Timo Fahler "Light, First and Foremost" @ Stanley's Gallery In Los Angeles

Stanley's Gallery In Los Angeles presents new work by Timo Fahler. In Light, First and Foremost, self portraits of the artist, alter egos, and other iconography in the form of stained glass are held up by model casts of the artist’s hands. Through this medium, Fahler explores his own psyche with ecclesiastical expressions that shape-shift like desert mirages that melt into the asphalt of psychological roads that always seem to lead back to the unconscious. Medusa, Aztec gods of fertility, a corpulent Venus, a Mexican cowboy—the three dimensional sculptural works are prismatic as they refract illuminated doubles, thus furthering deep Jungian symbological paradoxes of the anima and animus, good and evil, light and dark. In this solo exhibition, Fahler crashes into the iceberg of the self—the result: a beautiful shipwreck of new exalted idols. Light, First and Foremost is be on view through October 23 at Stanley’s Gallery in Los Angeles.

Ben Sakoguchi's Chinatown @ Bel Ami In Los Angeles

Ben Sakoguchi’s combinations of commercial signage, history painting, and Pop Art comment on the American Dream and its fraught entanglement with xenophobia and racism. With acrylic paint on canvas, Sakoguchi reassembles imagery from film posters, newspapers, comics, and internet searches to reveal subtexts of local discrimination, mass media exploitation, and state-sanctioned violence. A Japanese American who spent years of his childhood living in an internment camp during World War II, Sakoguchi comments on a century and a half of prejudice against diasporic Asians. Contending with overlapping histories that contribute to ideas of Asian American identity, Sakoguchi creates an ironic primer on capitalism’s treachery with an audacity that challenges and uplifts.

A publication with essays by Eli Diner (Critic, Curator, and Executive Editor of Cultured magazine), Steven Wong (Curator and the Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA), and Ana Iwataki (Writer, Curator, and PhD student in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles) will be released in PDF and printed form during the course of this exhibition.

Chinatown is on view through April 24 @ Bel Ami 709 N Hill St. #105, Los Angeles

Ben Sakoguchi Chinatown, 2014 Acrylic on canvas, wooden frames (1 of 15 panels) 53 x 91 in (134.6 x 231.1 cm)

Ben Sakoguchi
Chinatown, 2014
Acrylic on canvas, wooden frames (1 of 15 panels) 53 x 91 in (134.6 x 231.1 cm)

Dane Johnson Presents "House Party 2" @ Charlie James Gallery In Los Angeles

House Party 2 follows up Dane Johnson’s House Party exhibition from 2017, wherein in the course of a few short days he activated the whole of a condemned house in Silver Lake with floor-to-ceiling interlocking figurative installations made from wood and painted in bold primary colors. House Party 2 will expand on the first show, presenting a series of paintings and sculptures depicting various forms of human interaction, connected by functional pieces which change the viewer’s relationship to the work. The emotional temperature of the figures and their interplay remains warm, their intersections supportive and loving, and essentially chaste. Bodies stretch out in mutual support, hold hands, share ledges, and walk in unison. Sculptural paintings are pieced together to create stages, platforms, ledges, and curtains that frame the actions of the figures: walking, talking, embracing, kissing. The scenes depicted in the works are amplified and connected by an array of functional pieces installed within the gallery space. Benches, stairs, and platforms lead the viewer to rest, climb, and stand while regarding the work, sometimes mirroring the poses in nearby pieces. House Party 2, read against the backdrop of contemporary social tension and general unease, and seasoned with the simplicity of its figuration, operates like a primer on the foundational postures of human kindness and cooperation. House Party 2 is on view through August 31 at Charlie James Gallery 969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Rikkí Wright Presents 'SIS' @ Nous Tous Gallery In Los Angeles

SIS is a solo exhibition by Rikkí Wright analyzing the themes of the sibling relationship and exploring how it shapes the future of those involved in it. “This series of images are based around a subject matter that’s dear to me, sisterhood. Analyzing the themes of the sibling relationship and exploring how it shapes the future of those involved in it.” - Rikkí Wright. SIS is on view through March 29th at Nous Tous 454b Jung Jing Road, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Zehra Ahmed Curates "Women In Windows" On Chung King Road In Chinatown Los Angeles

Six American women from diverse cultural backgrounds, spanning across South Asia, the Middle East, Puerto Rico and Trinidad, will present video artworks which challenge, both in content and in context, society’s definition of femininity. Videos by Alima Lee, Arshia Fatima Haq, Gazelle Samizay, Jasdeep Kang, Muna Malik and Yumna Al-Arashi are placed throughout the windows and storefronts of Chinatown’s historic Chung King Road by Los Angeles-based curator Zehra Ahmed. Women In Windows is on view through March 17 Windows along Chung King Road in Chinatown, Los Angeles. photographs by Douglas Fenton

Willard Hill's Solo Exhibition @ Good Luck Gallery In Los Angeles

The intricate masking tape and mixed media sculptures of Willard Hill (b. 1934) draw from a lifetime spent in the small town of Manchester, Tennessee. Over twenty years ago, when Hill returned home debilitated after a hospital stay, the idea came to him to start making sculptures out of all the everyday detritus he had at hand. Primarily composed of masking tape, Hill’s sculptures also utilized plastic bags, wire, toothpicks, rocks and a plethora of other found materials. Whatever a piece reminded him of as he worked, that’s what it became and soon every surface in his small home was covered in evocative gems. The exhibition is on view through October 14 at Good Luck Gallery 945 Chung King Road, Los Angeles.