang Mi’s solo show The Taste Of Purity at Adjunct Positions. Informed by her training as an ocean engineer, Mi designates the viewer…
Colorful and humorous incarnations consider the physical fictions of painting and the nature of its cyclical relationship to time and place. Appropriating motifs from pop-culture, travel, and fetishizing cartoon-like figments of ‘the outsider,’ LA-artist Joshua Petker’s saturated paintings read— as the press release echoes— like…
Once upon an August in 2014, 10 net artists convened on the Greek Island Serifos. In isolation on the island for a week— and marking their first IRL meeting— they assembled to activate an experiment: ‘to create freely, under the theme how to water.’ From this 7-day…
Working between media and place, Zuzanna Czebatul extends cognitive possibilities and relational aesthetics through the sculptural architectures of her installations. Reconfiguring spatial representations, Czebatul maps environments that read as site-specific studies from an aerial perspective. Towering high above MacArthur Park, the contours of the corner-tucked…
To me the most effective installations are those exploring the intricacies of the infinite. They are visceral and self-directed— partial parables— erecting and placing us in moments of reflexion contemplating the fluidity of perception and probing open the inconsistencies designed within exhibitions. Angeleno emblem Mark Hagen…
As a woman contributing to a critique where aesthetics are often over-intellectualized and women making art, or shows starring an all female cast, are too often overtly deemed to be ‘about feminism’ by anatomical default— it’s compelling to come across an exhibit where the ‘female…
Within the crisp sun-drenched irregular walls of the former Regen Projects HQ hang recent works by Yale’s 2015 MFA Photography Graduates. Curated by interdisciplinary artist and Regen staple, Jack Pierson, the show features ten artists whose works vary in form and content but share a…
A newly established platform for audiovisual remixes, our live-score collaboration with Cinefamily returns under the guise VideoSonics. This time we accentuate the dazzling effects visible through reconfiguring auditory schematics. Creating another acoustic space for cinematic narratives to unfold, these artists place us in a new kind of…
Entering NY-based artist Martin Basher’s solo show, A Guide to Benefits, I am immediately self-conscious of things I forgot to buy: hand sanitizer and mouthwash are set in front of the first crisp gray gradient that greets me and perpetuates Basher’s body of paintings. The…
Czech artist Ira Svobodová nails her LA solo show debut with the sculptural paintings showcased in Papercut. With seamless edges and a pristine neutral palette cut with flashes of rich blues and peaches, the acrylic on linen works glide into space like paper planes. Hovering…
