Christian Eckart Presents "White Noise" @ Wilding Cran Gallery In Los Angeles

In White Noise, Christian Eckart is re-presenting romantic sublime imagery for the purpose of reconsidering its primal power specifically in the context of the potential extinction of the human species as a result of climate change. Without humankind, who will be left to appreciate, collect, and share the Earth's ineffable beauty and awesome grandeur? The exhibition title is an acknowledgement to the profound impact Don DeLillo's 1985 novel by the same name, and presenting similar undercurrents, had on the artist many years earlier. White Noise is on view through March 17 at Wilding Cran Gallery 939 South Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Wilding Cran Gallery

Leah Guadagnoli Presents "Soft Violence" @ Asya Geisberg Gallery In New York

Soft Violence is an exhibition of sculptural paintings by Leah Guadagnoli. With a sparer touch than her prior work, the artist has presented a sort of exaggerated logo, a calling card of absurd proportions, with textured panels, upholstered shapes, and painted canvas uniting to form a streamlined rectangular result.  Whereas her recent work incorporated digitally-printed patterns on fabric and eclectic juxtapositions, this series has a reined-in seriousness that belies gaudy Miami sunsets and remaining hints of "Saved by the Bell", and its heightened simplicity acts as a cohesive statement on abstraction's potential as graphic power. The images seem familiar, but they are a design for a non-existent entity - fully empty, thwarting connection. Soft Violence is on view through February 16 at Asya Geisberg Gallery 537b West 23rd Street, New York. photographs courtesy of Asya Geisberg Gallery

Highlights From FOG Design+Art Fair @ Fort Mason Center In San Francisco

Celebrating today’s most significant creatives and leading contributors to the worlds of design and visual arts, FOG Design+Art Fair assembles 45 leading international galleries; prominent 20th-century and contemporary design building on FOG’s longstanding commitment to cultural institutions, the fair’s Preview Gala is honored to continue its crucial support of SFMOMA’s exhibitions and education programs. photographs by Bradley Golden

Highlights From Untitled Art Fair In San Francisco

Untitled, Art is an international, curated art fair founded in 2012 that focuses on curatorial balance and integrity across all disciplines of contemporary art. Untitled, Art innovates the standard fair model by selecting a curatorial team to identify and curate a selection of galleries, artist-run exhibition spaces, and non-profit institutions and organizations, in dialogue with an architecturally designed venue. Untitled Art, San Francisco took place January 18 – 20 at Pier 35, 1454 The Embarcadero. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Zhou Yilun "Ornament and Crime" @ Nicodim Gallery In Los Angeles

Ornament and crime are not synonymous to Zhou Yilun, however. His influences begin with the Western, Judeo-Christian canons he studied and was trained to emulate in school, but skew more heavily to the laborers he saw building, tearing-down, painting, and repainting the structures in the city surrounding him, and the American basketball players, hip-hop stars, and black celebrities he grew up mythologizing and imitating.  Zhou lifts and distorts techniques inherited from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romantic eras, revisiting, perverting, and parodying their ideas for the new globalist regime. Each of his artworks is formed from the same bricolage of identity—the sum of stretcher, wood, and canvases painted, deconstructed, and constructed again. Zhou’s practice is alive with Chinese bones and Western sinew and flesh, torn down and built back up with the same materials again and again, so that the elements that once existed as ornament are now integral to the identity and essence of each artwork itself.  "Ornament and Crime" will be on view @ Nicodim Gallery  571 S Anderson Street Ste 2 until February 17. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Beverly Pepper "New Particles From The Sun" @ Kayne Griffin Cocoran in Los Angeles

Kayne Griffin Corcoran presents the gallery’s second solo exhibition of work by, 96 year-old American born, Italy based sculptor, Beverly Pepper. The presentation will highlight the work this great artist created early on in her career between 1958–1967. During this period, Pepper carved out a niche in her own signature sculptural language. In addition to early works, the exhibition will include works from later years: 1970–1980. The show title, New Particles From The Sun is culled from a poem written by Frank O’Hara. The exhibition focuses on this timeline of works both for their rarity and their significance to the narrative of American sculpture. Beverly Pepper’s work in metal, especially steel, places her in the rightful legacy of the pioneering and revolutionary sculptors celebrated throughout art history."New Particles From The Sun" will be on view @ Kayne Griffin Cocoran 1201 S. La Brea Ave until March 9. photographs by Oliver Kupper.

Read Our Interview Of Rosha Yaghmai On The Occasion Of Her Exhibition At The Wattis Institute → →

Walking into Rosha Yaghmai’s studio is a little bit like walking into the laboratory of a junkyard hoarder/mad scientist. There’s a distinctly pleasant organization to the vast collection of Los Angeles detritus that extends from the studio to the backlot outside. The walls are plastered with images from torn magazine pages, postcards, posters, watercolors and collage works. It’s as though you could hold a microscope to any detail in the room and discover a tiny world within. Click here to read more.

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.

Evan Holloway Presents "Outdoor Sculpture" @ David Kordansky Gallery In Los Angeles

Outdoor Sculpture is Evan Holloway's first exhibition to consist solely of objects conceived for outdoor installation. Though they require intensive planning and fabrication, the open -air settings for which they are intended are necessarily less predictable than white - walled galleries. Holloway thereby reimagines the ephemerality and provisional quality of his earlier work, which often included performative elements or unorthodox materials, in a more expansive register and at a larger scale. As he confronts technical issues of size, visibility, and durability that come along with the possibility of placing objects in the landscape, his forms have evolved in a variety of ways; the exhibition showcases a diverse range of sculptural languages, each of which addresses a different set of questions regarding form and signification.Outdoor Sculpture is on view through March 2 at David Kordansky Gallery 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery.

Watch Kelsey Lu's New Music Video For "I'm Not In Love" Directed By Alima Lee

Die hard Kelsey Lu fans may fret at the idea that she might be abandoning the cello, but we’re not worried at all. You can hear in the layers of her vocals the oscillating rhythm of an instrument that has completely possessed the artist and endowed her with an air of continual, breathy expansion. Kelsey Lu’s “I’m Not In Love” is a haunting and luscious update to the original track by 10cc. One that abandons the bright 70s synth that made this track a power ballad for slow dancing at the disco, and pares it down to needle-point potency of a raw heartbeat and atmospheric synth more befitting to the times, and arguably the song itself.

Says Lu, “This is dedicated to the ones who have ever felt misunderstood in the name of Love, in the name of Self. Who Love the Passion, Love the Grace Of Dramatics, Love the obsession of life and want to Kill the Confusion all while finding beauty in the abstract of growth and humor that surrounds the horrors both within and around us daily.” We say, “Thank you!”

Mark Verabioff's Poolside Drive-by @ Team (bungalow) In Venice Beach

Long before the current administration’s ascendancy, the wheels had been turning in favor of hostile mechanisms of control. The blatant aggression and fascist broism of the present, however, have thrown into stark relief how identity and the gaze of another can be weaponized and internalized. Mark Verabioff’s practice is borne of the conjoined dynamics of identity and imaging and proposes self-definition as a position of resistance that can challenge cultural and political power structures. Existing at the intersection of autobiography and community, Poolside Drive-by is the mapping of an internal topography that tells us much about the artist’s choices and frames of reference, but also describes the kind of world in which he finds himself. Vulnerable, humorous, both reverent and irreverant, the work is grounded in Verabioff’s appropriative processing of cultural products and pushes against strictures of authorship, authority, and objectification. The show’s title, Poolside Drive-by, juxtaposes positions of blithe passivity and ruthless retaliation; when they go low, kick ‘em while they’re down.

Pooside Drive-by is on view through February 10 @ Team (bungalow) 306 Windward Avenue Venice, CA 90291. Image courtesy of the artist and team (bungalow). Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sandra Barros hosts Mayor Eric Garcetti & Los Angeles Artists For 'A Bridge Home' Benefit In Los Angeles

In an effort to raise immediate funds and awareness for the Mayor’s A Bridge Home initiative - which gets homeless Angelenos immediately off the streets and into temporary housing - over 35 artists gathered in an art fundraiser on December 14. The event included works by Analia Saban, Andre Saravai, Antony Cairns, Dani Tull, Devendra Banhart, Sheree Hovsepian, Keith Tyson, Rob Reynolds, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. photographs by Lani Trock

Koak Presents 'Breaking The Prairie' @ Ghebaly Gallery In Los Angeles

Breaking the Prairie is Koak’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. “Prairie is not a term that seems to need breaking, not some bit of grassland, unknown and freshly wild, but rather a thing already tamed. To me the Prairie is barely a place of nature at all, not a field of today’s land that we could visit. In fact, it seems barely a place of the physical world. Instead, the Prairie is a vision, a fictional utopia of Americana or the long dead dream of vacancy waiting to be grabbed. The Prairie is a thought with its back already broken.” - Koak. Breaking The Prairie is on view through January 19 at Ghebaly Gallery 2245 East Washington Boulevard Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

"The Street & The Shop" Flea Market @ Tin Flats In Los Angeles

The Street & The Shop, was a one-day event at Tin Flats showcasing unique works from over 40 LA-based Artists and galleries. The flea market was an homage to Oldenburg’s pop art experiment and featured artists like Simon Haas, Alex Becerra, Steve Hash, Ammon Rost, Jake Kean Mayman and more… The first edition of The Street & The Shop took place at Tin Flats, 1989 Blake Ave, Los Angeles. photographs by Agathe Pinard

Yayoi Kusama "Narcissus Garden" @ Bellagio Gallery Of Fine Art in Las Vegas

Narcissus Garden has been re-installed and commissioned in various settings since its creation more than 50 years ago. This iteration is comprised of 750 stainless steel silver globes that create an infinite lake that distorts images of reality reflected on the surface of the 12-inch orbs. Yayoi Kusama "Narcissus Garden" will be on view until April 28, 2019 at Bellagio Gallery Of Fine Art in Las Vegas.

Watch The Premiere Of "Dynamite" By Leila Jarman Featuring Multi-Disciplinary Artist Maceo Paisley

“We live in a world with very strong norms and archetypes about how our bodies are to be interpreted. These archetypes can be so loud that we lose touch with our own ability to make meaning of the forms we inhabit,” says Maceo Paisley about Dynamite, a new short performative film directed by Iranian-American director and activist, Leila Jarman, with an original score by Michael Sempert. Investigating gender and masculinity (more specifically the American black male experience), Dynamite guides us through narrative incorporating movement, spoken word, and chant, as it uncovers truths about race and success in an ever-changing social landscape. In the end, the film exemplifies the metamorphosis of identity, light to dark, unconsciousness to consciousness.

Read Our Interview Of Chuck Arnoldi On The Occasion Of His Show At Desert Center Los Angeles →

Some interesting facts about leopards: they are solitary animals that hunt in open terrains, they are difficult to track in the wild, they are extremely adaptable to new environments, and they often leave claw marks on trees to mark their territory. In Chuck Arnoldi’s expansive Venice Beach studio, a dusty, taxidermied leopard is perched, mid-roar, above the kitchen alcove. There is something strangely symbolic about this once ferocious, now inert genus of panthera. Click here to read more.

Sweet Cheeks Group Exhibition @ Big Pictures In Los Angeles

Big Pictures Los Angeles is pleased to present Sweet Cheeks, a group exhibition of works that explore the playful and sublime aspects of the human form by portraying the most intimate parts of our bodies. Through the use of line, color, and texture the artists evoke ideas of desire and love. From tender and vulnerable to burlesque and comical, the figures featured in Sweet Cheeks celebrate the self without concern for outside admiration. These works exude an appreciation of life—and of all the luscious shapes that nurture and inspire us.

Sweet Cheeks is curated by Mélanie Faure & Doug Crocco and features the following artists: Eve Ackroyd, Amy Bessone, Alison Blickle, Manny Castro, Anthony Cudahy, Camilla Engstrom, Helen Rebekah Garber, Wendell Gladstone, Kady Grant, Jenna Gribbon, Nikita Gurnani, Aramis Gutierrez, Julie Henson, Shaun Johnson, Kara Joslyn, Emma Kohlmann, Alice Lang, Lilian Martinez, Max Maslansky, Joshua Miller, Laurie Nye, Vanessa Prager, Hayley Quentin, Caris Reid, Alyssa Rogers, Marty Schnapf, Kira Maria Shewfelt, Corri-Lynn Tetz, Julie Weitz, Brittney Leeanne Williams, Paula Wilson.

Sweet Cheeks will be on view at Big Pictures 2424 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018 through December 8. photos by Lani Trock

Hugo Wilson Solo Exhibition @ Nicodim Gallery In Los Angeles

To Hugo Wilson, animals are mirrors of human consciousness. We project our desires, hopes, and impulses onto the animal, and the animal reflects, refracts, and hurls them back to us. Unlike the Old Masters he references in his paintings and bronzes, however—George Stubbs, Peter Paul Rubens, Nicolas Poussin—Wilson’s menagerie is not beneath the human on the food chain or emblematic of the love of Christ. These creatures are Gods themselves, emerging from turbulent clouds of divine ether, meme warfare, and YouTube clips with agendas all their own, radiating their sentience in neon geometric yantras.  In our eagerness to apply our own personal narratives to Wilson’s beasts and the baroque noise from which they emerge, one begins to question herself, her own genesis and binary belief systems: Is this the birth or demise of the universe? Why can’t Jesus be an ostrich? Is that really what a zebra’s teeth look like? Wilson’s work doesn’t answer. Wilson’s work is. Hugo Wilson’s solo exhibition will be on view at Nicodime Gallery 571 S Anderson Street Ste 2, Los Angeles, CA 90033 until December 22. photographs by Lani Trock