Having had dinner last night with some friends and seeking, but not finding, a single article to send them this morning that succinctly summed up the artist, his career and international stature, his current L.A. exhibitions, and why I am gaga about both the man and his art, I am writing what follows. Ai Weiwei is the son of a famed Chinese poet who was exiled to China's northern provinces during the Cultural Revolution, where he was humiliated and subjected to forced labor. At age 19, after Mao's death, Ai and his family returned to Beijing, where he attended the Beijing Film Academy. He then spent over a decade in the United States, where he studied a bit, took photographs, absorbed the current American art scene, and experienced … [Read more...]
dOGUMENTA LA
If Clover, my 14-year-old Beagle had not eaten a bag of Milano cookies the night before, she and my white Golden Retriever, Breeze, would have come to a curator-led tour of dOGUMENTA, America's first art show for canines, held in Downtown L.A. As it was, Wesley, my Granddog, joined me and a small group from ArtTable in a walk-through led by Mica Scanlin and Jessica Dawson, who also curated its first iteration in New York last year. (Rocky, Dawson's Maltese-Yorkie mix, the third member of the curatorial team, was busy elsewhere). Interactive artwork in a wide range of media by 10 artists, most of them local, were presented. As an art historian, I have long acknowledged that my critical judgement tends to be suspended and is … [Read more...]
Mary Heilmann: Work of Casual Genius
About 15 years ago, a cousin who collects contemporary abstract painting sent me an image of a work by Mary Heilmann and asked what I thought. At the time, not having seen her work in person and being unaware of the subtleties of her execution (which, in my defense, are often not visible in reproductions), I replied, "It doesn't knock my socks off." Apologies all round!! A fine opportunity to view her work is found at Hauser + Wirth, Los Angeles, in Mary Heilmann: Memory Remix, the artist's first show in this city in over 20 years (it continues through September 23rd). It consists of paintings and ceramics that span her career as well as a table and chairs dating to the last decade. Heilmann, who was born and raised in … [Read more...]
Birds of a Feather/Beall Center Exhibition
At this time of political turmoil, It Passes Like a Thought comes as a breath of fresh air. Focused on seven artists who employ avian imagery and themes, the title of the exhibition derives from a John James Audubon quotation that states, "When an individual [bird] is seen gliding through the woods and close to the observer, it passes like a thought..." Presented at the Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California, Irvine, and curated by Artistic Director, David Familian, the show offers works in a wide range of media that variously investigate avian flight, language (birdsongs, calls, and the ability to mimic human speech), habitats, and diversity, as well as issues of endangerment and extinction. As a center for art … [Read more...]
SUPERFLEX: Flooded McDonald’s at the Hammer
While the trailblazing exhibition Radical Women is a must see at L.A.'s Hammer Museum (and will be the subject of a later post), concurrently on view and of contemporary relevance is the 2009 film Flooded McDonald's, situated in a small plaza gallery. The 21-minute film was made by the artist collective SUPERFLEX, which was founded in Copenhagen in 1993, but is now based in Denmark, Sweden, and Brazil. The group's mission is to explore systems of power, global capitalism and trade, community relations, and more. I first became aware of the collective through their piece CopyLight/Factory (2008) in the Museum of Modern Art's Print/Out exhibition of 2012. Part of the group's ongoing "Supercopy Series," it consisted of computer and other … [Read more...]
proyectosLA: A Model Fair
Amid the hubbub and bounty of the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative is proyectosLA, a two-month long commercial art fair of remarkable quality, taste, and inspiration, which is housed in a converted downtown warehouse. Near the entry, a collection of small rooms radiating off communal office space serve as booths for 19 galleries from throughout Latin American and the U.S. that present select works by Latin American artists. The remainder of the 20,000 sq. ft. space is occupied by the exhibition Here the border is you, which is comprised of fascinating and distinguished work drawn from the 19 galleries. They are installed so as to elicit dialogues among the established and emerging, multigenerational artists … [Read more...]
Paul McCarthy WS at Hauser + Wirth L.A.
Walt Disney's Snow White bends her head to perform fellatio on... No, wait... It is Dopey's head she has taken in her mouth and this is not Snow White, but White Snow, the lascivious doppelganger of the Disney princess with whom Paul McCarthy has been preoccupied since late 2008. Over the course of the past decade, McCarthy has repeatedly taken the beloved 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as subject, exploiting it in several different series of drawings, sculptures, installations, films, and more. Throughout, he has twisted and perverted the tale, subjecting it to intense psychosexual scrutiny as well as to the abject sensibility that has long characterized his art. Also playing major roles are dark humor, art history, … [Read more...]
Underground Museum
An ArtTable Southern California event once again provided my first introduction to an extraordinary Los Angeles art space--the Underground Museum. It is situated in a series of connected storefronts on Washington Boulevard in Arlington Heights, a largely working class Black and Latino neighborhood in the heart of L.A. The space once served as the family home and studio of Noah Davis, a young African American artist who a decade ago began to achieve considerable renown for psychologically penetrating figurative paintings based on Black experience. Davis was also a gifted curator and in 2012 established the space as an alternative art venue for exhibitions and events, with primacy given to community engagement. His shows were brilliant, … [Read more...]
Doug Aitken: Electric Earth at The Geffen
If you currently have no plans to be in Los Angeles before January 15th, when Doug Aitken: Electric Earth closes at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, make them, as the exhibition is a must see (it will also be shown at The Modern in Fort Worth, May 28-September 24, 2017). The exhibition is well worth the journey as it itself presents a journey, one whose images and experiences will long be impressed upon the eye and mind. The forty-eight-year-old Aitken was raised and trained as an artist in the Los Angeles area--its landscapes, cityscapes and sunsets figure prominently in his art--and he has long been familiar with The Geffen, whose spaces he has reconfigured so as to offer multiple paths of exploration to his work of the past twenty years … [Read more...]
Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles
Five years in Los Angeles and I finally made it to the Craft and Folk Art Museum with a Southern California ArtTable event and I'm glad I did. The museum is practically across the street from LACMA and is a few doors down from the new Los Angeles branch of the Sprueth Magers Gallery. Two exhibitions are on view through May 8, 2016. The first, Little Dreams in Glass and Metal, presents paintings, sculptures and objects selected from a vast collection of American work in enamel dating from 1920 to the present belonging to the Los Angeles-based Enamel Arts Foundation. Bernard N. Jazzar and Harold B. Nelson, who established the foundation devoted to this under-documented art form, are both specialists in design (the latter is Curator of … [Read more...]
On the Opening of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel
Over the course of the past year, I've had the privilege of attending the press previews of three remarkable public institutions devoted to modern and contemporary art. In May, the new Whitney Museum building opened on Gansevoort Street in lower Manhattan. In September, The Broad was inaugurated in downtown L.A. Today, the new campus of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, located near the Los Angeles River in downtown L.A., offered the press its first view. Wait, you may well say, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel is not a public institution, but a commercial, for-profit gallery, yet another outlet of the mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth with locations in Zurich, London, New York, Somerset (England) and now Los Angeles. However, it is an art center … [Read more...]
Enrique Martinez Celaya Studio Visit
A few nights ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Culver City studio of Enrique Martinez Celaya, whose work I have long admired, together with a small group from ArtTable. Martinez Celaya moved back to Los Angeles two years ago after a ten-year hiatus, during which time he lived in South Florida (where he retains a studio) and Berlin. Martinez Celaya is an old-fashioned artist in the sense that he paints in oil and wax on canvas and creates sculptures cast in bronze that are rendered in a representational manner. However, his works go beyond naturalism to embrace poetry, poignancy and wonder, being rich in implied narrative and displaying a deep-rooted humanism. Each provides a journey into its own world and experience. Each is … [Read more...]
Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016
Art Los Angeles Contemporary this year had terrific energy and featured a lot of interesting, high quality work. It continues to surprise me, however, given that L.A. now houses one of the world's more dynamic art scenes, being replete with artists of national and international reputation, galleries showing exciting and important work and a growing collector base, that this, the city's preeminent fair focused on current work, which is now in its 7th year, has remained so modest in scale. It is by no means just a local affair, as the galleries indicated below will testify, but I anticipate that in the coming years this fair will greatly expand its scope and become a magnet for collectors worldwide. Soon, the major New York galleries that … [Read more...]
John Outterbridge: Rag Man
Among the recent works by John Outterbridge on view at Art + Practice in Los Angeles are two very different series of modestly-scaled, wall-mounted assemblages, each of which evokes aspects of the African-American experience. One is sculptural in nature, the works being made with a wide assortment of castoff objects; the other is aligned with painting, the pieces consisting both of flat and "stuffed" (puffy) pieces of fabric painted in bright colors. Both series consist of works that appear to have been constructed in a most casual and offhand manner. Although contemplation reveals that formal and conceptual clarity underlies these works, their literal scrappiness and wholly unpretentious (almost Outsider Art) nature is fundamental to … [Read more...]
Njideka Akunyili Crosby on the Rise
If you haven't yet heard the name Njideka Akunyili Crosby, then you haven't been paying attention, as she is a young (32-year-old) Los Angeles-based artist on a meteoric rise and her work is phenomenal--the most jaw-droppingly wonderful and accomplished work I have encountered in an age. That said, I walked right by it at the New Museum's 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, where both her two paintings on view and I were overwhelmed by the hubbub. Akunyili Crosby has since gone on to have simultaneous solo exhibitions at L.A.'s Hammer Museum and Art + Practice and to win the Studio Museum in Harlem's Wein Prize. As of November 23, 2015, a billboard entitled Before Now After (Mama, Mummy and Manna), which reproduces one of her paintings, … [Read more...]