Read Our Interview Of Jason Stein On The Art Of The Auction At Bonhams →

LOT 275 MOTOROLA 50XC Radio 1940 marbleized green and butterscotch catalin height 6 1/2in (16.5cm); width 9 1/2in (24cm); depth 6 1/2in (16.5cm) US$ 5,000 - US$ 7,000 £ 3,600 - £ 5,100 € 4,200 - € 5,900

LOT 275
MOTOROLA
50XC Radio
1940
marbleized green and butterscotch catalin
height 6 1/2in (16.5cm); width 9 1/2in (24cm); depth 6 1/2in (16.5cm)
US$ 5,000 - US$ 7,000
£ 3,600 - £ 5,100
€ 4,200 - € 5,900

Jason Stein, Director of Modern Decorative Art and Design at Bonhams, grew up in the world of astrology and birth charts in Los Angeles’ growing New Age scene. His mother was a co-founder of The Aquarius Group, and his father was a department store manager. This amalgam wound up being a perfect formula for his work in the secondary market, first as an intern at Sotheby’s and finally at Bonhams where he is immersed in a universe of rare and beautiful objects that span movements, thoughts, trends, and design history. Ahead of this week’s Modern Design | Art auction, which has a focus on rare Bakelite radios and Mexican surrealist artists, like Leonora Carrington, we spoke to Stein about his fascinating role as design guru at Bonhams, avoiding fakes, and the return of maximalism. Click here to read more.

Made In L.A. 2018 @ The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

Made In L.A., the Hammer Museum's exceedingly comprehensive biennial just celebrated the opening of its fourth installment, and it's decidedly the best one yet. Curated by the Hammer's senior curator, Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale, the newest member of the Hammer's curatorial team, the show features 33 artists from widely diverse backgrounds who employ immensely disparate media and span an age gap of 68 years. While the biennial doesn't proclaim any particular theme, almost all of the work presented is new and was made in response to the predicaments of the present. Much has happened since the last installment of 2016, and our collective experience has been marked by devastating fires, hurricanes, earthquakes and drought, government-mandated religious bigotry, deportations sans due process, countless recorded accounts of police brutality against black and brown citizens, countless school shootings, etc. Heavily steeped in political and social response as it may be, though, there's nothing didactic or sanctimonious about it. Instead the thread that connects all of these works together is one that explores the idea of citizenship in the present moment. In it we see stories of our past, how they led to the present, how they define who we are, and determine what is in store. A collective moment to "count using only your breath" as taisha paggett instructs us to do on a handwritten note taped to a microphone. She is one of several artists who will be performing and activating the space throughout the run of the show. Throughout the summer there will also be numerous lectures and walkthroughs with the curators, so there are plenty of reasons to take your time and come back a few times. Artists featured include: Carmen Argote, James Benning, Diedrick Brackens, Carolina Caycedo, Neha Choksi, Beatriz Cortez, Mercedes Dorame, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Aaron Fowler, Nikita Gale, Jane Gordon & Megan Whitmarsh, Lauren Halsey, EJ Hill, Naotaka Hiro, John Houck, Luchita Hurtado, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Candice Lin, Charles Long, Nancy Lupo, Daniel Joseph Martinez, MPA, Alison O'Daniel, Eamon Ore-Giron, taisha paggett, Christina Quarles, Michael Queenland, Patrick Staff, Linda Stark, Flora Wiegmann, Suné Woods, and Rosha Yaghmai. To learn more about lectures, performances and programming related to Made In L.A., visit the Hammer. The exhibition will be on view through September 2, 2018 at The Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Opening of Florian Meisenberg's The Taste Of Metal In Water @ Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles

The Taste Of Metal In Water is a body of new paintings in a sculptural sound installation. This show marks the artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery and unspools like a vivid session of lucid dreaming. Metal pipes slice the space into particular trajectories. The pipes, extensions of the guts of the building, carry neither electricity nor water, but instead small and resonant hiccups that spread throughout the space. A series of new paintings operate collectively as a stream of memories. The show will be on view through April 14 at Ghebaly Gallery 2245 E Washington Blvd. Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

The Opening Of "Nose Job" A Group Show Curated By Adam Beris @ BBQLA

Nose Job groups together artists who work knowingly/unknowingly within the process of transformation: to look at material as character and alter its identity into something aesthetically functional. Featured artists include: Bjorn Copeland, Andrew Dadson, Trulee Hall, Ariel Herwitz and Joshua Miller. The exhibition will be on view through April 14 at BBQLA 2315 Jesse Street Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Theodore Boyer & Grant Falardeau Present Aleph and The Rock @ H I L D E LA

Aleph & The Rock, a two-person exhibition of painting and sculpture by Theodore Boyer & Grant Falardeau is on exhibition January 13th through February 24 at H I L D E L.A. 

Homeward Bound Group Show @ Nicodim Gallery In Los Angeles

Homeward Bound is a domestic setting where all the skeletons are let out of the closet and allowed to play on the furniture, to stomp each other’s grapes. With the eye of noted designer Oliver M. Furth, the gallery space has been transformed into a literal home, complete with a living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, beyond. Karon Davis’s Bianca sits plaintively by a front room window, drinking, smoking, waiting for a lover who will never return. Bjarne Melgaard cross-dresses in the skins of other species as if he was never quite comfortable in his own, while Lisa Anne Auerbach is very comfortable lounging around the house, reading bondage magazines in her underwear. Chris Burden’s first wife informs him in a letter that not only won’t she crucify him to their VW Bug, but that the suggestion has destroyed her relationship with the vehicle. Gold-leafed snails carry their mobile homes to the apexes of an organic landscape—the tips of Ruben Verdu’s nose and erect phallus—and both artist and travelers achieve climax simultaneously. Within the walls of this house, faces become chairs, vaginas become toothy faces, jello moulds become temples and orifices, music becomes sex itself. Homeward Bound will be on view until December 9th at Nicodim Gallery, 571 S Anderson Street Ste 2 Los Angeles

Haas Brothers "Haas Angeles" @ UTA Artist Space In Los Angeles

UTA Artist Space presents Haas Angeles, the first exhibition in Los Angeles by multi-faceted sculptors, designers, craftsmen, and artists The Haas Brothers. Their internationally renowned work defies strict categorization, as do the fraternal twins themselves, disrupting both the design and art world with their playful and provocative biomorphic creations. Haas Angeles will be on view until October 14, 2017 at UTA Artist Space, 670 S Anderson St, Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Wolfgang Tillmans Exhibition @ Regen Projects Gallery In Los Angeles

Regen Projects presents an exhibition of photographs by German artist Wolfgang Tillmans. For his seventh solo show at the gallery Tillmans brings together a broad selection of new and previously unseen work that spans the various themes, visual motifs, and processes developed over the course of his career. The exhibition revisits long-standing interests present in the artist’s oeuvre. A recent picture depicting a pair of black shorts draped on a banister references an early motif expressed in ‘grey jeans over stairpost,’ taken in 1991. Several startlingly pink large-scale abstract works from his signature Freischwimmer/Greifbar series are prominently affixed onto the gallery walls. Examples of Tillmans’s interest in exploring the fundamental qualities of the photographic process, these non lens-based photographs are the result of light exposed onto color photographic paper. Shown together these works challenge common perceptions of the real and question how photographic processes change our conception of the world around us. The exhibition will be on view until December 23, 2016 at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

"On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller" Group Show At The Historic Gamble House in Pasadena

On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller is a group exhibition of sculpture, painting, photography, video, and performance centered on the themes present in the work of under-recognized avant-garde filmmaker Marjorie Keller (1950-1994), co-curated by Los Angeles-based artists Alika Cooper and Anna Mayer. Cooper and Mayer seek to establish the significance of Keller’s contributions to visual culture, and to make visible states of being that are difficult to articulate or are deliberately avoided by mainstream culture. "On the Verge of an Image: Considering Marjorie Keller"  will be on view until December 11, 2016 at the Gamble House, 4 Westmoreland Pl, Pasadena, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Private Opening Of The "Human Condition" Group Show Curated by John Wolf At A Former Hospital in Los Angeles

Human Condition is an immersive, site-specific exhibition that features the work of sixty emerging and established artists in a uniquely challenging space: a former hospital in West Adams, previously known as the Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center. Curated and produced by the Los Angeles-based art advisor John Wolf, Human Condition invites artists to re-contextualize the hospital’s functional history—over 40,000 square feet of it—as a venue to explore what it means to be human. Human Condition is a unique opportunity to experience artwork outside the confines of a typical art space. In using the skeletal remains of the hospital and its discarded medical supplies, artists and viewers are encouraged to explore the notion of what we leave behind—from objects to human history. Human Condition opens to the public on October 1, 2016 and runs through November 30, 2016. Address: 2231 S Western Ave. Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Please Have Enough Acid In the Dish! Group Show Organized by Vinny Dotolo @ M+B Gallery in Los Angeles

M+B gallery presents Please Have Enough Acid In The Dish!, a group exhibition organized by James Beard Award winning chef Vinny Dotolo (of Animal and Jon & Vinny's fame). The exhibition explores the intersections between food, daily life and art in Los Angeles and features food-influenced paintings, drawings, sculptures and videos by thirty-seven Los Angeles-based artists, including many new works made for the exhibition. Please Have Enough Acid In the Dish! will be on view until September 2, 2016 at M+B Gallery in Los Angeles.  photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Baron Von Fancy "I'm Over Here Now" @ Ochi Projects in Los Angeles

Ochi Projects presents "I’m Over Here Now," a solo exhibition featuring Baron Von Fancy (aka Gordon Stevenson) – the first in Los Angeles. Over the years the name Baron Von Fancy has become synonymous with a stylized lettering and a clever sense of humor. Interested in activating relationships between words, objects and places Von Fancy explores the nature of communication by expressing his short and declarative statements via a recognizable font reminiscent of vintage ad signage. Often bordering on cliché and always witty, Von Fancy invites viewers to re-evaluate their understanding of any given context, or any given phrase. Baron Von Fancy "I'm Over Here Now" will be on view until July 30, 2016 at Ochi Projects, 3301 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA