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...]
Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada at LACMA
Despite the existence of a 10-acre sculpture park devoted to his work in Joshua Tree, CA, Noah Purifoy was largely unknown to the mainstream art world until the Getty's Pacific Standard Time exhibitions shed light on the artist, his career and his contributions. A single junk assemblage by Purifoy appeared in Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, at the Getty proper and a half-dozen works were featured in Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 at the Hammer. It is perhaps as a result of this newfound exposure that America Is Hard to See, the exhibition that opened the Whitney Museum's new building, presented a work by Purifoy in its "Scotch Tape" section devoted to assemblage and collage (see image below … [Read more...]