In residency with Coaxial, Maria Maea creates an environmental sound installation that explores coming into consciousness as an artist and her daily practice of getting out of her own way. Altering the mundane as sacred she constructs her personal mythology – out loud. 'When I Came To' is on view since May 5th at Coaxial Arts Foundation 1815 S Main St. Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
Abraham & Sons, Inc. is LA’s leading commercial exhibition by Steve Hash and Stephen Neidich. Hash & Neidich use only top notch materials combined with top notch craftsmanship to ensure a lasting artwork for the client to enjoy for years and years. It is a fact that nothing can take the place of artwork created in a timely manner. The end result always being a great relationship with art history, lasting decades or even centuries to come. Abraham & Sons, Inc. is on view through June 16 at Hilde 4727 W. Washington Blvd Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
Frieze New York closed its seventh edition on Sunday, May 6, bringing together 197 leading galleries from 30 countries. This year's fair enjoyed record visitor attendance and continued to build on its commitment to discovery - with new programming, curators, and a redesigned layout, bringing a fresh energy to the fair. Frieze returns to Randall's Island in May 2019 247 Centre Street 5th Floor New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer
This year’s Fair features 90 of the world’s most illustrious dealers in modern and contemporary art and design, with 24 new participants, including Gagosian, Gladstone Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Marian Goodman Gallery, Lévy Gorvy, Matthew Marks Gallery, Mnuchin Gallery, Taffin, White Cube, and more. The exhibition is on view through May 8 at TEFAF Park Avenue Armory, New York City. photographs by Ava Berlin.
Just Another Step on the Staircase is an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Organized by Price Latimer, this is the first exhibition of Lindsay-Hogg’s work in the U.S. since 2015. Now, in his late career, he has embraced a manner of painting that comprises vivid psychological portraits not unlike those of Max Beckmann, Howard Finster and Paul Klee. The work is in many ways a direct form of creative expression with little regard for self-aggrandizing or promotion, rather identifying with direct moments that connect with eroticism, innocence and everyday human drama. The show is open through May 13th at Werkartz 927 S. Santa Fe Avenue Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper
If you have consumed marijuana anywhere in the developed world over the past thirty years, you can most likely trace the variety you are consuming back to the work of Mel Frank and a handful of his California colleagues. Mel Frank, quite literally, wrote the textbook on marijuana. His 1978 tome, Marijuana Grower’s Guide Deluxe, was the first serious manual on how to grow cannabis. Combining research with practical experience, the book broke the seal on the often-secretive world of growers.
Frank was unique amongst his contemporaries in his love for documenting the process of marijuana cultivation as much as the product it yielded. His photographs were used as a means to chronicle and promote cannabis botany, illustrating numerous books and articles over his forty-year career. The images also served as the artist’s personal record of guerrilla growers and breeders who collectively helped create the seminal varieties that have come to define today’s marijuana. The photos are an intentional and descriptive record of what growing looked like at a particular time—before cultural acceptance, giant indoor grows and legalization. While representing long-ago criminality, they also represent innocence and optimism; many of the photos have a giddiness about them, an awe, maybe an aspect of braggadocio—look what we hid, see what we grew... When We Were Criminals is on view through June 9 at M+B Photo 1050 North Cahuenga Boulevard, Hollywood. photographs by Oliver Kupper
I AM THE HOUSE continues Ray’s interest in the fetishization of objects and the construction of female identity through high-contrast, monochromatic photomontages and suspended metallic sculptures. Throughout this series, she situates the body as a vessel, one that carries life, physical memories, and emotional fortitude. Read Claressinka Anderson Pugliese's poetic response here. See additional photographs from the exhibition here. photograph by Lani Trock
As Adam McEwen’s title suggests, anxiety resides even in the most common images and objects. His art draws attention to the vestigial dramas of daily life; the forgotten is memorialized, the subliminal laid bare. Narrative flow is tempting to seek yet impossible to find. See more exhibition images here. "Nighthorses" is on view through June 9 at Gagosian Gallery 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills. photograph by Oliver Kupper
BEYOND THE STREETS (BTS) is the premier exhibition of graffiti, street art and beyond, celebrating the soaring heights to which the world’s most recognizable modern art movement has risen. BTS is a groundbreaking multimedia showcase of paintings, sculpture, photography, installations and more throughout 40,000+ sq ft of industrial indoor and outdoor space. The exhibition is curated by Roger Gastman, with additional curation by Evan Pricco, Caleb Neelon, and David Villorente. Beyond the Streets is on view through through July 6 at Werkartz 1667 N. Main Street, Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper
Mindy Shapero’s anthropomorphic sculptures are like figures emerging from such night visions. Imagined though also strangely familiar, her large-scale works are totemic, suggesting archeological ruins or manifestations of Jungian archetypes. Made with humble materials like spray paint and bits of hand-painted cut paper alongside more opulent materials like richly pigmented felt and gold leaf, it is Shapero’s aesthetics of relentless accumulation that give her works their energy, as hundreds upon thousands of tiny bits grow into human and architecturally scaled objects. Portals and radiating forms, concentric rings and infinite stripes, a hypnagogic hallucination of shapes and colors beckon us into what might be the artist’s dreaming mind turned inside out in a flash of infinity. Second Sleep is on view through June 10 at The Pit 918 Ruberta Avenue, Glendale. photographs by Lani Trock
In Venusian Weather, Nye explores humanity’s struggle to control its relationship with nature via the Andromedans’ perception of environmental disaster on Earth. As a student of mythology and science fiction alike, Nye looks both backward and forward, challenging the notion of linear time in the centerpiece of Venusian Weather, an architecturally-scaled, cosmographical frieze that describes what is and what has been at stake on Earth through the Andromedan gaze. Inspired by Mark von Schlegell’s 2005 novel Venusia, Nye portrays the world as a hologram, represented in her paintings as gridded non-spaces that recall Star Trek’s holodeck virtual reality environments. The grids mingle with and interrupt depictions of transformation and flux amid multiple realities. Nye’s brightly hued, eloquently painted compositions conflate the chaos of present-day Earth with dreams of a radiant future on Venusia in a hopeful vision of love, peace, and environmental harmony. Venusian Weather is on view through June 10 at The Pit 918 Ruberta Ave, Glendale. photographs by Lani Trock
Woman and Women expounds upon Martinez’ interest in exploring alternate histories where women, particularly women of color, are not excluded from specific cultural narratives typically associated with privilege. Through her paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, Martinez blends past with present and future, combining classical architectural elements with contemporary pop cultural references to create the settings for her portraits, landscapes, and still lives. Her flat, bold style recalls iconic predecessors like Matisse, while her subject matter prioritizes brown bodies that have been heretofore omitted from these kinds of images. Woman and Women is on view through June 9 at Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
On Saturday April 28th, Navel LA celebrated the launch of MAPS, Movement Art Performance Space. MAPS was founded by Samantha Blake and is dedicated to cultivating the contemporary and traditional arts of the Afro-Latinx and Caribbean diaspora in Los Angeles. The launch featured three dance performances by Samantha Blake, Chris Bordenave and Vera Passos (respectively), along with a film screening by Nery Madrid, singing by Felicia ‘Onyi’ Richards, costumes by Gabrielle Datau + Jiro Maestu (Poche) and Desiree Klein, and still photographs by Russel Hamilton, shot during the film’s creation. You can read our interview of Chris Bordenave from our Winter 2017 issue here. Navel LA is located at 1611 S Hope Street Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
Soil is the debut film by Mathilde Huron & Julian Feeld. It was shot on Fuji Super 16mm film in the Bouches-du-Rhône department of Southern France and scored by Pontus Berghe, ex-member of Thieves Like Us and current member of Thunder Tillman, with featured actors Joe Rezwin, Liza Journo & Sati Leonne Faulks.
A young filmmaker with mixed intentions sets out to document the friendship between a fifteen-year-old Parisian girl and a homeless alcoholic on the verge of death. Between documentary and fiction, Soil is an exploration of manipulation, dependency, and objectification. This experimental psycho-thriller — a mix of documentary and fiction — was screened in Paris, Tokyo and Los Angeles.
"Character Study" presents new work that explores the artist’s relationship to color and light, as well as his interest in cycles and patterns as they relate to time, matter, and pop-culture. In the first part of the exhibition, iconic cartoon characters cast from vintage patches, enlarged to a fantastical scale, appear familiar and playful as they hang throughout the gallery. Some of these appropriated pop-images, such as Bart Simpson, Bugs Bunny, and Felix the Cat, are from of the artist’s own childhood collection of patches that covered the Jansport backpack he owned during his school years in the 90s. "Character Study" is on view through June 9 at Morán Morán 937 N. La Cienega Boulevard Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper
Ibid Gallery presents the debut US solo exhibition of Sydney-based painter Wayne Magrin. At the center of Magrin’s large-scale paintings are larger-than-life characters engulfed in dramatic scenarios. Magrin began painting to tell stories, and soon after discovered the potential for images to transcend narrative. Whether dropping in on a monstrous wave in Portugal or dancing on sleepy waves in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Wayne depicts how malleable time becomes when met with adrenaline and bliss. A linear narrative is sensed in each picture without needing to flatten the moment into words – there is already enough belief in the painting. The Far Away and the Familiar (Narrative Paintings of Surfers, Sailors and Bushrangers) is the first in a series of solo exhibitions curated by Julian Schnabel for Ibid Gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibition will be on view until June 30th, 2018 at Ibid Gallery. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
"Often times in my work the body and the landscape become so interconnected it is difficult to figure out where bodies start or end, whether they are landscapes or bodies to begin with. Starting with raw canvas, I begin working from the inside out. I employ a technique that stains the images from the backside of the canvas, until it slowly seeps through to the front. Through the staining of the canvas I am confronted with the fluidity of the mark making, and the idea that both the internal and the external are intrinsically connected." "From Inside; The Out" is on view through May 12 at New Image Art 7920 Santa Monica Boulevard Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
In One in the mouth and one in the heart, his solo show at Skibum MacArthur, Pinhassi prods us to confront our notions of the salacious and taboo, the social mores and religious dogma that shape our reactions, and the pavilions we architect to house and hide our wants and, at times, shame. The exhibition is on view through May 19 at Skibum Macarthur 1989 Blake Avenue Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
Depicting a strange and mysterious world, Naudline Pierre’s paintings cobble together a personal mythology full of characters paused in intimate scenes. The characters within these works play parts in this parallel reality flavored by the influence of Pierre’s puritanical Protestant upbringing. Touch Not My Beloved presents these scenes of protection and affection from a parallel reality, only accessible, the artist believes, through the act of painting. "Touch Not My Beloved" is on view through May 12 at New Image Art 7920 Santa Monica Boulevard Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
In this particular body of work, Kat Olschbaur explores motifs typically associated with the American West; as the name of the show and the artist’s painting style signal, however, the meaning of these images are multi-tier. Many of Olschbaur’s native association with riders on horseback are apocalyptic, deadly, seductive, or indicative of insanity. "Wilde Reiter" is on view through May 20 at Oof Books 912A Cypress Avenue Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
