Izumi Kato's Not-Quite-Human Figures Are Apparitions of Coexistence in Perrotin's Inaugural Los Angeles Show

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Untitled, 2023

Photo by Kei Okano
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin ©2023 Izumi Kato

Perrotin inaugurates their new Los Angeles location with an exhibition of work by Japanese artist Izumi Kato.

Imagine, for a moment, that Izumi Kato’s figurative subjects have a life of their own. From the artist’s studio in Tokyo, his subjects have traversed the ocean, crossing the Pacific to emerge in Los Angeles. Making their way to Pico Boulevard, they appear utterly at home in Southern California—a place where one can encounter the extremes of both prehistoric geology and urban modernity, where tar pits coexist with gleaming new buildings, where eternal ocean cliffs abut concrete highway. These binaries of ancient and modern, geological and man-made, are dualities that also coexist in Kato’s work, making his exhibition a fitting choice for Perrotin’s inaugural exhibition in Los Angeles.

Izumi Kato’s exhibition is on view through March 23 @ Perrotin in Los Angeles, 5036 W. Pico Boulevard

"Portraiture as Social Commentary" Showcases the Genre's Explosive Social Capital @ Persons Projects in Berlin

 

Zofia Kulik
Land-Escape I (2001)
silver gelatin print, 180 x 150 cm

 

Persons Projects’ latest group exhibition, Portraiture as Social Commentary, not only highlights the different aspects of the genre but also links together a variety of artistic perspectives. A portrait is a painting, a photograph, a sculpture, or any other representation of a person in which the face and its expressions are predominant. They reveal the presence of the subject viewed from the perspective of the artist – a merger of contrasts between what’s projected by one and perceived by another. These images become mirrors of many faces that reflect both the political and cultural undercurrents relevant to the time period in which they were conceived.

Portraiture as Social Commentary is on view through January 27th, 2024, at Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 34–35, 10969 Berlin.

Glenn Ligon "Untitled (America)/Debris Field/Synecdoche/Notes for a Poem on the Third World " @ Regen Projects In Los Angeles

Untitled (America)/Debris Field/Synecdoche/Notes for a Poem on the Third World, is an exhibition of new work by Glenn Ligon now on view at Regen Projects. For this exhibition, Ligon will present a new series of silkscreen paintings based on abstracted letter forms and several neon installations. Glenn Ligon’s wide-ranging multimedia art practice encompasses painting, neon, photography, sculpture, print, installation, and video. His work explores issues of history, language, and cultural identity.

Over the years, Ligon has created neon sculptures that illuminate various phrases or words in charged and animated ways. Notes for a Poem on the Third World, Ligon’s first figurative sculpture, is comprised of a large neon based on a tracing of the artist's hands that takes its inspiration from an unrealized film project by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini claimed that it was the "discovery of the elsewhere" that drove his identification with the struggles of non-Western peoples and people on the margins of the West. Ligon's neon, with its ambiguous gesture of greeting, protest, or surrender, is the first of a series of works inspired by Pasolini’s project."Untitled (America)/Debris Field/Synecdoche/Notes for a Poem on the Third World " will be on view @ Regen Projects 6750 Santa Monica Blvd until February 17. photographs by Oliver Kupper.

BioPerversity Group Show Opens @ Nicodim Gallery In Los Angeles

Nicodim Gallery is pleased to present BioPerversity, an exploration of humanity’s darker and lighter perversions as told through the personification of the rest of the animal kingdom, creatures who exist a few rungs beneath us on the evolutionary ladder. BioPerversity is on view through April 28 at Nicodim Gallery 571 S Anderson Street Ste 2, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock