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September 30, 2026

Children of the Projects - Show Text (link to pdf)

Diva Corp
Children of the Projects
September 25-27, 2026

On June 6, 2003, the artist Merlin Carpenter opened Children of the Projects at American Fine Arts, Co. in New York. The show featured over a dozen paintings of disadvantaged black children, all rendered in a loose, expressive social realist style. In the center of the exhibit stood a pair of flimsy towers made of paint-splattered Masonite boards, on which Carpenter hung a handful of haute couture-ish dresses and women’s power suits from the 1980s.

Children of the Projects was almost uniformly panned by critics, though very few endeavored to read beyond the racial politics and into the work itself. The show’s defenders were no more scrupulous, however: the most generous assessment of the show came in Texte zur Kunst, an art journal whose founder, Isabelle Graw, had -- weeks prior -- donated the couture used in the show from her personal collection and given the artist free advertising space in her magazine.

Since the exhibition predated camera phone ubiquity, and art hadn’t yet adopted its now-normative practice of extensive photo documentation, very few images of Children of the Projects exist. Further complicating things, the gallery owner, Colin de Land, died three months before Carpenter’s opening, and the gallery closed shortly thereafter, leaving show archives in limbo. For his own part, Carpenter has chosen to withhold images of the exhibit from his personal site, an exception he’s made for almost no other show.

Presented in Diva Corp’s Children of the Projects are oil paintings based on a selection of privately sourced archival images of Carpenter’s Children of the Projects, staged in a truck outside 530 West 22nd Street, the site of the original exhibition.

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September 24, 2026

Diva Corp, Children of the Projects
New York, September 25-27, 2026

*in a truck outside the former American Fine Arts, Co. / Colin de Land Fine Art (530 W. 22nd St), at U-Haul Art Fair

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September 21, 2026

INTERVIEW WITH ELENA VELEZ:
BEHIND ENEMY LINES AT NYFW

We went deep behind enemy lines (NY) last week to talk w Elena Velez and see her new collection SMITE.

Velez is equal parts industry cancellata and avant-garde darling, censured for her recent associations with Kanye West, Clavicular, & Red Scare.

Her work cuts more toward art than most. Hermann Nitsch would’ve liked it, I think -- it’s aggressive, fed by ritual, yet there’s play.

- - -

[START OF CONVERSATION]

Diva Corp: Hey Elena. Your show opens soon. You must be busy. Maybe you’re always busy. What’s the temperature in fashion right now? John Galliano just lost his show, it looks turbulent from over here…

Elena Velez: Definitely busy, busy in ways that feel like work… fashion month is a physical endurance exercise. I rely a lot on sports psychology to keep my BPMs up. The fashion industry is struggling with a uniquely modern identity crisis right now which I see as an exciting opening. It’s clear we’re transitioning from centralized institutional authorities to the Wild West of the internet. The space has been diluted and democratized to the point where nobody even knows what function fashion should even serve anymore. Nobody is brave enough to posit a pointed statement anymore out of fear of alienation or backlash. Simultaneously, problematic geniuses are in short supply but high demand, which isn’t a coincidence.

Diva: You know, I was just listening to your Met Gala podcast with Anna and Dasha -- that was my homework. You are funny. To some people, that might seem at odds with your brand, which is filled with post-apocalyptic themes and sharp edges and rust… darkness. I have my own thoughts on this, but where do you think that levity comes from, and where do you see it in your work?

Velez: I think I’m the queen of gallows humor! At the end of the day I’m immeasurably blessed and also uniquely humiliated, as most public artists are, so a sense of humor is an important survival skill. You’ve got to be able to take the piss if you’re going to stay agile in such a pressurized environment…

Diva: In the episode, you guys went through and appraised almost every look from the red carpet. This was fantastic: it reminded me of when Diderot critiqued all 200 works in the salon of 1765. I was struck by how curious you were, as if you weren’t an authority, or something. You know, you’re an award-winning designer engaging with two… I assume you all are friends, but they’re not in it like you, in the industry sense. Fashion is remarkably exclusive… What draws you to voices like these? How do you know when someone’s worth listening to?

Velez: Unfortunately there’s nothing exclusive about the fashion industry anymore. I’m also not really all that excited by the industry of fashion. I have this bizarre craft-based compulsion and a knack for visual communication but beyond that it’s hard for me to scrounge up a take on where the garment lives after it’s left my hands. I like critiquing the garments formally but the politics of houses, directors, and celebrity pairings really put me to sleep at the wheel. Beyond that I also just like and trust unyielding contrarians.

Diva: Speaking of, the Red Scare girls were in your salon show [Salon 001: Tomorrow Is Another Day, February 2024] which was criticized for its interrogation of Gone with the Wind. Your most recent show [YR008 Manus Maxxima, February 2026] got a lot of pushback for, among other things, featuring Clavicular as a model on the runway. With these critics and commenters, it all gets really overcoded. There’s, like, this hysteria to determine a single meaning, which almost always devolves into politics. What gets lost in interpretations like these?

Velez: I’m trying to build something descriptive, not prescriptive that doesn’t start and end in the simplistic confines of ideological binaries. I often wish I had the plausible deniability of any other form of documentarian who is afforded some intellectual distance to their subject material but I don't think there’s “artists privilege” for anyone anymore. Ultimately I’m exhausted by the moral posturing and tidy conclusions that have to accompany every artistic endeavor in 2026. It’s a fool's errand in our era of non-existent media literacy and ideological tribalism, but I refuse to spend my time on earth upholding its continuity.

Diva: Okay. Into the deep. I was just looking at the flyer for your upcoming show in a few days [YR009: Smite on Saturday, September 12]. On it you’ve got a photo of the Trinity explosion, the first nuclear weapon test [in 1945]. It’s a black-and-white still frame by Berlyn Brixner, taken 25 milliseconds into the detonation. It feels biblical to me, like a creation event. It also looks kind of like an ultrasound. I guess, in a way, it is. Can you talk about that image? What about it resonates with your upcoming collection?

Velez: The storytelling focus of this season is a creative inversion of the aggressor and a commentary on brutality under the pretense of heavenly mandate. It’s a cautionary portrait of righteous violence that asks us to reconsider both victim and perpetrator. I want to update our association of militant tribalism and holy warfare (which I define as the “spiritual” posturing we undertake in an increasingly secular society). It’s a story about our timeless preoccupation with waging interpersonal violence in a way that feels both ancient and modern. The image really does capture this grotesque modern motif of biblical reformation through annihilation.

Diva: Brixner’s image is, to be specific, a document of a test. It’s a step removed from the explosion, which is a step removed from the actual annihilation event. Maybe this is useful to think about. Most people encounter fashion as photographs – individual models walking down the runway, straight toward the camera. Naturally, what’s lost is, you know, the gravity of a garment, how it might move and fall, how its textures shift with light. The tension. In other words, almost everything. What’s your relationship to documentation? How do you communicate the spirit of your clothes to someone who isn’t physically there to see them?

Velez: I’m a literalist when it comes to cataloguing as much “supporting evidence" as possible when building a thesis through a collection. I like to work with textiles that are original to the source of the inspiration for the season, whether its repurposed military canvas or used ship sails- materiality that captures the energy of a past life or of a distinct activity. I like to collect human artifacts... I think we neglect to consider all the ways we might collect ephemera around the fashion spectacle.

Diva: How much of the runway is part of the garment? Can the themes and the afterlife of your shows fill in the gaps of documentation?

Velez: The reason I love fashion as a medium is because it's a creative response to a sociological prompt. For me the spectacle is so satisfying because it’s an opportunity to curate all sorts of artistic references and iconoclastic figures into a tableau vivant of “now”. For me, even the language used to review my work, (whether good or bad) is also written in the vernacular of the times which adds another layer of complimentary context to the work. It’s all a Rorschach test. My work can be thematically overcomplicated sometimes but I think it should be the burden of a good critic to have to parse the semantics.

Diva: Building off that, a lot of the people you cast arrive with an image pre-attached. I’ve already mentioned Clavicular, Dasha… you’ve also had Anna Delvey and Liv Schmidt walk… Pariah the Doll is a frequent collaborator, and is involved again this time. These people are all sort of living readymades, built by the internet. Thematically, what interests you about putting that type of person into your shows?

Velez: I think of these people as conceptual ambassadors. They’re all thematically connected to a story or a subculture that I find interesting or impactful each season. Beyond that I just feel an obligation to elevate and shield disrupters and contrarians from the meat grinder of the Monoculture. I don’t think complicated people can be meaningfully defined by the internet.

Diva: Is there a formal appeal, too? They obviously come with a built-in constraint – you already know roughly how people will react to them. So, if you’re sculpting in the theater of the real, these characters are like an armature, something you can shape around. What does having that fixed point let you do elsewhere in the show?

Velez: I’m not all that interested in viewer reaction or preconception around the people I work with. My project is a space for the audience to overhear me in conversation with myself. I think a good designer should be able to impose their vision on any person, place, or thing, even if it comes with its own distinct individual identity, and come away with a visually coherent, amalgamated result.

Diva: Brett Cooper was at your last show, too. She’s someone who weighs in on masculinity quite a bit, as does Clav, in his own way. Until very recently, your work has focused almost entirely on femininity. This week you’ll launch your first menswear collection. What can we expect? Why menswear, and why now?

Velez: There’s so much combustible energy around depicting masculinity these days. It’s become so taboo and politically coded... I want to make sense of it for myself artistically. I’ve enjoyed making work that inverts mainstream gender discourse, like YR004 & YR006 which were inspired by the theory of toxic femininity, so this feels like a natural and exciting unfolding.

Diva: A couple years ago you said that the woman you want to make clothes for is one “who revels in her autonomy and doesn’t make excuses for her capacity for wickedness.” Who is the man you want to make clothes for?

Velez: I think another woman coming in hot with a preachy, prescriptive take on masculinity is the last thing sensitive young men want these days so I’ll try my best to be thoughtful and responsive instead.

Diva: You often talk about your work in very autobiographical terms. Early on, you talked a lot about your upbringing – you were raised in Milwaukee by a single mother who worked as a ship captain on the Great Lakes – and how that informed some of your material choices (the sailcloth, the corrosion, etc.). You’ve also spoken publicly about the financial sacrifices she made to support you. What you haven’t spoken about much is your father – though on Red Scare you did say that Bad Bunny in his Met Gala old-man outfit “looks just like my dad.” Jokes aside, it makes me curious. How has your father influenced your work, your life, your concept of masculinity?

Velez: My dad came up from Puerto Rico. My parents divorced when I was young. He’s got a sensitive artist's soul and very worldly tastes– I imagine the banality of middle class life in Wisconsin was frustrating and unsatisfying for him. The demand for a more meaningful outlet for masculine catharsis is universally palpable.

Diva: I guess what all this makes me think of is… A couple days ago I went to Glendale, to Forest Lawn, the cemetery. At the very top, inside a church, is this massive painting of Christ on Golgotha Hill, where he was crucified. It’s one of the biggest paintings in the world. Wonderful. And that made me think of Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ, which is a great movie. Now Mel has already shot Passion 2, you know, The Resurrection, which was an entirely unexpected and unprecedented event, so Mel says it’s going to be hallucinatory, a fever dream… And it makes me think, like: When you build a world this specific, you create all this expectation. And I love that, because expectation creates a ton of space where people could never imagine you’d go. So much real estate. Do you feel that opening up around you? Does that possibility excite you?

Velez: Yes! People call me a rage baiter which I think is such a lazy term. I see a lot of value in pressurizing the atmosphere around the brand in different ways so that the eventual ignition can fuel something new and unexpected. Counterculture is a gated community: the friction points are an essential bonding and sorting tool. Cesar A. Cruz says “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”, which I think is an extremely important energy to bring to your creative work in the dystopian hellscape that is 2026.

[END OF CONVERSATION]

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September 10, 2026

L.A. ART FALL PREVIEW & MAJOR QUESTIONS

Okay okay I don’t have much time so I’ll keep this quick: Is LA over??

We used to have it so good: Deitch shows with James Franco, ceramics dripping on every corner… mention “swap meet” and you too could be the city’s next shining star.

But now? “Kinda ghetto,” they’re saying.

I beg to differ. Los Angeles means Los “angels” and angels fly, my friend, long after they’re pronounced dead. Hope springs eternal, especially this fall.

Here’s what I’m tracking.

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1. Legends

Great names this month. Most very specific to LA.

John Baldessari at Spruth Magers - 9/10
Silke Otto-Knapp at Regen - 9/16
Paul Pfeiffer at Perrotin - 9/18
David Lynch at Pace - 9/19*
Thom Andersen at Human Resources - 9/19*
Jack Whitten at Hauser & Wirth - 9/30

*David Lynch loved LA Plays Itself

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2. Strange / Beautiful Minds

A lot of tinkering and burrowing and veiling this fall. LA does this well. Is it the sun? The isolation?… Farber’s Termite Art?

Jeffrey Stuker at Ehrlich Steinberg - 9/10
Nick Herman & Museum of Commerce (George Raggett) at Foyer-LA - 9/12
Chris Lux at Guerrero Gallery - 9/12
Darren Cortez & Tanya Brodsky at NOON - 9/18
Benjamin Echeverria at Overduin & Co. - TBD
Eric Wesley at ZPTDB - TBD October

[NB: This list includes artists associated with the Triste Corridor, an area of LA known to rely on “smart” style at the cost of substance. I tend to distance these specific artists from that region’s reputation.]

- - -

3. Matinée

I’ve liked everything at Matinée so far. Apparently, the founder, Andrew Greene, only plans to operate the space for another year. Extend the lease, for Christ.

Jessica Diamond & Michael Ross at Matinée - 9/26

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4. Younger Artists & Smaller Spaces

Younger artists & galleries can be up to no good and get away with it. Aka they can take risks… ‘no good’ in the best sense. They can also be after, per Brandt in Lebowski, “various commendations, awards, citations, honorary degrees, et cetera.” You decide...

Ethan Shaw at Giovanni’s Room - 9/12
Jacob Fenton at Brewer Martin - 9/18
Niko - TBD
The Village - TBD
Gina Raster - TBD

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5. Group Show Mayhem

Self-explanatory. Maybe more mayhem at O-Town House than the other 2.

Men Object Permanence or The Crack-Up at O-Town House - 9/10
Judith Bernstein, Alberto Cuadros, Ross D. Eaton, Dese Escobar, Kim Fuck, Evan Green, Tallulah Hood, Satchel McCarthy, Marton Mora, Dagmar Moritz, Carol Rama, Chadwick Rantanen, Benjamin Reiss, Mark Roeder, Andy Rothblatt, Patrick Sarmiento, Ben Scott, Lauren Sullivan, Naoki Sutter-Shudo, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
Curated by Jools Rothblatt

Hard Line Women at Nonaka-Hill - 9/16
Sumie Aoki, Akiko Horio, Rei Kawakubo, Kazuko Miyamoto, Aiko Miyawaki, Rakuko Naito, Etsuko Nakatsuji, Tomie Ohtake, Kay Sekimachi, Atsuko Tanaka, Eiko Yamazawa, Shizuko Yoshikawa

Images, Afterimages at Mariposa - 9/19
Em Davenport, Christian John Munks, Leah Ke Yi Zheng, Calvin Miceli Nelson, Mary Stephenson, Peter Tomka

- - -

6. Pressing Questions

- Will the heat ever subside???????

- Lucas Museum feels like Kylie Jenner future ex-side piece fever dream?

- Why did Okey Dokey Konrad Fischer have to leave??

- Mid painting shows at every gallery on Western, or just most?

- Tesla Diner film programming… better than Human Resources?

- Charlie Kirk?

- - - - -

August 19, 2026

ODDA Magazine Interview (link to pdf)
We were interviewed by Sabrina Roman (excerpts below), who also wrote the intro; Pariah the Doll modeled our Crisis of Criticism shirt (shot by Emma Anderson)

Intro + Q&A Excerpts:

“How do you even describe Diva Corp? Are they a person, an organisation, an art-world vigilante, who instead of wearing a mask and cape, channels social media into their own restless broadcast system, specifically one that assembles knee-jerk criticism, performance, and confession into a single, volatile feed? Functioning somewhere between sincerity, sass, and sabotage, Diva Corp has produced a dialogue that feels at once journalistic and dramatic, capable of suddenly veering from razor-sharp institutional commentary to haywire, self-exposing humor within a single moment. Their Instagram presence, in particular, has developed into a kind of cultural pressure point while functioning as an investigation into what it means to critique art right now.”
- Sabrina Roman

- - -

ODDA: Your Instagram page has been one of the most entertaining and informative things I have come across in a while. What I have regularly noticed is that your writing often reads like a hybrid of review, journal entry, and cultural satire. Do you see Diva Corp primarily as criticism, performance, or something closer to digital art?

DIVA CORP: I wish I thought about it in those terms. It’s more pure than that. I just log on, say whatever, and then log off. And then sometimes I come back later and see I’ve made a terrible mess. And that’s no fun, especially because the project is sincerely me, maybe the most me. They always say “just be yourself,” but honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it, because then you run the risk of finding out that deep, deep down, the instinct at your very core is maligned by almost everyone. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, though… so maybe Diva Corp is really about bravery.

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ODDA: The style of your reviews is also occasionally a little dirty and diva-esque in tone. Is there something culturally worthwhile about reintroducing a more mischievous, unscripted voice, particularly one that isn’t afraid to be a little rude in the search for bluntly stating what is happening?

DIVA CORP: People say we’re rude and impolite… They said it about our panel last month at ArtCenter, that we “pulled the rug” on those writers from Artforum and the New York Times or whatever. I don’t get it, though. Nobody calls a fireman “mean” for smashing a window to save a baby, right? Well, to us, art is the baby, and it’s in danger. And I know you’re probably thinking, “Oh come on, it’s not that serious.” But art is that serious, and it’s worth breaking windows for.

- - -

ODDA: You mentioned watching a chaotic Twitch stream, where the user is essentially trying to get knocked by cars in Nevada, Fresno, or wherever his home is. You also mentioned that he is always creating new accounts. What do you see this as saying about where experimentation has migrated?

DIVA CORP: Yeah, it’s this streamer who tries to get hit by cars, a suburban kid with gauges. Last I saw, his account was called “MaoZedonuts”. He’s really bad at getting hit, though, so recently he actually put out a bounty on himself. He gave some hints about his location and said, “If you find me and hit me, I’ll pay you a thousand dollars.” I was pretty depressed at the time, so I gave it a shot. Ended up in Madera, California, asking around for Mao Zedonuts. I never found him, but this – you’re right – says a lot about experimentation: it’s migrating away from the artist and toward the audience. In the past decade, artists have really tried to control their own narrative and context, ultimately in an effort to control their audience. What Mao Zedonuts is doing is more of an exchange: he’s freeing the work, decentralizing it, giving it life. Making it more immaterial.

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ODDA: Speaking of, your reviews often engage not just artworks but the programs and aesthetic embellishments that encapsulate them, from press releases to curatorial texts and even the ritual of the exhibition itself. Are you ultimately more interested in artworks or in the codes that pre-empt them?

DIVA CORP: Those aren’t embellishments, they’re part of the exhibit. We talked about this extensively with our current show at Pio Pico [The Meeting, until 3/28]. To me, the exhibition text is just as important as the work, which is just as important as the room and the ritual and the documentation, and the person who created it, too. Like an orchestra, together it all creates a sound, a frequency. It’s not that complicated. For us, in The Meeting, the fun part was like, what happens when you mess with those hyper-coded instruments? How does the reception change, and what does that say about art viewership?

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ODDA: If the avant-garde is still alive and kicking, where do you believe it can be glimpsed now? In galleries, online, in gaming spaces, streaming culture, or somewhere else entirely?

DIVA CORP: I see the roots of the avant-garde in entertainment. Unlike art, entertainment needs an audience to succeed. That’s where the money’s at. And since viewership and distribution channels are always in flux -- a recent phenomenon -- the best entertainers now have to experiment, to engage with new tech or content strategies to stay relevant. It’s the opposite in art, which is slow and has no respect for the audience. Art makes sense of itself through museum boards, curators, and tenured faculty, who all have a financial incentive to reproduce things in their image, as they understand it, with a different lineage to what was. So the avant-garde today is really found in entertainment, which, yes, in its streaming and gaming form, points us toward expanded reality, toward using the levers of the real as instruments of theater.

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ODDA: On your website, you’ve declared, “Well, we’ve reached the dark side of tolerance. ‘Make what you want’ has settled into its detrimental extreme. Painters today choose to regress toward the mean, and they’re proud of it. Worse yet, they defend it!” Do you think today’s studio has become a ground-zero site where artists feel free to do anything ...? Except risk embarrassment, failure, or genuine aesthetic calamity?

DIVA CORP: By the time most artists get into the studio, risk has long been abandoned. We’re taught to be right, to be nice. To, like, prioritize guardrails and insurance. And that’s totally fine for some people -- live your life -- but over time it builds a very resilient self-censor. Once you’re in the studio, unless you’re proactive about it, it’s too late. It’s already a habit. And that’s why people get so defensive when you even say the word risk: within the confines of what they believe life to be, they are taking risks. Consider Peter Sellers in Being There. He’s never left the house his whole life, so even a single step outside is monumental. That’s why they’re playing that epic Strauss song from 2001 when he finally leaves. The humor there is obvious: to us, it isn’t a risk at all. Freedom can be much more.

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ODDA: Do you think the internet has abolished the proportions of what defines “art” versus what defines “content”? Or has it simply revealed that the distinction was always a breakable friction propped up by institutions and critics?

DIVA CORP: It depends on who we’re talking about here. Most people who associate themselves with art are very stubborn. They couldn’t for a second begin to think of art beyond the frame they inherited, the one they operate in. They like the distinction, and that comes from fear, probably: they want things to slow down so they can catch up. What they don’t understand is… just jump in… the current will carry you. Some people understand this, of course, but they identify with “art” less and less, because “art” doesn’t want to identify with them.

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August 4, 2026

OPEN CALL: DIVA CORP MAG

DEADLINE: AUGUST 31, 2026

SEND TO: INFO@DIVACORP.NET

For Issue 6.

Diva Corp Mag seeks art that responds to art.

So, instead of traditional criticism, we’re looking for stories, poems, drawings, photos, scripts, etc...

Literally anything but the stuff you always see... related in some way (however oblique) to a show open in LA from 4/1-8/31.

Movies / screenings / performances are ok, too.

Send to info@divacorp.net. Indicate show in submission.

- - - - -

July 29, 2026

It has come to our attention that the Diva Corp Magazine Issue 5 release was officially the last event ever held at the ArcLight Hollywood & Cinerama Dome, now that Alamo Drafthouse (Sony) has taken over the property. This news is official as of Wednesday, July 22, 2026, and has been confirmed per multiple sources.

- - - - -

July 27, 2026

Ok so good news: we were being sued and now it’s over.

The threat of a lawsuit, to be specific. Which I understand isn’t the same thing, but it feels the same when you don’t have nearly the money or status as the person who might sue you.

Ultimately, they wanted us to apologize for one of our paintings.

That was outrageous, still, and I think proves the point of the painting.

We’ve been advised to not say much else, but I wanted to say something, because we’re finally free.

- - - - -

June 23, 2026

Jordan Wolfson & Diva Corp Conversation
Published in On the Rag Vol. II
Magazine available here

[START OF CONVERSATION]

Diva: Hey Jordan. It's January 1st. Happy New Year. The world is full of possibilities. How'd you ring in 2026?

Jordan: I went up to Mendocino with my three dogs and girlfriend. We just stayed in. It was raining. You?

Diva: I like to go up to Mulholland and watch the fireworks down below. There's a spot where you can see both sides of the city at once. It was raining, though, like you said. Then the rain stopped and it was clear for a minute. All the fireworks went off at once.

And then I thought about Churchill. Apparently he’d go out on his roof every night during the Blitz and watch the bombs fall on London. He thought it was beautiful, I think because he knew he'd turn it around. Like it was setting up for an even better narrative climb.

Which then made me think about setbacks. Is there such a thing? Or is it all just momentum? Do you think about this stuff? Do you ever feel like Churchill during the Blitz?

Jordan: I never use the word “setbacks.” It’s never in my head. I do get delays and challenges, though, and a lot of deals for production of artworks fall through.

I don’t think of “bad luck” either.

But I’ve definitely had a lot of challenging times that forced me to pivot and change my course. It’s never-ending. I think that all my partners have this, too, so when something comes up we just discuss it as the new reality and make an alternative plan.

Do you want me to get specific?

Diva: Yes, we need to know about the challenging times.

Jordan: Covid delayed and setback Body Sculpture. It was a very stressful period. It forced me to reconfigure my professional alignment with my commercial galleries and skip several personal engagements, like the last family trip my mom attended the summer before she passed away.

Diva: How'd you deal with that? How'd you get clear in the studio with the stress? I feel like I've seen you post a photo of a Jung quote on IG...

Jordan: I meditated a lot. I’ve been doing it since I was 29. I just surrendered to it. There wasn’t a point to resisting and I was in service to the work, not my personal comfort.

Diva: Is there ever a time when you're not in service to the work?

Jordan: When I’m not working… like relaxing.

My studio is very 10-6 pm. At 6, we all walk out and I usually don’t work late unless I’m on a deadline and it’s critical.

Diva: Yes but I wonder if the motor stays running, you know? Maybe it quiets down.

For example, in your talk at ArtCenter [in December], you went over your early career. A lot of that was very successful work and laid a foundation for what was to come. Yet for every work, you pointed out how things were "made in fear." This type of thinking extends beyond studio time, I'd imagine...

Jordan: I shut off at night, but, if I’m on deadline and approaching a show, my mind feels always on. I compulsively take notes – mostly in the form of selfie video or voice memos or notepad on my phone, all of which I later transcribe. For example, a lot (if not all) of the dialogue in my sculptures and video works was written late at night or during moments I wasn’t in the studio.

The fear thing was something I was going through in my 20s and early 30s. I still have it, but not in the same way.

Diva: Yes, that's what I was curious about. Maybe you don't think about this, but I wonder if one day you'll see, say, Colored Sculpture or Female Figure in the same way? How are you sure that those early works were treading in fear, and these weren't?

Jordan: Because my experience in making them was smooth and bright high-frequency. I held back nothing. I wasn’t isolated in doubt and fear and insecurities.

It was all intuition and nothing else. No rationale for any decisions except for feeling.

Diva: One thing you didn't seem to hold back in the early works was the aggressive crop. In one video, you cropped at the neck, leaving the head out of frame entirely... maybe there were two like this... and in another you removed the audio track in favor of sign language. Even the edit in Favorite Things put an emphasis on the cut. More recently of course you have something like Body Sculpture where the head is removed, and other works remove senses -- Little Room swaps the participant's body for another.

Where does this come from?

Jordan: You’re right, I love the aggressive crop. I love it in music and cinema and literature and sculpture. All of it.

I just always liked a kind of indifference that’s structural. I think it’s like using a delete or erase tool without the fade, and it makes an implication in form that binds the artwork.

I can name some of my favorite crops by other artists if you like?

Diva: Yes, we need to know your favorite crops.

Jordan: Barry Lyndon freeze frame at the end.

End of Scenes from a Marriage.

Last line of Old Man and the Sea.

There are more. I’ll work on this but need to do later.

Ask me another question?

Diva: Love Barry Lyndon... You know, I'm also thinking right now of filmmakers like Bela Tarr who died today may God rest his soul or, like, Tarkovsky, and for them the frame is important, but it's open. For you, it’s closed, not thematically or artistically, but in a purely cinematic sense the entire story is right there, in frame. Do you think of your work in these terms ever? To me it's a style thing... do you ever try to evade elements of your own style?

Jordan: I’m not sure it’s intentional…

I don’t like tricks and I don’t like to hide things in terms of illusions, but I also very much don’t think or function on narrative. That’s why I never had ambitions to make a feature like so many other artists do. You’re right: I’m interested in the total experience, and that’s probably why even when I was doing video I considered it sculptural or structural, even if it wasn’t on a short loop, like Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture. It’s always been about feeling my body in front of the work, in the most direct, practical way.

Diva: To what degree does the total experience of your art extend to persona? Maybe it's not something you think about -- though I'd argue it must be -- but how do you think your public perception affects the delivery of your work?

Jordan: I don’t think about it. If I did, I’d be paranoid.

For me it’s simple, I make what I think is good art or does things good art does. The art I like does certain things that aren’t virtue signaling or decorative or entertainment… It’s about feeling and witnessing, and how that lingers when you walk away. I don’t have interests and I’m not nostalgic. This isn’t about taking a hobby and professionalizing it.

Diva: There is paranoia in the work! Sometimes it circles around harm, too, or addresses it directly, like Real Violence. I'm working on a piece right now responding to the question of 'what is radical' -- sometimes I think the fear of doing harm can limit radicality. Do you think I'm heading in the right direction? What are your thoughts?

Jordan: It depends. I think the fear of harming oneself is more profound than that of harming others in making art.

I don’t believe good art can harm the viewer. I agree viewers can be harmed, but that may be because they bring all their past with them when they look at art. Same as the artist who brings their past when making it.

So, I think you shouldn’t write from the perspective of guilt or fear, but the absurdity that one is afraid of saying things in context and the viewer not being sophisticated enough to get it. The person who does this is committing a selfish act and doubting the sophistication of the viewer.

Diva: So, like, "it's absurd to fear doing harm as an artist."

Jordan: Yes. It’s like putting a mirror in jail for reflecting a crime.

Diva: Is it absurd to fear not doing harm as an artist?

Jordan: It’s only not absurd “to fear” harming another person. What we do in our art is fiction.

It’s absurd to even talk about art like this. What happened why are we doing this?

Diva: I was just curious where you'd go with it.

Jordan: I mean how did we get here culturally to talk like this about art…

Diva: I think there's a benefit to talking about it because it's inevitable that other people will. How we got here, I don't know... Maybe something to do with academia, conceptual art, describing the thing instead of feeling it... You probably have a better sense of it all.

Jordan: I don’t know that much about you. Are you an artist?

Diva: I guess if having a show makes you an artist, we are about to be an artist.

Our first show is coming up. Any advice?

Jordan: Just do what you like.

Who’s “we”? I’m still confused.

Diva: Diva Corp.

Jordan: Ok I’ll stop there.

What else do you want to know about me and my art?

Diva: Well I have endless questions. I'm very curious and never get exhausted.

I won't overstep though, I just have a couple left... Besides, I have no idea if you're enjoying yourself. Are you? That's a formal hurdle to this [email] conversation style, I guess. It spans time, which is interesting – almost like an interview conducted in slow-motion – but it removes all the human cues. Like an aggressive crop.

Jordan: Yes, I’m into this. Keep going…

Diva: I saw your piece in the Horror show at Sprüth. It's funny and erotic and sincere. Your wallworks often have some Ashley Bickerton in them, which you don't shy away from (I think you wrote the text for one of his recent shows), but for some reason people don't ask you about him much in interviews. Can you talk about Ashley, that influence, his work as it relates to yours?

Jordan: Ashley was a dear friend. I was his last good friend. We talked all the time and I’m still close with his family.

I remember seeing his early work in my late twenties and thinking it would be cool to develop them, but as me, not him. It sort of started that way. The more I work, though, the more I’ve felt connected to his work. There was this sexy abrasiveness to his logos – or the use of logos – that felt fast and mean. His works were much more personal and vulnerable than mine. He called his “self-portraits.” For me, what stuck out wasn’t the vulnerability, but the sexuality in the material combinations.

He told me when we first met: of all the artists who ripped him off, I was his favorite.

He was the most innocent person I’ve known. If you want, I can send you our last picture together. It’s from a FaceTime call.

Diva: That makes sense. Now I'm thinking of the ones from a couple years ago; you had a few in different booths at Basel. Maybe one had a car accident, some praying hands with gloves, and then of course the screws and plexi. Definitely charged.

Yes, sure, please send, would love to see the photo.

Jordan: Yes those works were at Basel…

Diva: What do you mean he was innocent?

Jordan: He was like a child, and I think “innocent” even more because he wasn’t tough and I felt he had difficulty being resilient. A lot of artists and creatives are very sensitive and can be thrown off track when they feel attacked and misunderstood. You need to learn to get up again and again until it’s just part of the story and not a story.

I remember once I felt very hurt and I called Jeff Koons and we spoke for over an hour. He told me that he recovered quickly from negativity, that it was his superpower and he benefited from it his whole career.

Knowing Ashley, I felt like that was harder for him and he needed more protection. That’s the sense I got for the reason he moved so far away to Bali.

Diva: What was the situation you called Jeff about?

Jordan: Just someone being mean. I don’t like to give it energy.

Diva: Do you think you're less innocent than when you started? What role does innocence play in your work?

Jordan: I’m more innocent now because I know what’s important and what’s not.

I don’t see there being any roles in my work because it’s so intuitive, but I do always feel like a beginner – confused and stumped.

I like to think that every time I walk into my studio, I’m new. That’s why I like LA. It’s new. The sun makes me new. There’s never a plan other than to work most of the time.

Diva: Another side to your work, I imagine, would be considered CEO-like to some people. Pitching, securing the funds for these ambitious projects. Communicating the vision. Delegating. Things that might not be rewarded by innocence, or even intuition.

Can you talk about that? How are you so effective at realizing these ideas logistically, financially? Are you a convincing person?

Jordan: Back in 2018, I invited Jeffrey Deitch over to help me brainstorm about raising money for Body Sculpture. I asked him over specifically because he presold Jeff Koons’ works when Jeff was developing the Celebration series.

I showed Jeffrey the idea for Body Sculpture using some previs animations and still imagery, and I explained the idea. I asked him how to pitch it. He said my enthusiasm would carry over most effectively and suggested I make a short pitch video. That’s how it started.

My dealers then collectively shared the film to several museums and collectors. Sadie Coles finally made the sale to the National Gallery of Australia.

I did the same for Little Room and my new work I’m about to start in February.

Diva: You remind me of Tom Cruise a little bit. Say what you want about him, but he believes in movies, he has a vision, he makes it happen.

Jordan: I get it. Tom Cruise has willed a lot into existence. It’s different though because he’s an actor, he has less control or power over what he can do.

Diva: Yes, though I think he’s active in production, too. I don’t know him, so I can’t say for sure. But it does seem like he has incredibly high standards, or maybe it’s ambition. Do you think art is ambitious enough right now?

Jordan: Yes, there is always great ambitious art!

Diva: What about your upcoming project? The one you're starting in Feb -- what can you tell us about it? What can we expect?

Jordan: I don’t want to talk about it on the record but its in line with the previous large animatronic sculptures.

… Ask another question?

Diva: Sorry I was watching Afternoons of Solitude. Have you seen it?

Jordan: I haven’t. My friend I’m with right now says it’s crazy.

Diva: It's very serious and straightforward and naked. But also archetypal to the point of parody. It's my favorite art piece from last year, I think.

Jordan: I don’t think I have a favorite work from the last year.

Diva: Why not?

Jordan: I don’t know. I haven’t thought of it until now.

… Wait I do…

Diva: What is it?

Jordan: Saint John the Baptist (Leonardo) – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_John_the_Baptist_(Leonardo)

Diva: You sent a link to Leonardo da Vinci's Saint John the Baptist. This was your favorite work of the year? It’s a delirious painting, that smile…

Jordan: It’s a mysterious work. Maybe one of the finest artworks ever made. I remember being frozen by it. It’s very strange. It gave me an amazing feeling.

I feel artworks are containers of imprinted consciousness. And the quality of the work is relative to the purity and level of frequency from which the consciousness has been applied to the material.

Diva: The first painting I was struck by was a Dali painting, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. I spent hours with it. I started laughing in front of it after a while, I don’t know why, maybe discomfort. I knew nothing about art at the time; I don’t know if I’d even like it if I saw it again. Maybe this was a pure thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis_of_Narcissus

Jordan: I’ve never seen that one before, but I’m not versed in Dali.

I do like it.

Diva: You seem optimistic about art.

Jordan: I love art.

Diva: You know, I was looking at that Leonardo painting again this morning and it actually reminded me a lot of your piece Animation, masks. The eeriness, especially in the void. It’s even sort of lit the same way.

Jordan: It’s a sin to compare my work to one of the finest artworks ever made. I never thought of that. I wish we could stand in front of it together. You’d be surprised. It’s a modestly-sized painting… it’s mysterious, much more than Animation, masks.

Diva: Hhaha yes, I understand. I am, I think, seeing similarities in their framing, lighting, and direct communication with the viewer.

You don't like Animation, masks?

Jordan: No, I like it. But it’s not a fair comparison. For him, not me.

When I saw it, I didn’t think of my work. I was struck by the strangeness of it. It’s the same with many masterpieces. For example Michelangelo or Caravaggio… there’s a strange secular quality in the work that hides in plain sight behind the religious narratives. Do you ever get that sense? Where the artist is doing their work behind the requirements of church and the religious overtones are almost a caricature.

Diva: You think? I always was under the impression that the Sistine Chapel couldn't happen without true belief. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Jordan: I think it’s half-secular if not entirely. It’s very much real art and I feel that’s why.

Diva: Do you think there are equivalents today?

Jordan: Do you mean of artists at that level?

Diva: A situation where an artist works within a system, for a system even, yet the output is 'secular,' if you will, vis-a-vis that system. Like you said. And then, of course, it has to be done well, which is another thing.

My mind goes to Robocop first, but that's not right. Too much of a Trojan horse. And then stuff that Merlin Carpenter does isn't it, either, because it's done to counter the system explicitly. Sincerity is needed.

But if we take the market as art's religion, and the gallery as its church...

… Oh, I’ve got it I think—

Jordan: I don’t totally understand what you mean… By default, now, everything is secular. By today’s standard, work that’s secular is not based in morality, i.e. the “edgelord” is now secular and godless.

… That’s funny to think about that woke and/or political work is now the un-secular.

Do you believe in faith? Do you have faith in your life?

Diva: I believe in momentum. And I pick up momentum every time I do something scary and realize it doesn't hurt. Something like that. Inertia is my God.

You?

Jordan: I love that. Wow. That’s such a good analogy for god.

There’s a magnet in my heart that guides me to do right by others and my work.

Diva: That's cool. It reminds me of what you were saying about Ashley.

Could be a good place to put our swords down, too.

Jordan: No let’s keep going

Diva: It's extending into podcast territory, we'd need to hire actors to perform it.

It would be like My Dinner with Andre, except with Jordan Wolfson and Diva Corp.

Jordan: I know you can muster one more question. You’re smart.

I hate when interviews have soft, poetic landings. Remember, I like the harsh crop.

Diva: It’ll be sad when it does happen because for a couple days we were like pen pals.

Jordan: I know how to end it. With a monologue.

May I?

Diva: I had a question about beauty and destruction. Which you've probably answered a million times.

I'd love to hear the monologue.

Jordan: Black.

[END OF CONVERSATION]

- - - - -

June 13, 2026

Rip David Hockney u would’ve hated elon musk

>>>

Though, actually… I’m not sure…

Hockney seemed like a clever man

And certainly a defiant one

After all he did protest the UK’s smoking ban

>>>

I guess what I’m getting at is this:

Do I think it’s an issue that art has vilified tech, which has a whole slew of new millionaires, billionaires, and, yes, trillionaires starting today?

… To the point where they’re not even interested in collecting or learning about art?

>>>

… if you don’t want to count on the government for funding… maybe !!

>>>

Not that I’m sympathetic to their postures and skepticism is a virtue

But art can turn the screw… right? Add a wrinkle to even the most calcified… soften things…

Would that be useful in this case?

So there has to be some way to engage w them apart from completely and utterly alienating the entire class no?

>>>

I dunno, I guess u tell me…

But, flies / honey / vinegar, right?

- - - - -

June 6, 2026

Diva Corp Mag Issue 5 now available at Skylight Books in Los Feliz.

- - - - -

June 4, 2026

Diva Corp Mag Issue 5 now available at Arcana Books in Culver City.

- - - - -

May 31, 2026

DIVA CORP MAG OUT NOW

CONTRIBUTORS
ERIC WESLEY
LOUISE WEARD
BERNADETTE VAN-HUY
JOHANNA STONE
BILLY STONE & ANAM MEHTA
MOLLY SODA
JANE SHIN
RYDER RIPPS
MOSES MASCUCH & ZARA SCHUSTER
MAYA MAN
MARTINA MACKINLAY
SAMMY LOREN
SARAH LEHRER-GRAIWER
EUGENE KOTLYARENKO
JOSEPH KLAHR
MIA KERIN
ELISE HOUCEK
MAT GLEASON
OSCAR CORONA

AVAILABLE AT THE CINERAMA DOME & ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD

AND AT AMOEBA RECORDS TUCKED BEHIND:

+ Cry-Baby (d. John Waters)
+ Empire Records (d. Allan Moyle)
+ The Canyons (d. Paul Schrader)
+ Ratcatcher (d. Lynne Ramsay)
+ Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown (d. Pedro Almodóvar)
+ Madea's Witness Protection (d. Tyler
Perry)
+ The Beguiled (d. Sofia Coppola)
+ Ichi the Killer (d. Takashi Miike)
+ Encino Man (d. Les Mayfield)

- - - - -

April 9, 2026

DIVA CORP UPDATES APRIL 2026

1. In Office Mag, our convo w Rina Nicolae ab transgression at Pio Pico, ArtCenter fallout, the ennui of sex, and art’s unwillingness to adapt

2. Our painting at Cirrus Gallery (c. Alberto Cuadros). Titled Eliza Douglas: Guggenheim, Overduin & Co.

3. In Wallace Mag, our essay on Alake Shilling at Hammer. Tao Lin, Noah’s ark, Sharif Farrag, Laura Owens mentioned

4. Hyperallergic calls us “myopic”. A rare compliment

5. Petra Cortright adaptation of our poem Gun for Lily Lady & Jack Skelley reading

- - - - -

March 24, 2026

WHAT IS RADICAL?
by Diva Corp
Full piece in The Brooklyn Rail (March 2026 Issue)
A contribution to a series curated by Ginevra de Blasio and Vittoria de Franchis

Human flight, for thousands and thousands of years, was confined to the dream realm. Who’d dare imagine such a thing in the daytime? It was a physical impossibility, of course, and, besides, there were much more urgent matters at hand -- witches, for example, and plagues, and nihilism (the trinity of which, coincidentally, would later go on to invent Art Basel Miami)...

Read the full piece here.

- - - - -

March 15, 2026

On our ArtCenter panel*

We were invited to be on a panel at ArtCenter with critics from the New York Times, Artforum, & Texte zur Kunst. In our stead, we sent John Pelech and Lily Lady. Oliver Misraje was also involved. There was a framework to the approach, but no script. The post is about that, the aftermath, the chaos.

What a disaster! they said.¹ Hmm... I truly don’t understand. How would you rather we do it? More conventionally? Stale with a heavy dose of deference?

I’m starting to suspect that art people are a bit stuck in their ways, and just not lost enough.

Highlights from ArtCenter on instagram.

---
^{* The Panel: Jason Farago (NYT), Isabelle Graw (TZK), Alexi Worth (Artforum, etc), & Diva Corp
* Cast: Lily Lady & John Pelech, ft. Oliver Misraje
1}Contested. For example, per OTR: ‘a massacre.’

- - - - -

March 10, 2026

Current shows:

The Meeting at Pio Pico - Solo
Feb 26-March 28, 2026
Diva Corp

Living Proof/Living Archives at Cirrus Gallery - Group
Feb 22-May 9, 2026
Curated by Alberto Cuadros
Barbara T. Smith, Ed Ruscha, Rachel Rosenthal, Dennis Oppenheim, Bruce Nauman, Paul McCarthy, Jay McCafferty, Tom Marioni, Jim Isermann, Gronk, Laddie John Dill, Tony DeLap, Guy De Cointet, Judy Chicago, Karen Carson, Linda Burnham, Chris Burden, Bob & Bob, Terry Allen, Amelia Lockwood, Raul Guerrero, Ariana Mamnoon, Billy Al Bengston, Diva Corp, John Baldessari, Frances Stark, & Mark Bradford

- - - - -

February 22, 2026

FRIEZE PREVIEW + STORYLINES

LA continues to ascend. I’m in love with it – the turbulence, the incessant change, the resistance. I rewatched every ep of I Love LA this week just to prove it. “What a waste of time and spirit!” they cried. Not to me. I’d watch the Rachel Sennott show again and again just to prove how much I adore you, Los Angeles, my love. Even if it fries my nerves to oblivion; even if it sears what little cognition I have left.

… and the art’s got momentum, too…

Here’s what I’m tracking during Frieze.

- - -

1. Historic / derelict

A bunch of off-site projects this year, many in once-iconic, now-vacant locations. There’s cachet in the novelty, sure, but also a nudge about LA’s real estate churn. Tonight, Barry McGee and a hundred other artists have a show at the abandoned 99 Cents Store across from LACMA (2/22, 6-9p). Tomorrow, Perrotin opens Paging Dr. Feelgood, a group show at the old Spago spot above Sunset (2/23, 7-10p). Frankfurt Ordica’s got Exhibition House this weekend, too, part of which takes place in a Gregory Ain Mar Vista Tract home. Way wayyyy up in the hills, Rita McBride has an installation at Galka Scheyer’s Neutra house (Blue Heights/Konrad Fischer/Del Vaz), and Ryan Preciado has a fantastic show at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. We’ve even heard whispers about a show at the former Sizzler on Wilshire, opening next Sunday, curated by Grant Tyler.

- - -

2. Readings / Performance

Taix is closing; LA history fades yet again. And while “gentrification” is an easy scapegoat, the real blame here falls on Mike Taix (owner), who sold us out for millions just so he could fly Dungeness crab legs from Alaska to his McPalace in Scottsdale. (Humans have agency, people, remember that.) But now’s not the time for resentment – Social Club LA hosts a Casual Encountersz reading on Wednesday at 7:30p. Champagne room?

Elsewhere, Oliver Misraje brings his California Gothic bus tour to life. Produced by New Theater, the performance-cum-fever dream sounds like a Norman Klein anti-tour for internet-fed poets.

Also: Wallace magazine launch at Ochi on Friday (2/27), and Maya Man at LA Dance Project on Saturday (2/28).

- - -

3. What a Wonderful World at Julia Stoschek Foundation

With the exception of the Anne Imhof piece, basically all the work here is top tier (the Bunny Rogers downstairs, a favorite). And there’s a ton of it. Like six floors full and a whole basement, all in a gutted old vaudeville theater downtown. Stunning, the sheer volume. There’s absolutely zero curatorial throughline, though, so if sense is what you’re after, you’ll have none of it. In fact, I left rather suspicious of the whole operation… same feeling as when a mortal enemy is suddenly nice. Why here? Why now?... Why the free popcorn? More questions than answers indeed…

- - -

4. Diva Corp at Pio Pico

Thursday 2/26 from 7-9p

Sorry if u missed the panel at ArtCenter

- - -

5. Fairs

Most curious about what Bel Ami has from Isabelle Frances McGuire at Post-Fair (2/26-2/28). A couple years ago they showed her work at Felix… a fantastic Napoleon… worth crossing the 405 for.

Felix: Excited for a labyrinthine madhouse? Maybe I’ll stop in the SOLOS room with Petra Cortright, Parker Ito, Jon Rafman, and Evil Biscuit… and then leave.

And two new fairs: ENZO – NY galleries only – and Away From Desk – an “alternative to fairs” (guys we have another one!). Both could be interesting, especially some of the AFD programming… both could also be a rehash of a rehash.

- - -

6. Shows

Some have already opened. Of note:

- Max Earnest at Niko (2/20)
- Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch at Moran Moran (2/21)
- Dustin Hodges at Sebastian Gladstone (2/21)
- Bjorn Copeland at Benevento (2/21)
- Ronald Jones at Matinée (2/21)
- Andrea Fourchy & Jake Shore at The Village (2/23)
- Paul McCarthy at The Journal (2/23)
- Connor Camburn, Lauren Sullivan, Mark Verabioff, Eric Wesley at ZPTDB (2/23)

Also, guys, the number of openings yesterday was grotesque. Have you not a shred of imagination in the lot of you??

- - - - -

February 16, 2026

We're on a panel at ArtCenter tomorrow, Tuesday 2/17 at 7p

You should come, it's free

Others are Jason Farago (NYT), Isabelle Graw (Texte zur Kunst), and Alexi Worth, org by Jack Bankowsky

Please have ur cameras ready

- - - - -

February 12, 2026

Our first solo show ever
opens Thurs Feb 26 7-9p
at Pio Pico

It’s titled “The Meeting”

Please come we love u

- - - - -

February 1, 2026

It’s 2026, you’re an artist, you can do anything… Why paint?

Someone help me out.

We’ve stopped asking that question altogether.

Good answers are few and far between.

... and yet everybody’s doing it.

I’m not writing for ‘painters’ here, the ones blindly chasing the already exhausted. They never asked the question to begin with. I’d hesitate to call them artists, honestly, because of that oblivion.

I’m more worried about the artists – many of whom I like – meeting that question with willful neglect. Who know they’re not propelling art forward… and continue on, anyway.

These are lovers of the avant-garde, with dynamic ideas and restless minds (… i.e. you!!), who settle into their studios everyday thinking about the art they want to see, only to make the art they don’t.

To the degree that art has any utility at all, it functions best as a challenge. To itself, imo. Art under interrogation vindicates its being (or fails to), and then we move forward, better art in tow.

The opposite – art unquestioned, art tolerated – simply begets stasis.

Well, we’ve reached the dark side of tolerance. “Make what you want” has settled into its detrimental extreme. Painters today choose to regress toward the mean, and they’re proud of it. Worse yet, they defend it!

Can anyone help me think of a relevant corollary here? Some system whose petty decay became the norm, before growing louder and more hideous?

I wonder if an unwillingness to imagine art beyond its frame filters into life elsewhere.

... “How you do anything is how you do everything,” right?

Anyway, right now, we need more challenges to form.

Challenges to content are terminal and easily reduced – that was clear last decade. They fit neatly into the neoliberal regimes you guys love to hate: Quotas can be met, “evolution” pointed to… and the sale can still be made.

Challenges to form, however, have no end. (Thinking of Callois’ distinction, here, between play and games). With each challenge comes another… until that becomes the norm. Break form enough and prismatic shifts will follow.

Limits drift, boundaries fall away, new shapes take hold.

Don’t fall for the lie of postmodernism! We’ve got miles to go before we sleep.

With formal challenge as the ideal – rather than, you know, ‘doing what they used to do, just Taylor’s Version’ (or whatever else propels us fearfully toward the past… “fun”?) – perhaps art could (1) be more relevant to the terrifying, spectacular realities of the present, and (2) sprout a kernel of an idea that might crack the calcified systems that push ‘good’ to the margins.

Maybe this is too idealistic for many of you. I know you’re skeptical of progress, optimism, dreams, and agency… I know what they connote. But if artists don’t reach beyond the frame (and this is art, remember, and art can be anything), how do we expect anyone out there to do it?

- - - - -

December 28, 2025

BEST & WORST OF 2025

BEST LA SHOWS BY LIVING ARTISTS

+ Win McCarthy at Gaylord

+ Mire Lee at Commonwealth and Council

+ Dogperson39 and Parker Ito at Temple Projects

+ Ines Kivimaki at Soldes

+ The Worst Rave in the World at And/Or

+ Joe Sola at La Loma

+ Joe Klahr at Leroy’s

+ Kara Walker at The Brick (Monuments)

+ Sam McKinniss at David Kordansky

- - -

BEST LA SHOWS BY DEAD ARTISTS

+ Sawako Goda at Nonaka-Hill

+ Francis Picabia at Michael Werner

+ Gretchen Bender at Matinée

+ Claes Oldenburg at Maison d’Art

+ William T. Wiley at Parker Gallery

- - -

WORST LA SHOWS OF THE YEAR

+ George Rouy at Hauser & Wirth

+ Eliza Douglas at Overduin & Co.

+ Doug Aitken at Regen Projects

+ Bianca Censori at 4317 Beverly

+ Second Body at David Kordansky

+ Josh Sperling at Perrotin

- - -

BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR

+ Afternoons of Solitude by Albert Serra

+ No Other Choice by Park Chan-wook

+ Castration Movie 2 by Louise Weard

+ Same things make us laugh, make us cry by Allen-Golder Carpenter

+ Adolf & Eva / Adam & Eve Cooking Show by Paul McCarthy

+ Grand Theft Hamlet by Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls

+ F1 by Joseph Kosinski

+ www.RachelOrmont.com by Peter Vack

+ The ADHD Muses by Bernadette Van-Huy

+ The Naked Gun by Akiva Schaffer

- - -

WORST FILMS OF THE YEAR

+ Sinners by Ryan Coogler

+ I Love LA Season 1 by Rachel Sennott

+ Baby Invasion by Harmony Korine

+ Castration Movie 2 by Louise Weard

+ Weapons by Zach Cregger

+ Eddington by Ari Aster

- - -

BEST LIES OF THE YEAR

“We’re not closing.”

- Clearing founder Olivier Babin to Annie Armstrong on July 14 (Artnet), approx.

Clearing officially closed on August 7.

- - -

BEST WRITING OF THE YEAR

+ Caroline Busta on network & transmission in What is Contemporary Art for Today?

+ Daniel Kolitz, The Goon Squad in Harper’s

+ Ross Simonini, The Joy of Persona, Substack

+ Greta Rainbow, My Machine and Me, LA Review of Books

+ Barbara T. Smith, I Am Abandoned

+ Hannah Tishkoff, LA Poem

+ Nate Freeman, The Barbarians Are at the Gates, Vanity Fair

+ Marlowe Granados, Women should only sleep with hot men, On The Rag

- - -

WORST WRITING OF THE YEAR

+ Charli XCX, The Death of Cool, Substack

+ Cultured Mag (entire)

+ John McDermott, Inside the ‘Anti-Woke’ Literary Scene Growing in LA, Rolling Stone

+ Alex Paik, Made in L.A.’s Anti-Curation Doesn’t Work, Hyperallergic

+ Emily Watlington, The Pleasures and Perils of Hot Girl Feminism, Art in America

+ Hakim Bishara, The Fabricated Crisis of Art Criticism, Hyperallergic

+ Rahel Aima, The Rise of Vaporwave Curating, Frieze

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BEST EMERGING ARTISTS OF THE YEAR

+ Adrien Brody

+ Kid Cudi

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MOST OVERRATED ART OF THE YEAR

+ Marty Supreme by Josh Safdie

+ Monuments at MOCA

+ Geese

+ Cady Noland at Gagosian

+ One Battle After Another by Paul Thomas Anderson

+ Jon Rafman at Spruth Magers

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December 18, 2025

Diva Corp Mag Issue 4 stocked at Arcana Books

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December 14, 2025

DIVA CORP MAG ISSUE 4 OUT NOW

Buy in store.

Available* at:

Trashy Lingerie
Musso & Frank’s
Crossroads of the World
Winkie’s Diner
Pann’s
Hollywood Liquor
California Surplus Mart
Tiki Adult Theater
Canyon Country Store
Mac’s Club Deuce (Miami)
Sam’s Hofbrau
The Bigg Chill
Beachwood Market
Hollywood Center Motel
Johnie’s Coffee Shop
Chateau Marmont

*Bathrooms, phone booths, backsteps

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December 8, 2025

THE BEST & WORST OF LA IN MIAMI

You guys were right: Miami has been, in no uncertain terms, hell. I’m still here, too. All alone. Tom Hanks getting intimate with a volleyball.

Ok. LA rundown. Here we go.

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1. The Body is The Body at Rice Hotel

Janelle Zara said Deitch’s group show was the ‘coolest’ of the week. She must’ve missed The Body is The Body, a show laden with LA talent. Not that it was cool per se, but it was definitely cool-er than Deitch’s (which had the charm of an unc-filled Shoe Palace), so… Rice Hotel wins. I do feel like the curators played it safe, though. Most of the young artists here are already popular or proven or both – so no real discoveries or surprises – plus, the addition of Paul McCarthy, Jordan Wolfson, Lita Albuquerque, etc. reads like a vanity play. Does Wolfson’s taboo-treading Animation, say, bolster Isabelle Brourman’s docile painting of the ‘most vulnerable’? Only if you understand neither. I’d rather this show without the marquee names just to see who’d anchor it. Alix Vernet & Jaxon Demme, maybe.

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2. Deitch at Basel

I just really liked this Tom Wesselmann/Vanessa Beecroft pairing (next slide). Not intuitive, but it adds up to something about American vacancy, or dreams. The soul out of place. The rest of the booth is whatever, oversized souvenirs. Also: Jeffrey’s selling a Picabia from the Werner show a couple months ago? And an Albuquerque from his Frieze LA presentation last year?

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3. Max Xeno Karnig at CASTLE at NADA

These quiet, gently Currin-ish paintings were a high point in an otherwise stodgy fair. Small scale, on copper. They’re cold, seductive, and a bit puckish, like if Duncan Hannah had a little more Sam McKinniss in him. The best small paintings at NADA, maybe save for the effortless Katelyn Eichwald pieces on burlap at Cob Gallery. (Fyi: Eichwald has a show up rn at Overduin).

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4. Raffi Kalenderian at Gattopardo at NADA & Joseph Geagan at the Rubell Museum

Kalenderian’s Mac’s Club Deuce might’ve been the most photographed at NADA, bait considering the bar’s popularity. And while painters have always chronicled nightlife, that subject seems especially popular now. Across town at the Rubell Museum, Joseph Geagan opened a show depicting lives entwined in cabaret; this summer, too, Justin John Greene basically gave the Frolic Room an art scene facelift at Matthew Brown; and Marcel Alcalá, of course, has been doing this for years. There are many more. So why now? Maybe it’s aspiration. These artists saturate their work in color, pattern, style; it’s romantic, decadent, delusional, twee. Often, they’re painting what nightlife isn’t. A counter to sanity? To the absence of friction?

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5. More Notes

Regen: Niceee Georgia Gardner Gray, noir-ish, especially in tandem with that Marilyn Minter.

Gaga: ‘They’re not in LA anymore,’ whatever, I get it. This is my fav booth. The Maggie Lee & Emily Sundblad corner – fantastic. As are the peculiar little Elizabeth Englander pieces.

Kordansky: Nowhere near as aggressive as the Sam McKinniss booth from Frieze LA 2024. The massive Tristan Unrau, a highlight. Ditto Derek Fordjour. Mary Weatherford needs to break from neon.

Matthew Brown: Drab and restrained, with the exception of some densely saturated Sedrick Chisoms. The Olivia van Kuiken work, too, is nice, but dim compared to the stuff from her fall show.

Ghebaly: Good Dabin Ahn work. I clearly don’t see what Ghebaly sees in those Soumahoro paintings (perhaps just $).

Night Gallery: Predictable, still pushing Mira Dancy.

Perrotin: Nice Holly Lowen spotlight.

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November 23, 2025

On Miami and acceptance

No disrespect, but the Miami fairs are letting evvvvverybody in this year. Why?

It’s the nightclub phenomenon, right? First, it’s cool: artists, weeknights, cheap drinks. Then it’s popular: long lines, tough door, celebs. And then, one day: bankers. Everyone late to the party with money to spend, trying to see what all the fuss is about. Only by the time they get in, all the fuss is gone. Washed.

Insofar as there was ever a fuss to be had recently in Miami, it wasn’t, say, last year (though there kinda was fuss during the NFT boom, as insufferable as that sounds…), so this phenomenon likely isn’t new. However, against the background of the art world’s splintering façade, it’s rather noticeable, and seems to be accelerating.

Regardless, in Miami this year, we’ll get two types of ‘banker,’ of galleries that shouldn’t be there. First, obviously, are the ones that should’ve been gatekept out of all this to begin with. They’ll dilute the experience, sell nothing, and call the weekend a success. They can afford it. There’s no saving these galleries; we wish them the best.

What concerns me more are the galleries who’ve clawed their way to show good art, consistently and locally, despite the tight margins. Now they’re off to the fairs, warnings unheeded (cc: Olivier Babin et al.). They don’t belong because it just doesn’t make sense.

Many self-style as alternative spaces. I fear this puts them on a track headed in the other direction, toward convention. Even if they’re paying nothing in booth fees – highly unlikely – the cost of freight, housing, food, and transport in Miami next week can be crippling for a small outfit. Enough to earmark a future show for saleable work only.

And then another. And then another. And then another.

All these “rogue” spaces… Why not go a little rogue? Done well, you’d get more attention, spend less money… and you’d still be in Miami.

Perhaps this is what they’ve always wanted, though. Remember who’s making the decisions here: millennials. And if there’s one thing we know about millennials, it’s that they love institutional approval. They love adding to the resume. They love dated markers of success.

“Look, mom, I got into the club.”

Yes, but at what cost?

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November 17, 2025

Jerry Gogosian Meltdown – TWO STARS
Jerry Gogosian
Internet / Nov 5, 2025-Present (ongoing)

I honestly love this in a formal sense. Never seen more wine-drunk white women spiraling in a single comment section. (No offense, by the way.) Perfect tension. The content is whatever, though. Straight down the middle stuff, nothing controversial, easy rage bait… Which is a good reminder: Did we forget what a satire account is for? Her posts are a “joke,” until the joke is on you, and then they’re to be taken seriously? For artists and art laborers so keen to note how content manufactures consent, you sure fell into the most basic trap on this one. (She’s revving the engine again today, this time woe is me – the only reason I’m writing.) Also, Jerry: you can’t turn off the comments. They were just starting to get good. Don’t limit the work… Anti-censorship, remember?!

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November 6, 2025

On Vanity Fair & “Mean”

Vanity Fair says we’re “mean”… Mean? Overzealous, sure, but mean?? Maybe I don’t understand the concept.

Was Nelson Mandela mean? Was Batman?… Trotsky? I think you know the answer. (And yet all 3 exiled...)

This is an aspirational project.

You know what is mean? A lack of faith in art, not believing in it. To think that we’re getting what we deserve. To settle, appease, excuse, and grovel.

All for a machine that’s co-opted “art” while supporting none of it.

You’ve taken empathy to its bitter end! Smooth edges, corporate wellbeing, and an art scene hellbent on self-destructing in 3… 2…

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October 27, 2025

Made in LA 2025 – ONE POINT FIVE STARS
David Alekhuogie, Black House Radio/Michael Donte, Greg Breda, Widline Cadet, Carl Cheng, Alonzo Davis, Ali Eyal, Hood Century/Jerald Cooper, Hanna Hur, John Knight, Kristy Luck, Patrick Martinez, Beaux Mendes, Na Mira, New Theater Hollywood/Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel, Pat O’Neill, Will Rawls, Brian Rochefort, Amanda Ross-Ho, Gabriela Ruiz, Alake Shilling, Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, Mike Stoltz, Peter Tomka, Freddy Villalobos, Kelly Wall, Leilah Weinraub, Bruce Yonemoto
Hammer Museum / Oct 5, 2025 – Mar 1, 2026

A note from the curators:

Los Angeles. Ah, yes. Where to begin? It’s a city, of course, with people in it. And all those people are different people, with ideas diverse and dissonant and unspecific. Truly, this is what LA is all about: many things, to many people. Not any one thing. Or even anything. In other words: nothing. So, as you walk these hallowed halls, and you note, say, the load of ceramics occupying the entire east wing, just know that their inclusion, along with the rest, makes as little sense to us as it does to you. But remember: that’s the point. Duh. Deleuze and Guattari, people: The form is the content. “Making sense” is just a relic of modernism, after all, a false singularity. There’s no such thing. Our lives are but a small speck in the turgid churn of the universe.

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Staged – THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Matthew McGaughey
Reisig and Taylor / Sept 20-Nov 1, 2025

A complete show, and a dynamic one. Kurt Cobain as a springboard for the bind of expectation. Strong sound design (all foley, it seems), specifically in isolating and foregrounding the piece’s “vocal” tracks to create dissonance that begs to be resolved, but never is. It’s an abstraction (or a removal, a drawing out) that prompts us to pick through the video’s transmuted residue (another removal) that stretches the length and height of the space. Insofar as art ought to make us reconsider what we just saw, this is successful. The work does owe a bit too much to Matthew Barney, though. The physicality, the overtly slow pacing, the corporeal sound design, the mythic recreation, the material translations… I’m reminded of the Gary Gilmore bit in Cremaster 2 (the claustrophobia, the metamorphosis), Secondary’s pace and contact, Drawing Restraint, too.

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Stitious – THREE STARS
Michael Bala, Nancy Lupo, Grant Mooney, Gozié Ojini, Hirsch Perlman, Jennifer West
Michael Benevento / Sept 6-Oct 25, 2025

Too many pieces interrupting each other, an ensemble full of leads. So the show’s a bit unwieldy, without a center to hold. The work is great, though. The Hirsch Perlman print, Nancy Lupo’s installation, two favorites. The most memorable work is Gozié Ojini’s flipped and altered grand piano. It waits for you around a blind corner. Tucked away on the opposite wall. It breathes there, patient. (Seductive and almost grotesque… Possession…) You move closer. You notice what look like found family photos, a couple of them, something archival. They trail around to the back, so you follow… It’s all Dada-ish, yes – the ‘mastery’ of a piano reconsidered, tempered – but it’s alive, too, and the unexpected shock of sound proves it. Nicely set across the room from Michael Bala’s Exit #4 (Where?), an equally magnetic, but quieter piece that doesn’t compete for attention, and attracts it as a result.

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October 16, 2025

Redistribution - FOUR STARS (NYC)
Seth Price
15 Orient / June 21-Aug 2, 2025

LINK TO FULL REVIEW in Flash Art

EXCERPT:

In literal terms, this version of Redistribution – installed for the first time as an exhibition in the United States – forces us to consider the video last. It’s a gesture that calls attention to the primacy of context, to the currents of place and time that inform art’s mechanisms of production and reception. More figuratively, the journey of finding Redistribution is a very roundabout way of arriving at an artwork that itself takes a very roundabout (read: endless) course to become one. Based on footage taken from the artist’s lecture at the Guggenheim Museum in 2007, and continually updated in the years since, Redistribution works in a collage-type essay film format to contextualize Price’s practice through an impossible range of art and culture — from the Lascaux caves to Bruegel’s 1560 painting Die Kinderspiele to copyright law to wine connoisseurship (and much, much more). Price’s voiceover drives the whole thing and, though the pacing is unhurried — at times even drawn-out — the film still moves too quickly for most of its abstruse points to ever settle in.

Yet Price invariably returns to ideas about plasticity, as he has in previous versions of the video, about an object’s ability to redefine itself as it’s recontextualized, even while remaining “the same.” Although he gets most explicit in these terms when talking about the internet or software — “essentially in flux, always pointing to the next version and the last version, but somehow understood to be the same over time” — it’s clear he could just as easily be referring to his own art practice generally, the Redistribution project specifically, or even himself.

What’s new about this version of Redistribution, however, is Price’s willingness to be himself on camera, or at least present convincingly as such. In previous iterations, Price appeared mainly off-screen, as a cold, didactic narrator, often using a woman’s stern, measured voice as a surrogate for his own. His voice – whether by proxy or not – was unreliable and subtly manipulative (an echo of his 2015 autofictional novel Fuck Seth Price), grating in its ambiguity, and certainly one that lived up to John Kelsey’s quip of Price being “one of the original trolls of contemporary art.” When he did appear on screen, the moments were swift, staged, and impersonal – snippets from his Guggenheim lecture, documentation of an artist portrait photoshoot.

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September 30, 2025

And all at once: Summer.
in Artillery Mag

If you’re reading this, it’s too late. Summer came and went. Pool parties in the Valley? Over. Midnight drives on Mulholland? Gone. We don’t care that you went to Sicily, that your credit score’s crippled because of it, or that you haven’t k-holed at Marcelino’s since you’ve been back. None of that matters anymore. It’s September now. Reality’s calling – time to pick up.

I, however, can’t (pick up, that is), because I’m not in September yet. I’m coming to you LIVE! from the past. Late July 2025. Right now, our city’s in the throes of its group shows, the same ones that’ve been declared alive, dead, and revived again, year after year after year.

The critic Dave Hickey was known to hate them. He likened group shows to big dinners where you “only [get] the hors d’oeuvres table,” noted that they’re really just fluff for the ego of “some preening curator,” and vowed to ban them altogether if he were ever made president.

Well, Dave Hickey isn’t president; Dave Hickey’s dead. And, though I agree with him on all accounts (and certainly wish him the best down there), the group show lives on, as unstoppable as the blazing sun, even if current market conditions caused some dealers to sit this season out.

Here are the five shows that’ve made the most noise so far this summer. Warning: it hasn’t all been good noise. Much like in showbiz, though, even the worst noise is better than no noise, because no noise is what you hear on the island of irrelevancy. And no one, no matter what they say, likes it there.

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Burn Me! - THREE STARS
John Joyce, Nastya Klychkova, Lee Lozano, Robert Mallary, Damon McCarthy, Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, Jasmine Rudolph, Molly Tierney, Sean Townley, Johanna Went
The Box / May 17-July 5, 2025

Curating from a place of tremendous loss, but also warranted anger, Mara McCarthy (owner of The Box), her father Paul McCarthy, and Molly Tierney pull together works that survived January’s fires (which took the curators’ Altadena homes and studios) alongside some more explicitly political pieces. The result is heavy, not just thematically, but objectively (there are substantial sculptures by Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, and Sean Townley), yet the show maintains a sense of levity, all things considered. For example, despite being one of the McCarthy family’s few surviving pieces from the Eaton Fire, Snail, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother…(2002–4), a collaborative giant snail work by McCarthy and Rhoades, maintains its lick of absurdity and becomes emblematic of resilience with its flame singed shell. Authoritarianism is a target throughout, making Burn Me! doubly current, as the president ordered ICE to significantly escalate operations in LA during the second month of the show, and subsequently called the National Guard and Marines into the city to assist them. A small drawing by Lee Lozano, I got fucked in the ass by ConEdison (1962), too, makes a blunt proclamation on the ties between avarice and disaster, depicting an eyeless face with phallic, flame-spitting tower that protrudes from its center, and an overzealous, crooked-tooth smile that reaches for its hairline. A cathartic show, in all, and a document of time.

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The Immediate Distance - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Giovanni Anselmo, Jan Dibbets, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Kate Mosher Hall, Jasper Marsalis, Gregor Schneider, Nicole-Antonia Spagnola
Curated by Tyler Murphy
Okey Dokey Konrad Fischer / July 11-September 13, 2025

The Immediate Distance is a quick-witted show, and one that continually nudges us to reorient. That tone is set early, upon entry, by Nicole-Antonia Spagnola’s video work Old Baby / Commercial Street (2025), which repurposes two plastic half-dome drink lids into hologram projection containers using old cell phones as their media source and a found pedestal as support for the whole thing. It’s one of my favorite artworks of the year, its projections flickering faintly enough to give me pause, to prompt me to “find” the images from just the right angle. That piece dovetails nicely with Giovanni Anselmo’s Particolare (1972-2015) on the opposite side of the room, a work completed only once the viewer steps into its projector’s light beam, thus being able to read the word particolare (“detail” in Italian) on their body. Together, the two pieces cue us to subtly reframe our focus, to notice cause and effect through shifts in orientation. Jasper Marsalis’s Dada-ish works Tommo and Steven (both 2023), are also worth a mention here: they sit crudely on the floor, bowling balls skewered with sticks of wood that reach outward, roguish “projections” that double as physical impediments. Not every piece dances successfully on the twin axes of projection and reorientation, though, namely Jan Dibbets’s New Colorstudy 1976/2012 SB2 dark blue (2012), a tightly-cropped photo of a car hood that lacks the play found elsewhere in the show, and might better serve a corporate lobby.

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Second Body - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Carlos Agredano, Lucy Bull, Ali Eyal, Sayre Gomez, Daiga Grantina, Guan Xiao, Shara Hughes, Kahlil Robert Irving, Yifan Jiang, Josh Kline, Moka Lee, Xin Liu, Jake Longstreth, Jeffrey Meris, Ohad Meromi, Shahryar Nashat, Berenice Olmedo, Karol Palczak, Magali Reus, Rachel Rossin, Rose Salane, Tavares Strachan, Ashley Teamer, Chiffon Thomas, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Tristan Unrau, Kaari Upson, Robin F. Williams, Anicka Yi
Curated by Molly Everett
David Kordansky / July 15-August 16, 2025

Second Body is a messy show of almost thirty artists that aims to investigate “the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth.” With such an unimaginably Sisyphean concept, the exhibition is bound to futility from the start, and lands in limbo somewhere between biennial tryouts and gallery overstock. Often, this costs the work dearly. On one wall, for example, Carlos Agredano’s Collector (2024) – an incisive commentary on LA’s air quality in communities of color meshed with institutional critique – hangs directly adjacent to Tristan Unrau’s Interval (2025) – a loosely rendered oil painting of tennis players on a clay court; nearby, Chiffon Thomas’s Untitled (2023) – a cold sculpture that slips between tree trunk, torso armor, and body cast, alluding to gender and hybridity – sits beside Lucy Bull’s 21:24 (2025) – an open-ended, agreeable abstraction in the style that’s fetched her paintings millions at auction. In other words, the gallery chooses to position works critical of industry and normativity alongside paintings that work best when those critiques disappear. This, frankly, doesn’t make sense as a curatorial strategy… unless the gallery is intent on devaluing all the work, altogether, in which case: bravo. Excessively comprehensive, and overcrowded to boot, Second Body fails to make sense of itself.

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Gravity Bong - THREE STARS
Isabelle Adams, Negashi Armada, Tanya Brodsky, Cameron Cameron, Billy Frolov, Jacob Lenc, Madeleine Leplae, Alex Prestrud, Jarret Rubin, Mia Stearn, Jake Tobin
Quarters (hosted by The Hermitage) / July 18-25, 2025

Gravity Bong is a less-than-pristine, necessarily lo-fi eleven-artist show in a Burbank apartment’s laundry room (it’s small, two Maytags and a closet deep). The curation here is clever and swift, as if the last object were placed a few minutes ago, and then – Oh! No no!... What about… this? – repositioned at the last moment to make the rhythms just right, just as you walk in. There are also nice threads of misdirection and concealment that weave through the work. Tanya Brodsky’s Air Vent (2023), a bronze replica of a small air vent cover, hides in plain sight, mounted above a breaker box and below some errant piping. It waits – untroubled – to be recognized for what it is (an object) and not overlooked for what it isn’t (an air vent). Across the room, Madeleine Leplae’s Stone (2025) is evasive materially: the sculpture, which sits directly on top of the washing machine and under decent light (so it’s not literally “hiding”), isn’t a readymade stone as it appears, but one made of paper mâché. Above it hangs Isabelle Adams’s Mary L. (2025), a disarmingly simple, yet still vivid portrait whose subject wears racoon makeup. And in the corner, all the way in the back, along the floor? If you spot it, Mouse Hole (2025) by Jacob Lenc, a small painting, mainly black, on a mousehole-shaped canvas. Taken together, the show becomes a puzzle with a payoff, a game that rewards a closer look.

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Small Object Show - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Cameron Galley, Lily Pressman, Marley White, Alex Reed, Rowan O’Bryan, Asher Gillman, Zou Chen, Laura Rule, Spenser Atlas, Snyder Depass, Mikey Robins, Nick Riano, Joseph Dieppa, Al Dawson, Alex Emmons, Catherine Wang, Elias Hernandez, Kento Saisho, Abraham Delgado, Jack Alving, Devin Feldman, Emma Sher, Cooper Janusevskis, Casa Ysasi, Zoe Alameda, Ethan Konishi, Grady Borte, Chris Johst, Eli Bucksbaum, Antiem Tran, Sıla Ersayin, Lauren Elder, William Patchen, Lucy Black
AUTOBODY autobody / June 28-July 3, 2025

Small Object Show accomplishes very little, by design. It doesn’t reach for a cohesive theme or discursive link, instead choosing to be exactly as advertised: a show of small objects, mostly installed on shelves that cross through the center of the space. There are so many small objects, in fact – in such great variation, each installed in such tight proximity to the next – that it’s hard for any one to stand out. Asher Gillman’s Old New Snake (2025) does catch my eye – it’s a sharply finished aluminum alarm clock with a rattlesnake bell and hints of medieval inspiration. Zoe Alameda’s Ever Holding the Thought of You (2023-2025), a Big Mac container embedded in silicone and cement, is noticeable, too, because… well… it’s a Big Mac container embedded in silicone and cement. Things, otherwise, blend together, which isn’t to say that Gillman and Alameda’s objects are Best in Show, but simply that my attention span is no match for the small object doomscroll (affectionate) provided here by AUTOBODY autobody. And that’s okay, because, on the night of the opening, the show was memorable for something else: the crowd. Hordes of artists gathered in the backyard and stayed for hours, fueled by a live band in the driveway and frequent runs to the liquor store across La Brea. Drinks, cigarettes, ideas – whatever – jumped from group to group, with noticeably less pretense than your average opening. Dare I call it a clique-buster? Maybe this was intentional, maybe not… Still an accomplishment, right? I mean, isn’t that sort of the point of all this?... Isn’t that summer?

Yes, I think that’s summer.

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September 11, 2025

FALL PREVIEW + STORYLINES

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the deep end. Scary, right? But listen: Where else would you rather be? Sure, we lost some in the chop (In Memoriam last slide), but things were getting a biiiiit too chummy around here, anyway. We were due for a rapture. Galleries that couldn’t cut it? Sayonara. Art we never wanted? Byeeee. And finally (and I mean finally) the frontrunning Angelenos moved back to New York. That’s all over now. Our summer of sadness c’est fini. A vacuum waits to be filled. Time for some ingenuity, some urgency, and way less professionalism.

Today is 9/11. Tomorrow is 9/12. The pyramids shall rise… or continue falling. Therein lies the drama.

Here’s what I’m tracking this season.

1. Alt Projects

Done right, alt projects can be fast and anti-precious, and throw a wrench in the gears that got us here. Jane Fishman’s putting together Post Show (9/13) with the Princess Castle artists – in a matter of hours this Saturday, they’ll go to the Deitch show, make work that responds to it, and then install it in a house set for demo. Free Parking & ArtRev100 have Museum Gift Shop (9/13)… could be a disaster, plus Jerry Saltz is involved (tomato soup protests?). Other Places art fair (9/27) is back – dozens of installations, performances, etc outside at Angels Gate overlooking the Pacific. LETRA (10/3) – from Isabelle Adams, Justin Ortiz, + Jake Fagundo – has extraterrestrial inquiries in a dome in the desert. And Sammy Loren has Made in helLA (10/4), a 24-hour happening ft. the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, a foil to The Hammer.

2. New Theater Hollywood

New Theater Hollywood had been around for less than a year when they were offered a spot in this year’s “Made in LA”. They’ll collab with Leilah Weinraub there, who was in residence at the theater just a month after it opened. How serendipitous that things came together so fast! some say. Others whisper about a masterplan and the theater’s ties with Herr Obrist. This needs to be settled at once: Armie Hammer and Essence Harden, unseal the studio visit logs forthwith! Truly, though, I’m excited for NTH. Apart from the Hammer, they’ve got Jasmine Johnson on the slate (party scene darling; tbd on her films) and a play written by Ian Svenonius starring John Tottenham (together responsible for the daddy complex in LA’s so-called anti-woke alt-lit reading scene). Both will likely sell out, which raises the stakes.

3. Monuments

Yes, the one with the decommissioned Confederate statues (10/23). It’s co-produced by The Brick and MOCA, and Hamza Walker has been working on it since 2017. Culture has shifted a lot since then, though – even in the last year – so I wonder what the appetite/enthusiasm will be for a concept that may have been more salient in 2021. That and the budget: The Brick alone received huge grants for this ($2 million from the Mellon Foundation, $1 million from MacArthur, $500k from Ford), and essentially quintupled their annual revenues after announcing the project in 2021 (from a year-to-year average of $1MM to $5MM in 2022). Though contemporary artists are involved, the irony of spending millions to give space to dead Confederate generals is not lost on me, especially when most of us would be over the moon for a couple Parliaments and a McChicken.

4. Revivals

Both Morán Morán and Ghebaly have been in a slump. For the most part, their solo shows this past year were overrehearsed, too clean, on autopilot. Maybe, juuuuust maybe, that’ll change next week. Morán’s showing Claire Chambless (9/20), whose work can be ornery and incisive, yet still dip into calmer, more surreal arenas. And Ghebaly’s exhibiting Salim Green (9/20), who has those very tidy Ryman-ish abstractions, yes, but also a more unruly conceptual/sculptural practice (seen with Ghebaly at Frieze 2025). The more fractious sides to each artist ought to be amplified, rather than tamed, for these shows to pop. Fwiw, Chambless and Green showed together with Carlye Packer at Felix 2024.

5. First Time / Long Time

- Josh Smith has never had a solo in LA (Zwirner, 9/13)
- For the first time ever, Deitch hosts a super-massive group show (9/13)
- Sebastian Gladstone inaugurates his new space & candy pink exterior (9/13)
- Cameron Jamie is a ghost (A Shirt Made of Asters, Fernberger, 9/20)
- Matthew McGaughey first solo at Reisig and Taylor (9/20)
- Hannah Hoffman & Bridget Donahue merge, open in Beverly Hills with Adam Alessi (9/30)
- Lee Lozano incoming (Hauser, 10/30)

6. In Memoriam & Other Suspicious Activity

In Memoriam: Gaga Reena, Clearing, Blum, Poe, Tanya Bonakdar, Sargent’s Daughters, SHRINE, Harkawik, Carlye Packer, Steve Turner, Bridge Projects

Suspiciously Quiet: Matthew Brown, Stars on Hollywood, Honor Fraser, Diane Rosenstein

Generally Suspicious: VSF lady’s campaign activity

Movement (Upgrades?): Hannah Hoffman to Hoffman Donahue, Sebastian Gladstone, Ochi, Chris Sharp*, VSF, Sarah Brook

*I can’t see anything at the new Chris Sharp space, hazy af inside, like the Angel Gabriel

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August 19, 2025

Maxfield Parrish / The Grove – FOUR STARS
Rick Caruso
The Grove’s AMC Theater / 2002-Present

RICK CARUSO, you’ve done it again: fervent, cunning curation, hidden in plain sight. I guess that’s why they call you Tricky Dick. No, this isn’t about the Picassos stashed near the valet bathrooms, but I agree: good point. And I don’t mean the Karen Bass Piece, either, though I do like how it co-opts the moral high ground to beguile us all. No, no, I’m talking about that Maxfield Parrish painting, the masterpiece as big as a whale, hung high in the AMC lobby. In a city full of ignored paintings, you’ve somehow managed to make this one the most ignored... Remarkable considering the foot traffic below. How many people pass it per year without a glance? Millions, no doubt. A clever commentary on industry and the death of painting, sure, but it’s something more, too. I think it’s about you, Rick... about the descent of man. All this gilded brilliance, and for what? To be forgotten? Regret, fear, sorrow. This is Rick’s Johnny Cash ‘Hurt’.

- - -

The Worst Rave in the World – THREE POINT FIVE OR FOUR STARS
Matt Barton and Extreme Animals (Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman)
And/Or / June 21-Sept 6, 2025

It can’t all be Eleven!! Red Alert! Now Now Now!!... and yet somehow everything is. An inherited trait, right? From anyone who needs you to BUY BUY BUY. And it’s trickled on down to ~*art*~ – “an arena of nuance,” they say – and now we act like our ceramics actually do skewer the surveillance state, which really does foretell doom, which definitely is impending… and I mean it this time!! Basically, no one can just chill, so ;;;;; OKAY DEEEEEEEEP BREATH ;;;;;;; DRIVE TO PASADENA ;;;;; WOW HOW BUCOLIC ;;; This show, The Worst Rave in the World is sublime, truly. Lethargic, lo-fi animatronics looking like they woke up in a South Beach lost-and-found. A four-channel video with skitzed out, heavy sound. All in delirious, disjointed sync. Seductive precisely because of how pathetic it is. In other words: relatable. (The attempt to work.) In other words: contemporary. (The echo of long-gone hype.) In other words: urgent.

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Now You Don’t! – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Hye-Shin Chun, Rory Hamovit, Jacob Lenc, Kai Sugiyama
Five Churches / Aug 1–Sept 7, 2025

Rory Hamovit’s Burglar photos here are great. They’re self-portraits of (yes) a burglar in a house at night – in one, he’s on the stairs; in another, on a couch in the living room; in a third, on a bed. Read narratively, the photos stoke threads of mischief. Is this a homeowner playing dress-up? A burglar documenting his crime? An act of kleptophilia? Who knows, but the hook works, and it allows the photos to function conceptually, too. Specifically, they play with perspective, muddying the roles of perp/victim, actor/audience, subject/object. The burglar looks at us and we at him. As viewers, then, we inhabit the camera’s POV. We’re the photographer. We capture the burglar in an intimate moment on his bed; we surprise him as he’s coming down the stairs; we interrupt him on the couch. In essence, we’re the intruder, the roles are reversed. Neither of us own the place, though… so who’s the danger?

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August 4, 2025

Guggenheim - TWO STARS
Eliza Douglas
Overduin & Co. / June 28-Aug 2, 2025

LINK TO FULL REVIEW in Texte zur Kunst

-
Excerpt 1:

Ultimately, “Guggenheim” is a one-liner told to a crowd of insiders backed by a laugh track. Yes, it takes a jab at the art world, but it does so while implicating itself and, more importantly, without undermining the apparatus.

She’s a prepackaged commodity selling prepackaged commodities... Get it?

-
Excerpt 2:

If these ideas – about authorship, commodity, and context – seem unrevelatory, that’s because they are. The territory mined here has been well covered by many artists, perhaps most incisively by Merlin Carpenter, who’s been at it since the ’90s.

Further, pointing out the bleak reality of art’s commercial drive in 2025 – as the bubble bursts on a market inflated by institutional heft – doesn’t seem prophetic or insightful so much as it seems flagrantly and undeniably true.

-
Excerpt 3:

Mid-summer competition is cutthroat in Los Angeles, especially on a Saturday. Given the choice, many locals would rather take a sunset stroll along the Walk of Fame, hunt down Justin Bieber on a Starline celeb safari, or even sip a few cocktails before sending a flaming Waymo toward the nearest police precinct.

In other words, Angelenos have plenty better to do than attend an art show, and, if Douglas’s work is any indication, it seems like the artist may agree.

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July 28, 2025

FOR MY JADED ANGELS
DIVA CORP IN ARTILLERY

ARTICLE LINK

WHY IS ART IGNORANT OF THE PRESENT?

MENTIONS:

DELUSION
TAIX
JACKSON POLLOCK
THE TROJAN HORSE
MICKEY MOUSE
GREENBERG, LAWSON, & HAINLEY
DASHA, VACK, & KOTLYARENKO
CLUB SEPT IN THE ‘70S
MARTIN SCORSESE
PIERRE BONNARD
CYBERNETIC NIGHTMARES
MARY WEATHERFORD
ZELDA
LAOCOÖN
ERIN CALLA WATSON
& MORE

- - - - -

July 20, 2025

DIVA CORP MAG OUT NOW
AT HOLLYWOOD FOREVER

Available* at the headstones of:

VAMPIRA
JAYNE MANSFIELD
RENÉE ADORÉE
TOTO
FAY WRAY
HANNAH CHAPLIN
FLORENCE LAWRENCE
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Bars next, requests welcome

*As of ~10AM this morning

- - - - -

July 9, 2025

DIVA CORP UPDATES JULY 2025

1. In On The Rag, our poem. Read at Night Gallery (a known opp, no idea why, put your swords down), and at Confessions NY. It’s ab Alex Bienstock, the late artist. Sammy Loren, five stars

2. Hollywood Reporter endorsement

3. In The Big One, our essay on neon demons, nitrous, Kafka, and Žižek. Paired w/ Catherine Mulligan paintings.

4. Frieze calls us by our surname “Corp”. Very proper and British. Criticism of our criticism.

5. Artnet podcast. Sean Monahan & Kate Brown throw around “boogeyman” as a descriptor, a slur

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July 2, 2025

Untitled (Questions) – ONE STAR
Barbara Kruger
MOCA Geffen / 1990/2018-Ongoing

After the recent ICE protests, everyone called Kruger’s mural prescient. Really? I get it, we want art to mean something, but what of its inconsequence? The National Guard already had a photo-op with the same mural in 1992. That’s over three decades of Kruger’s nine “now-prophetic” questions with little progress to speak of. “Therein lies the magic,” says Alex Greenberger in ARTnews, adding that the work is “timeless because abuses of power will always take place.” Hmm… That’s magic? Will it still be ‘magic’ if the situation repeats in 2055?… 2085? Affirming the inevitable might make a work literally timeless, but, really, doesn’t that just mean it’s irrelevant? I guess I’m questioning art’s rush to locate value where it’s all but run out. Ostensibly, Kruger’s message has never been more disregarded than it is today… and this is a point of pride?

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Interludes – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Ohan Breiding, Tanya Brodsky, James Castle, AJ Collins, Langley Fox, Kelly Wall
OCHI / May 31 - June 28, 2025

If there’s an anchor to this show it’s Brodsky’s Escutcheon, which plays well with the text’s ideas about the uncanny and Bachelard’s Poetics. It’s also a bit riddle-ish. Every door teases What’s inside?, but this one – a partial cast… the knob and lock apparatus, mainly – denies us the conventional inside (we can see right around it), while exposing the actual insides (the latch, spindle, etc). So it creates a little wrinkle, and it’d be nice if the show complicated that further. It does not. Every work sings a different tune. Langley Fox’s paintings dot the walls and pull the show toward narrative genre. AJ Collins’ work wants to make a more conceptual point (something about industry?), but it’s handcuffed in context. The list goes on; things get stuck in no man’s land.

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Big Picture – ZERO POINT FIVE STARS
Josh Sperling
Perrotin / May 31 – July 3, 2025

THE YEAR IS 2013. You’re a summer intern at Facebook. Lunch today is salad and globalization is good, and you hope – yes… Hope, as Shep Fairey would say – that you’ll see Sheryl Sandberg in the cafeteria. She’s there every Tuesday at noon, you’ve been told, so you wait. And as you do, you consider the free fast casual and the ping pong and all the other “maximum happiness” perks. What’s behind it all? Suspicion takes root. More interns sit down. They, like you, wear identical blue Facebook tees, and that reminds you of last summer at JP Morgan, which reminds you of the military. And just as you begin to connect the dots – potentially saving you from a career of data weaponization (and many doomed polycules) – you’re distracted by a nearby painting. Colorful squiggles. Fun little loops. “A Josh Sperling,” they mentioned in orientation. Art, you think, how nice.

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June 9, 2025

Why Are You Sitting In The Dark – FOUR STARS
Jason Fox
David Kordansky / May 16 – June 28, 2025

Apichatpong’s Uncle Boonmee as accessed through something like Cheech & Chong, and all of it digested by the Luttrell Psalter. The stuff here is direct, often quick, yet it flowers with time, too. This is how good jokes work – on delay, an initial rush of laughter that snowballs into something more. And while these paintings aren’t jokes per se, they are funny, and they use that sting to disarm the viewer, to divert attention from sincerity as it rushes in the backdoor. The dripping paint, the pop culture, the naïve figuration, the lurid colors… all of it opens space for Fox’s transmogrifications to take hold. In After Midnight, for example, Homer Simpson is lean, pallid, stuck in a thousand-yard stare (shellshocked like us all), as he melds with a wolf and its shadow. A note on our chimeric present, no doubt, and a question of escape (the window, the door). More hopeful, I think, than Kippenberger, a clear reference.

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Background Static – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Justin Guthrie
Niko / May 9-30, 2025

There’s never nothing, even on a ‘dead’ channel: background static’s always there. Immediately, then, this exhibit – a chorus of static – pulls me to consider the afterlife or, maybe, the base layer of life that we come from and return to. Life as an activation of something already alive and distinct (after all, static responds to the interference around it), as opposed to the on/off binary. Proof of a ghost in the machine. The show has a durational effect, too: what begins as uniform noise shakes free and eventually becomes discrete, much as it does in good monochrome paintings or landscape films (thinking of Larry Gottheim’s Fog Line… fixed shot, extended take)… And then there are the physical objects to contend with – the painted earth-toned panels, the nostalgic car radios. I don’t really have an answer for them. Why not just the radios? Why not no objects, at all, and just sound?

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Lethe’s Tavern – ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Nicolette Mishkan
Megan Mulrooney / May 10-June 28, 2025

These paintings feel like fashion ads from Tom Ford’s YSL era. They’re also reminiscent of AI, or at least the digitally enhanced – perfectly symmetrical faces, orange/teal color profile, “cinematic” compositions, flat finish. In short, they’re designed, even familiar, rather than mystical or surreal as the text argues. (There’s even a reference to Dorothea Tanning in there… Tanning!... Who bats around in the uncanny! The only thing uncanny here is the fact that I’ve seen three or four eerily similar shows at Mulrooney since it opened… dark, enchanted, medieval, photorealistic… I wouldn’t be writing this otherwise…) Sure, Mishkan shows off some solid technical work, specifically her treatment of water and mist, and I commend the earnestness of the paintings despite their well-worn aesthetics, however these are far cries from affective artistic turns.

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May 19, 2025

Noir - THREE STARS
Alex Israel
Gagosian / Feb 6-Mar 22, 2025

LINK TO FULL REVIEW in Artillery.

Excerpt 1:

To prepare for his current show “Noir” at Gagosian, Alex Israel claims to have walked about fifteen thousand steps per day around Los Angeles. This is highly unusual and, honestly, suspect. As the saying goes, no one walks in LA. Yet Israel insists on it and says that all this walking clued him into the more subtle, textured aspects of the city —things “[he] wouldn’t ever clock from the car window”—which ultimately informed his paintings.

In an attempt to better understand Israel and his work, I, too, began taking seven-mile walks around the city, daily: Van Nuys to Canoga Park, Glendale to Alhambra. El Prado to Sunset Tower. And so on and so on. I did my best to see the city as I imagined Israel would. I got into character—Alex Israel, wunderkind artist—and adopted that carefree, near-smug affect I’d seen in all of his portraits online. I did things that I thought he would do: I wore Ray Bans, smiled at nothing in particular, and listened to songs from mid-2000s iPod commercials. Slowly but surely, I started to feel cool and unhurried, the star of my own private sequel to Nic Refn’s neo-noir Drive: Walk.

Such a confident approach gave me clarity, and I realized that Israel was right. After seven miles of walking per day, you do start to notice the city’s hidden textures. Most obviously: for all their disuse (or perhaps because of it), the sidewalks are remarkably perilous, so full of fissures and crags that even a brief daydream comes at the cost of an ankle.

Excerpt 2:

The paintings don’t go much further than this, and I’m not sure they have to. I could, however, stretch the show a bit further and note the fact that, at their most fundamental, these paintings are glorified depictions of LA real estate, which happens to be the source of Israel’s family fortune (his father is the developer Eddie Israel). So, while there is a base note of reverence throughout, maybe there’s also a tinge of guilt by association, of complicity. After all, these landmarks and their iconic features, not to mention the subcultures associated with them, will inevitably get lost in the very wave of real estate development that allowed Israel the opportunity to paint them in the first place. In other words, without this city, these paintings wouldn’t exist, but without these paintings, perhaps the city would.

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May 12, 2025

Wet Reckless - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Issy Wood
Michael Werner / Feb 15-May 17, 2025

LINK TO FULL REVIEW in Texte zur Kunst.

Excerpt:

... taken with time, what becomes increasingly loud is not the connotation of Wood’s subjects (with repetition, they drift from sensational to mundane) or their representative style (it recedes into an innocuous strand of realism), but, rather, the tyranny of her crop. Again and again in these paintings, Wood’s choice to limit our understanding – to withhold context from her compositions – is the device she leans on to command our attention...

The question Wood’s crop makes us ask is one of ownership. Whose gun is it? Whose car? Whose jacket? Like blinders on a horse, her tight frame directs our gaze and limits its freedom to wander. It also spurs a sense of creeping anxiety and claustrophobia (the approach, after all, is notorious in horror films), thus acting as a mechanism of control over the viewer. It’s a strategy that closes the work to misinterpretation, yes, but also to discovery, and to agency. Hence: tyranny...

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May 1, 2025

EMERGENCY HARD POST - On George Rouy

Dear British people and Hauser bots in our dm’s: We went to the Rouy show three times. I promise you, this is not the ‘next Freud’.
With all due respect.
Best wishes.

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April 30, 2025

P$ychiatry: An Industry of D**th – THREE POINT FIVE STARS
The Church of Scientology
CCHR / Dec 17, 2005-present

We’ve arrived. Scientology. And look: they have a point. Most of you are lost. Untethered. Reeling. Why am I back at Prado?.. Why do I still live in Highland Park?.. Why wasn’t *I* invited to painter’s pool? You need a shock of truth to wake up, and this show has it. (In droves, especially re: WWII…) Sure, things feel a bit overhung, the rooms tight, the air stiff… Yes, the labyrinthine design and motion-triggered effects induce low-grade panic in the weak… And so what if cameras follow your every move?? It’s all part of the pathos, a clever turn of curation to stir fear in the body before the mind. (Auratic, Szeemann might say, a poem in space.) Plus, this show is “only facts,” as the nice attendant with sharp teeth mentioned without blinking, and facts are rare in art these days.

- - -

The Bleed, Part II – ONE STAR
George Rouy
Hauser & Wirth / Feb 18-June 1, 2025

George. Georgeeeee. How could you overexpose yourself? The incessant ads online, all the interviews and promoted content… Why erode your mystique? “That’s on Hauser… Not my call,” you’ll say… but it is your call! In fact, it’s your art. Your persona, to this point, has made your career. It’s why you’re Hauser’s darling, age 30. Yet, recently, your gimmick’s slipped into Johnny Rotten at Soho Shoreditch. And that dictates our view, no doubt: Lad art optimized for a VP at Barclays. As a result, the work shallows out into cliché darkness, some tepid sensuality, and a disimpassioned wave toward Cecily Brown (or Bacon, or Richter, whoever). No texture, no weight. Flat-flat-flat with an approach to underpainting that deadens the work twice over.

- - -

PLAY – TWO POINT FIVE STAR
Adam Alessi, John Baldessari, Claire Chambless, Elizabeth Jaeger, Nevine Mahmoud, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nihura Montiel, Raúl de Nieves, Lauren Quin, William Schaeuble, Alake Shilling
Morán Morán / April 26-July 5, 2025

Yes, yes, yes, I get it. The text here hinges on Winnicott’s Playing & Reality, which was written over half a century ago – this, I think, is an issue. The issue, actually. Why not something more recent, like Nguyen’s Games: Agency as Art (2020), which very precisely supports the tack taken in the text? Research has come a long way, you know, as has art. However, the art here, too, is wedged into an era that isn’t ours. So what exactly, then, are we adding to the idea of “play”? How, in an exhibit like this – again, PLAY (‘dynamic form of engagement’ you say) – have we not found one link to gaming, to the open world, to the virtual?... To something reflective of 2025? Surely it would benefit, say, Quin’s abstractions or Chambless’ dollhouses, no? To acknowledge their possible contemporaneity? I guess my offense is with the position, not the art – the art is good. And, gosh, I just love Elizabeth Jaeger’s Screaming ceramics, and those hanging teacups…

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April 9, 2025

Proof of Concept – ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Jon Rafman
Sprüth Magers / Feb 15-May 3, 2025

Somewhere deep, deep down in a k-hole, Yung Lean and Sam Bankman-Fried are holding hands, thinking of stuff like this. Which is to say, while Rafman’s show is symptomatic of “internet culture,” and duly hypnotic, it doesn’t transcend the guise of innovation. Now, do I like the smoking angel-deer? Of course. But the show never answers Why. Why, apart from “AI,” should we care? What’s in it for us to invest in these people, that sequencing, those anecdotes? When pressed, the gallery throws around ideas about worldbuilding and character. They cite Cloudy Heart, the AI popstar who “has real fans online,” implying that Rafman’s world bleeds into “the real” in prescient ways. Perhaps somewhere, but not here. These characters are silos in a vacuum – artifacts of the means of production – who lack a world built for the moments needed to bring them to life.

- - -

ICANDY – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Angelyne
Melrose Botanical Garden / Jan 4-Feb 1, 2025

Angelyne wears a veil now, over her nose and mouth. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but she’s Angelyne. Her likeness is her instrument, and, historically, she’s appeared with face. So I can’t help but wonder: What changed? I imagine something cosmetic, a product of age. I’m curious how she feels about that. About change generally, about time. From ICANDY, I don’t get the sense that she views it with any levity at all… Most writing on this show overemphasizes what her work depicts – played-with food – at the cost of what it is: photography. This is misleading. Food decays; the image preserves. Angelyne isn’t Dieter Roth, she’s forever like Dorian Gray. Or at least that’s the wish in these portraits (of stars, to her: mirrors). They capture what hasn’t yet spoiled – serially and in prime form – and seal it. What a tragic thing it is. This portrait will never grow older and I shall…

- - -

Chair Show - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Ella Bandouveris, Zoe Alameda, Joseph Dieppa, Marley White, Bokiso Samayoa, Eli Bucksbaum, Asher Gillman, Nova Thoreen, Logan Hursh, Devin Feldman
AUTOBODY autobody / Feb 15, 2025

We’ve eclipsed ‘peak chair.’ I’m not sure when, but art_as_chairs posted a lot during viralhoax_19, which had many of us in chairs or looking at empty ones, so I imagine ‘peak’ came sometime in 2021. Around then, too, art was in bed with hostile design, late capitalism, and Mark Fisher, so the chair – a site of leisure and labor, blurred – became a natural point of inquiry. Very serious stuff. Very little air to breathe. And then came Skylar Haskard at Sebastian Gladstone in 2023… A turning point for LA chair! Freedom, puzzles, etc! Now, two years on, this: Chair Show. It doesn’t reach, or conclude, per se, but it feels fresh. Correction: *so* it feels fresh. Art/design, design/art, who cares. Logan Hursh, Marley White, and Ella Bandouveris are favorites.

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April 6, 2025

ON EXHIBITION TEXTS

Some of you took offense at our comments on exhibition texts.
Diva Corp loovvvves exhibition texts, make no mistake.
When they’re good.
Most are inert.

The best are coy.

Here are our recent favorites:

1. Marie Angeletti at Gaylord

2. Audrey Leshay at Human Resources

3. TJ Shin for Maren Karlson at Hannah Hoffman

4. Nina Miuccia for Philip Hinge at Quarters

5. Isabel Casso for Michael Bala at Overduin & Co.

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March 30, 2025

Sunday Morning Editorial – On half-baked plays

I need your help. LA is full of half-baked plays. In the art world. Why?

You’ve seen them; I saw three this week. They’re formal. There’s a stage and an audience and dialogue and at the end you clap and that’s it. Invariably, you leave unsatisfied because these plays are, for lack of a better term, half-baked. Taken from the drafts, under-rehearsed, unedited, too long, you get it.

Almost always, though, it seems like one more pass on the script, a couple more rehearsals, a few more cups of coffee, and we’d have something decent here. We’d have some affect.

As it is, we don’t, so I’m wondering what gives.

It’s just, like, a disaffected DIY vibe, Diva. No, not this. I’ve seen disaffected, fully-baked. Recently. With low production values, etc. This is not that. It’s capitalism! They’ve not the resources! You again. Fine, but it’s happening at big galleries, with budgets, too, not just backyards and black boxes. Also: scale to your resources. Oh, come onnn: they’re just experimenting, duh. It’s avant-garde. Maybe. Though, then, what form are they breaking? The rehearsal process?… And this is profound?

At times, I feel like it’s chasing something new, even if only an unexpected moment, or an unlock of character – to escape the tyranny of tradition… this is good. At others, though, it feels a bit too close to alt-comedy, whose bitter end I can only imagine still forces itself upon crowds at the Elysian.

I’d hate to say it’s a question of effort, so I won’t. If it were, though, I’d understand: failure’s more obvious with sincerity in the mix. And more devastating. If the play’s half-baked and turns out just o.k., whatever, we didn’t really try anyway…

Generously, I could position it as anti-work, á la Srnicek and Williams, a critique of platform capitalism. Perhaps pulling the reins on the finished product is a gesture toward rewiring our relationship with efficiency and optimization. Ideally, we find new forms through this unflattening. Again, generous (and are we getting enough sleep?).

And then there is, of course, the question of talent. Perhaps these plays are just miscast. Probably not. However, there’s definitely a clouted element afflicting things, similar to what’s saturated the reading scene, of which these plays are directly descendant. I mean, if you’re going to put on a play, you want people to show up, right?

And that dovetails into community. Maybe that’s the real priority. Half-baked theater as third space. That it happened, that people communed… this is what matters. For the sake of the artists, I hope not.

Whatever the reason, the half-baked style lowers the affective ceiling. We feel less. So, to the degree that these plays are intended for an audience at all, they won’t really reach one in their current form.

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March 23, 2025

LESS THAN ZERO
ON RISK & ART IN LOS ANGELES
BY DIVA CORP

OUT NOW IN ARTILLERY MAG

MENTIONS:

RICHARD NIXON
CHRIS BURDEN
MARILYN MANSON
PIPPA GARNER
SPEED
PAUL MCCARTHY
PARALYSIS
POST HUMAN
BARBARA T. SMITH
THE MOON LANDING
LEROY’S
PUBLIC NOTICE
CHESS V. TENNIS
SALA
QUARTERS
& MORE

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March 14, 2025

Diva Corp’s Frieze 2025 diary is now live

In Artforum

“Parties, secrets, and backroom glam”

… A horror

Fun is a euphemism

Hop Louie forever

Full article on site/profile

- - - - -

March 9, 2025

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS FEB 2025

1a. Sucker, our piece about commandos, timeshares, and dating in Tif Sigfrids’ legendary Umm… magazine. The theme of the mag is exercise, though, really, everyone is just smoking a lot. FIVE STARS.

1b. Lily Ludlow

2. Our Olivia Mole review in Artillery. A dream of a show, and a void, and a funhouse. Agency. Really liked it

3. KJ Freeman “indicts” us by saying we appreciate “tramp aesthetics and German absurdist dialectics.” I don’t see the problem here. Or, even: yes, and…? On substack, scareware galore

4. WHO HAS DIVA CORP ISSUES
(dm if you want mag)

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February 16, 2025

FRIEZE PREVIEW + STORYLINES

I’m high on LA right now. Bullish. Is that wrong? Things feel more unlocked, and this is good. Or maybe they’re just more authentically disturbed, which is the frequency LA runs best on. Crashing out. A reasonable response to the overwhelming sanity induced by Charli’s Grammys performance. And other things like that. The point is this: impatience runneth over. Maybe I’m projecting. Who cares.

Anyway, here’s what I’m tracking during Frieze.

1. Popups / Group Shows / Sideshows

These are the main thing. Some of them are tongue-in-cheek, some self-serious-chic, all better than the fairs. Pio Pico has Fridge, LA – a billion artists, but more importantly performances by Evan Holloway, Eric Wesley, and Paul Gellman (2/21, 7-11p). New Theater has Night of Speeches 2 (2/19), and then they’re screening documentation of their plays all day Friday & Saturday. Jed Moch has Ponyshow (2/18-25); LOYAL has their third iteration at El Royale (2/18); John Doe has Kronenhalle Lids (opens 2/16, happy hour 2/19 12a-4a); and then there’s Art Basel Lincoln Heights DTLA, a group show that has already been hit with the cease and desist by Art Basel and is now going by Redacted Lincoln Heights DTLA (2/19).

2. Readings

It’s difficult to hard-sell readings because of what they’ve become. You know what they’ve become. At best they’re now advertisements that you exist, or more likely that you’re making an experimental film and/or moving back to New York. Howeverrrrr, Lily Lady’s hosting at El Cid (2/22), Heavy Traffic has Rachel Kushner and Honor Levy (2/23), and PROPAGANDA has a Hollywood bus tour with a lineup that hints it’s more than just a reading (2/23). Marcel Alcalá has McPoems today (2/16) at 6p, which might unofficially signal the start of Frieze week and, in fact, set the tone for it.

3. Von Ammon at Felix

The Megadeth of art fair lineups.

4. Post-Fair

This story has it all: betrayal in the eleventh hour… a covert, some would say Landian name change… an alleged web of funding equal parts Thiel and Schnabel… and a complete and unapologetic media capture. Which is to say, things here should be scandalous, yet this fair feels somehow more corporate than the others? And I don’t mean the racy, 1980s corporate; I’m talking open-floor, millennial, intimacy coordinator. Post-Fair also bills itself as alternative, which, again, suggests a posture as empty as holding space, considering almost every fair these days is nominally alternative, making “conventional” Frieze and Basel now the de facto alternatives. No matter, looking forward to Andrea Fourchy at Lomex, Dan Herschlein at King’s Leap, Orion Shepherd at Cruise Control, and Harry Gould Harvey IV at PPOW.

5. Stefan Simchowitz

Okay, yes… Okay. I know. But stay with me on this: if you see Simcho at any of the fairs, hover close. At least for a few minutes. He walks around with a sort of Boss Tweed meets Venice Beach energy, and seems absolutely delighted that he hasn’t spent a dime on one of these booths. It’s infectious. There’s not a man more at ease than Stefan Simchowitz at an art fair. (You wanted an alternative, and you got one in Simcho!!!, and yet still you ask for more…)

6. Solo Shows

These are well covered and some have already opened. Of note:

- Michelle Uckotter at Matthew Brown (2/13)
- Jon Rafman at Sprüth Magers (2/15)
- David Hammons at Hauser (2/18)
- Mike Kelley at Manual Arts (2/18)
- Joe Minter & Daisy Sheff at Parker Gallery (2/19) (both solo)
- Kelly Akashi at Lisson (2/19)
- Bruce Nauman at Marian Goodman (2/19)

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February 12, 2025

Nocturne – THREE POINT FIVE OR FOUR STARS
Olivia Mole
Gattopardo / Oct 26-Dec 14, 2024

... This is the feeling that overwhelms Olivia Mole’s Nocturne, one of almost reaching exactly what it is that you’re after, only to have it soften into something else entirely. If you’ve felt this feeling before, it was likely in a dream, or possibly as a word slipped from the tip of your tongue, though it may have also been in a moment of love. Fine art rarely captures this feeling -- at least not what we’ve been seeing lately. Even at its most oblique, today’s gallery-bound art tends toward the definitive, the unencumbered, the essentialized. Nocturne does not, and that is good...

- Excerpt from review in Artillery Mag

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February 7, 2025

Psychic Debris Field – TWO STARS
Doug Aitken
Regen Projects / Jan 18-Feb 22, 2025

An incredible brand activation for The North Face, especially in these apocalyptic times. Like, they’ve got this huge mountain lion made of microplastics right up front, and then a bunch of massive foam bison with bushes on their heads, and I was like, Damn, North Face! Out here making an oblique ecological call-to-action! About time you caught up with the art world! They also have some Alex Israel-ish climate change posters, and those really made me think: The earth’s temperature is rising, you know? Like, someday our pools will be deserts… Anyway, the last room has these fighting caribou with antlers that change color like those TikTok lights. Definitely cool, but the best, most subversive part is the ice chest in the corner. Instead of being filled with ice? Get this: sand and cacti. You understand? This is bigger than fleeces.

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February 2, 2025

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS JAN 2025

1. Cultured asked us who we’re excited about in 2025. We said Thomas Macie. They called us divisive. Matthew Higgs mentioned an artist on his own roster – way more divisive.

2. On Jerry Gogosian pod

3. The shirt

4. In Spike. Travis Diehl’s piece. We’re six months old now and have matured by a factor of light years.

5. Manhattan Review. Haven’t finished reading

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January 29, 2025

Jorge Pardo – ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Jorge Pardo
1301PE / Nov 20, 2024 - Jan 11, 2025

I love an exhibit that treats me with the disrespect I deserve. I’m looking for Pardo – the marquee name, the larger-than-life extraordinaire – to give us something off-axis, something designed… at the very least something in three dimensions! Instead, he shrinks the gallery to a single small room, seals it off, and puts one “painting” in there. The gallerists are long gone, perhaps hiding, as if to avoid the emotional contagion of disappointment. Pardo’s text claims the work is an abstracted composite of 1301PE’s many exhibition posters, printed on canvas. I believe this. It also insists “additional paint” has been applied to the canvas. This is a lie, without a doubt. If Pardo has applied additional paint, he shouldn’t have. Much easier to just print the image direct from photoshop and have your assistants stretch it. (Which is what he did.)

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January 23, 2025

7 – FOUR POINT FIVE STARS
Kevin Reinhardt
Marc Selwyn / Dec 12, 2024 - Jan 25, 2025

So spare and thoroughly efficient, I’d rather not upset the balance. If I had to, I’d spin something about the Jungian shadow, about Mike Kelley’s Playing with Dead Things, about Bresson’s Pickpocket and technical certainty forgotten under the weight of its art. There’s also a haunting irony in standardizing Bill Evans, a master of improvisation, into an entirely rote and perfectly rhythmic machine, one that will swing forever and ever, without end… especially since Evans died too young from insistent addiction. The best dark rides run forever, though, right? But then what about that window? And the blazer on the ground?... Autonomy? Hope? I guess I just want to know whose dream this is, and if they’ll ever get out. Maybe I’m asking for myself. The show closes this weekend, I hope everyone sees it.

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January 16, 2025

Vigil at Bob’s Big Boy tonight at 8pm to honor the life of David Lynch.

Bring flowers and other memorabilia (no candles please God).

For those who can make it. In Burbank.

Today is January 16, 2025.

[...Hollywood Reporter recap...]

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January 5, 2025

DIVA’S EMERGENCY ALERT - JAN 5 2025

Ladies and gentlemen, betrayal is afoot! ‘Neath twin veils of secrecy and Westside haze, an insurgent: Santa Monica Post Office 2025. A new fair, as yet unannounced, counting Sprüth Magers, Chris Sharp, and King’s Leap among its rebels. We raised hell about it yesterday, and everybody had one question: Who’s in charge? Who’d dare challenge Morán’s crown jewel at the Roosevelt? So, we snooped around and, well… Ever heard of Bohemian Grove? Like that, this house of horrors goes deep: Vito Schnabel (son of Julian, the director), David Ellison (son of Larry, the Oracle), and, yep, you guessed it, Franklin D. Roosevelt (son of Teddy, the Roughrider). All implicated. (Not even joking!) What’s more, the scion currently “managing” the venue, Robin Fisher, has ties to Zuck, Blackstone, and Fox. Logically, then, all roads lead to Gavin Brown and Palantir, right?... Too early to say. No matter who’s at the heart of this nest of spiders, let me be clear: if we go silent, it wasn’t by choice.

Update 2/3/25: They’re changing the name to “Post-Fair,” announcement forthcoming.

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December 20, 2024

Jogo de Mesa (Table Game) – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Beatrice Arraes
Sea View / Nov 9-Dec 21, 2024

Something extraterrestrial’s going on here, and I like that. Though it’s, like, extraterrestrial removed. As in I can feel the presence without having to see it. This is good. I get the same feeling when I look at some of Esther Watson’s paintings, except there it’s overt. Arraes’ wood-carving gesture works to a degree – the implication of covered/uncovered… secrets whispered into trees as Tony Leung would say – but it quickly becomes incidental and occasionally trompe l’oeil-ish. It frames my attention on the substrate and pulls me out of whatever spell the paintings might have cast. (I wonder what would happen if Arraes dug deeper into that gesture.) The Braque pastiche painting also adds a counterpoint to the show that drags it from its more mystical strong suit.

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December 13, 2024

UHC Piece - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Luigi Mangione
December 4-9, 2024

Never seen more Ws in the chat. Can't say I'm surprised: it’s edgy in an obvious, everyone-likes-it-except-my-parents kind of way. A very New York-style work. Shrewd use of Glissant; Zerzan would commend the break from politics as usual. Tech engagement recalls MoMA’s Design and Violence project in the 2010s. I guess I'm confused about the text -- a bit redundant, no?... And the inscribed shell casings, while initially compelling, turn self-serious with the entire work in view. The mask down in the hostel moment is the piece at its most energetic, full of potential. In fiction, it's Bonnie at the window, Clyde at the car... it's Mickey and Mallory Knox dancing in the diner. But this isn't fiction. It's 2024. You know how things work, young bull. The myth of love will bite, always.

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December 10, 2024

Actions – THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Graham Collins, Zoe Koke, Laurel Nakadate
Sarah Brook / October 19-November 30, 2024

How was Sarah Brook left out of the “Women Shaping the LA Scene” puff piece? Yes, I know: it’s arbitrary, it’s quid pro quo, it’s Artsy for chrissakes. And, of course, the concept is absurd (Take me to the art scene, at once! I must see its new shape…). Still, here we are: yet another strong show at Sarah Brook. Please amend.

Brook has a knack for making her shows greater than the sum of their parts. In Actions, she uses Collins’ delicate paintings to unlock a way of viewing that elevates the whole show. Those paintings seduce us, pull us close, and, once there, we find their hidden ceramic supports. They’re hypnotic to untangle – like trying to make sense of the gears of a clock – and act as a little reward, a secret passed between artist and audience. Subtle encouragement to stay close and in pursuit. Approached this way, Koke’s work – abstraction at scale, often seen from a distance as soft or ephemeral – is first encountered from the front row, in IMAX. There, her more staccato and textured moves come into sharp focus, as does her ability to somehow wrangle lurid, even poisonous tones into quiet energy (see Mother’s Yellow Broom). Nakadate’s work, too, is unlocked through this lens. Crude and unfinished as it might seem, we’re compelled to hunt, to fill in the gaps… to determine why. As we learn about how the artist’s mother died before she could meet her grandson, distance and immediacy become relevant in new, albeit adjacent ways. The personal filters through the rest of the room… Time to look again, to reconsider…

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December 3, 2024

SparklyMiracleZONE – FOUR STARS
Nora Berman
Twitch / Ongoing

Regularly on Twitch, Nora Berman hops along on a feverish and strange, slow-trance pursuit of ego death. Or something like that. SparklyMiracleZONE is New Age-y, transcendentally ADHD, funny, and one of the more dynamic artworks in LA… if it’s even an artwork… if it’s even in LA. (Where, exactly, is the internet? More dreadful, still: what, precisely, is art?) Berman – an artist – insists upon the stream’s objecthood by stating “It is ART,” right there in her channel’s bio. Naturally, past net performance artists like Molly Soda, Jillian Mayer, and Petra Cortright come to mind, though Berman blurs the line between art and content (and person/persona) a bit more thoroughly than they do. To be clear, other than its label as “art,” SparklyMiracleZONE isn’t much different formally than any other stream (chat engagement, overlays, dead air, duration). What’s distinct is Berman, herself, as she plucks a kernel of an idea from the techno-superhighway, sprinkles it with wonder, and frees it to float at whim. This is the stream’s gift. There’s an insistence to it all, and a disorder… an in-studio flow state we can watch and participate in, arpeggiated by jingling contact mics and synthetic vocal shifts. An ‘alternative space’ in an avant-garde and true sense! I only wish I wasn’t aware of it as art at all. Though I accessed it via Berman’s website, others found the channel while streamhopping. This seems ideal. The best performances today are largely invisible as “performance,” so I wonder what’s gained and lost by calling this art “art,” self-aware as it is.

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November 18, 2024

Facts Worth Knowing – THREE POINT FIVE OR FOUR STARS
Aria Dean
Château Shatto / Sept 14-Oct 16, 2024

LINK TO FULL REVIEW IN ARTILLERY MAG

Our review of Aria Dean at Château Shatto is in Artillery Magazine. It’s a longer piece than normal. We mention Michael Krebber in there, specifically the text at his recent show by F.W. Heubach, which distinguishes between finding and seeking. Heubach argues in favor of seeking: “Does finding not mean schematizing – or to put it differently: Reducing knowing to recognizing?” Dean’s work seeks in fantastic ways, here. Heubach also talks about perfection in art, tethered to the clean finding, rather than the untidy seeking:

“And then there are works where it didn’t happen. Something did not really work out in them and has remained attempt, transition, search, approximation – in short: there is no fulfillment at all. In return, however, these works give rise to the possibility to experience more than ‘art.’ More than merely what art is and what it can do: Some idea of where it comes from and what it is after.”

Dean’s work comes close to this type of imperfection, too, though the conceptual balance is pretty thorough and ‘perfect’… so maybe not quite. No matter, if you missed the show, you have missed something worth seeing, and something quite unresolved. The article is in print and online; the link is on our site.

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November 14, 2024

Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism – ONE POINT FIVE STARS
The Brick / Sept 15-Dec 21, 2024

Um: is this a money laundering operation? $200k from the Getty and a dozen other grants on the budget ($30k, $150k, etc), so… where did all the cash go? This show is a haphazard and incomplete history lesson, a survey held together by buzzwords. With very little text to support it, anyone who is a wee bit uninformed about art’s intersection with ecofeminism (i.e. many, hence the grants, the perceived necessity) will have almost nothing to guide them through this claustrophobic minefield of work. No logic to the layout, difficult to physically navigate. Further, with the exception maybe of Alicia Piller’s installation and a video or two, there aren’t a lot of visually compelling works – I doubt the artists themselves would disagree… many are/were actively resisting aesthetics – making it even more imperative for the curators to frame our visit in some way, whether that be through time, material, figure (where is Denes?), whatever. Perhaps it’s a proof of concept for a larger museum exhibition – this is most likely – or perhaps it’s more important *that* they did it, not how. As it stands, the show lacks a sufficient hook, and we’re left swimming in rather expensive, grey-mattered didacticism.

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October 26, 2024

At This Hour – THREE STARS
Losel Yauch
La Loma Projects / Sept 14-Oct 26, 2024

Very little compares to the in-car cigarette. Yes or yes? A cool, quiet night in LA; hung fog, slow lights, fuzz. You crack the window. Out it goes, whisked unknowing and not caring into the night, as father Hemingway would say. (And this is not an endorsement, I’d rather no one die, you’ve seen the PSAs). Yauch’s paintings put me in that body-feel, or at least very close. But what about Jane Dickson at Karma, you say, or Izzy Barber at Fuentes? Those shows come much closer, right? No, they do not. They’re too practiced, over-planned. They are, in effect, too good. The in-car cigarette is fast and essential, not so impressive (or expressive) as it is just what’s necessary. Never perfect. And that’s where Yauch’s paintings succeed. In landing on the right frame, naturally, but maybe less precisely; in extracting things – just so – to the point of clarity, but without resolution. Because of the minimal compositions, people will say naive Ruscha-this and less-adept Bruce Richards-that. Todd Hido without the teeth. MCA’s daughter, we get it. They’ll come at the untidy brushwork, and the inconsistency of the exposed woodgrain, and the figurative representations of ghosts in a painting show where absence is already heavily suggested. Fine! Let them. The art here is that the paintings are onto something, that they’re working together as a show. Alarms in the night, suspended.

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October 21, 2024

nativemanson – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Arthur Jafa
Sprüth Magers / Sept 14-Dec 14, 2024

To truly enjoy Jafa’s work, you sort of have to believe that the apocalypse is imminent, that danger lurks around every corner… that the call is coming from inside the house! Which is why it’s most effective on city-bound, educated, mildly paranoid whites with enough free time to play along. Maybe this is his target audience, or maybe it’s just the gallery-going demo, but it’s worth pointing out. Why? Because it’s the sect of the artworld that most desperately locates their worldview – their algos, their mantras, their hopes, their dreams – in whatever unfortunate artwork that sits before them, especially work with a social dimension. They believe in art as an instrument of fundamental change, and they’ll not be denied. So, in a way, good on Jafa. Like a painter suggesting a figure without finishing it – knowing the viewer’s imagination will do the rest – Jafa loosely references “issues” and “ideas” without much substance (or, rather, with so much subliminal, implied-systemic substance that we’re left with none at all). Whereas the painter often suggests the universal, though – a torso, a tree, a cloud – Jafa suggests (though rarely arrives at) something more specific, which by nature requires context that the viewer doesn’t always have. In other words, unless you’re one of those city-bound, educated, mildly paranoid whites (or, perhaps, any two of the three) you’ll probably struggle to locate the thrust of Jafa’s work beyond race and violence, broadly. As presented here (with the exception of his BG video, which I liked), Jafa’s work is merely a sequence of slogans for apocalypticism, advertisements that use the same montage/associative strategies and droning backtracks seen in political attack ads, Balenciaga fashion shows, Kanye West marketing campaigns, and homemade conspiracy theory videos. There are elements of the current “cool” in all these things, especially Jafa’s work, but “cool,” as we know, hollows out with time.

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October 14, 2024

The End of You – TWO STARS
Divya Mehra
Night Gallery / Sept 14-Oct 19, 2024

Mehra’s show effectively proves how dissent has been commodified in the 21st century: completely, in a way that’s harmless to and, in fact, fun for its purported opposition. Upon entering, we’re escorted directly to ‘meaning’ – no detours, no illusions, no meandering. The works are crystal clear, talking points from lectures we’ve already heard, further stripped of context and synthesized into objects. Drawings of buffoons taught to dislike CRT while a nuclear bomb erupts in the distance; a broom sweeping invisible damage under the symbolic rug of statecraft and imperialism; and a massive, fallen Stay-Puft parade balloon (destroyer of worlds from Ghostbusters), emblematic of late capitalism’s unrestrained insistence despite its obvious failure. Without a specific target (Who or what, exactly, has been exposed here? Colonial legacy, broadly?) or much dimension to catch the viewer off-guard, the show becomes extremely palatable to just about everyone, and challenges very few to think critically, to think beyond slogans of moral imperative. (I wonder who might invest in work that so inoffensively laments injustice in general terms, and what they might gain from doing so…) To be clear: I’m not saying that these things shouldn’t be addressed, just that they’re not being addressed well artistically in this case. When Mehra’s work is successful – as it is in Ann Winterton 2002, a small all-white ‘joke’ painting that flips Richard Prince’s colorful, whimsical joke paintings in an incisive way – it puts faith in the viewer to interpret and engage and work. For the most part, though, Mehra’s show lacks that faith, and suffers as a result. The budget also seems quite high, which complicates things, especially since money is scant right now.

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October 9, 2024

All Is Pretty – THREE STARS
Brendan Lynch
One Trick Pony / Sept 15-Oct 12, 2024

I like this show, maybe even love it, in all its lackluster glory. Lynch’s presentation is aggressive and spare and impermanent: small paintings propped up on a knee-high, cloth-covered pushcart, set in the center of the room. It’s an easy gesture, but also an affront to viewing art on white walls, 57 inches floor-to-center, and it makes the paintings difficult to inspect (unless you walk on the velvet cloth). A literal letdown. Clever. I think of Josh Smith’s Stage Painting works as a close relative, but I also think of other, recent painting shows that physically challenge the viewer, namely Brett Ginsburg’s current show at Matthew Brown and Naoki Sutter-Shudo at Reena (there are more, I’m sure). Unlike those shows, though, this one turns the audience in on itself, and maybe, just maybe, fosters interaction. I really wish he hadn’t hung those three paintings on the back wall. There’s nothing that separates them from the others, so it feels like a cop-out. The quality of the paintings varies, and the kneaded texture felt unnecessary, but maybe that works with how aloof the rest of the show is.

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DRIVE: The Garage – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Jason Rhoades
Hauser & Wirth / Sept 13, 2024 - Jan 5, 2025

I miss Jason Rhoades. Not that I knew him (so back off, you oddly territorial, middle-aged art mob), but this show makes me feel it. The garage installation – a sagging, claptrap, cardboard husk surrounding a very real, but very useless Ford V-8 engine, no car in sight – makes me think of heart and body, and whether one can function without the other. Container and soul, in tension. Nearby, the stack of silent crates again reminds me of empty bodies, or, rather, empty bodies waiting to store an empty body (the installation). It all makes me somewhat sad. Having seen the entirety of Rhoades’ DRIVE series here at Hauser, I now consider the first chapter (The Parking Space) the strongest because we got the most Rhoades. We got to chase his twisting and unrelenting ideas down a freeway (via Obrist’s video), ideas that always led somewhere, even and especially when I thought they were going nowhere. That video painted a portrait of the artist as heat center, as a spirit kept alive through his rabid pursuit of… art? Ideas? Himself? While the show’s texts often refer to the readymade, to value, and to humor in conceptual ways, the more I watched that video, the more it became clear that the concept holding things together was Rhoades, himself, and nothing else. With Rhoades there to convince me, I looked at those four vehicles and imbued them with all the wonder in the world because I wanted to see what he saw. And so I did. In The Garage, though, Rhoades is absent, and glaringly so. The closest we get to him are his handwritten letters, sketches, and notes on the far wall. With the artist missing, we lack what’s obviously a vital hook, and the installation doesn’t quite land.

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October 6, 2024

Ted Gahl/Lydia Enriquez – THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Ted Gahl and Lydia Enriquez
Sarah Brook / Sept 14-Oct 12, 2024

Not much to say except that this is a very solid show. The two artists never talk over one another. Gahl’s paintings suggest limits but resist their certainty, making them casual and seductive. Enriquez’s pigmented plaster works are more finished – especially with that glaze, and on those black plinths – yet still they’re curious materially, landing somewhere between synthetic object and organic form. (The dark plinths are formally useful, too, giving some of Gahl’s lower contrast paintings a bassline off which to riff.) Gahl has a few works that are really, really fantastic: Shangri-La (In Reverse), whose soft red seems to come from miles away; Figure in Hole, whose figure emerges as if from water, Degas meets Baselitz; and Kismet, where things can only be made out from quick suggestions of paint and left-behind pencil. Gosh, even Sinker, whose line is insistent, plays well with its de Keyser-ish notes. I have reservations about Enriquez’s cotton twine wallworks, though that might be because they’re hidden around a corner. More confidently positioned, I might like them. Anyway, this show needs no conceptualizing, can be met on its own terms, and succeeds.

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Alibis – FOUR STARS
Maggie Friedman
As It Stands / Sept 20-Oct 26, 2024

We understand your concerns. Alibis is a quiet, humble show that doesn’t render very well online. Read formally, the paintings are basically just an exercise in value (tonal), and that’s not nearly as pick-me as, say, Jordan Wolfson thrashing his chained-up, displaced puppet self around the room. And, yes, Friedman does pantomime the ‘signature style’/appropriation bit that was popular in 2000s New York, understood. However, I do think the work is up to something more, especially with its emphasis on the digital frame. In flattening once-dynamic masterworks into green/non-green representations of their photographed image (void of brush strokes, of the artist’s hand), these paintings nudge us in the direction of the binary, of cybernetic processing. The green is consistent and specific, the same color found on early phosphorescent computer monitors, in the digital rain of The Matrix/Ghost in the Shell, in military-grade night vision goggles. If we take these hints, then, Friedman’s work doesn’t represent how she sees things, but, rather, how she and the machine see them, together. And, unlike a lot of post-internet work, these paintings find expansion and even optimism in tech, by stoking energy from the binary’s folds… Zeros and ones open up to much more. So, I think of Ray Kurzweil’s note (from 1999) that 21st century machines – designed after patterns of human thought – will seek to “connect with their spiritual dimension.” Perhaps these paintings inch us toward that singularity, toward a more ecstatic capacity of the machinic.

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Home Again – TWO STARS
John Divola and Megan Plunkett
Timeshare / Sept 14-Oct 12, 2024

Divola’s two almost-twin photos (with the red chair) form the best moment in this show. They prime us to look again at what we’ve already seen, vigilantly. Are these different images? Or did we just close one eye and open the other (i.e. is it a question of perception)? I hunt through the rest of the work because of them. And when I do, I just don’t find the images doing more than affirming their own construction. Timeshare’s text does hedge against this with the line about ‘paranormal’ being a mistranslation of ‘supernormal,’ but it also alludes to the unexplained and false realities, so it feels ambivalent. I’ve mainly seen Divola’s work on Instagram, in the feed, by surprise. Between travel photos and memes and whatever else. Positioned by the algorithm, Divola’s photos take on associations far more powerful and far more personal than they could in a gallery setting. This, really, is where his work makes the normal feel not so normal, and yet still normal.

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September 27, 2024

Killing the Precedent – ZERO POINT FIVE STARS
Indecline
Superchief / Sept 21-Oct 20, 2024

When sneakerheads discover electoral politics. Sort of spectacular, though? Like how they’d depict activist art in DC comics.

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September 24, 2024

Fruiting Body - THREE OR THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Piper Bangs
Megan Mulrooney / Sept 14-Oct 26, 2024

I find it hard to believe that none of the writing on this Piper Bangs show talks at all about animation. How is this possible? We’re plainly looking at narrative paintings of pears that lounge around and wonder and protect each other, all very human in their imperfection. Sure, Bangs takes on the art historical thread of the still life here, so it’s perfectly fine to allude to 17th century Dutch painting and the like, but is the art world so full of its own pretense that we can’t also acknowledge Disney’s countless animations of plants and fruits, and the fantasy imbued within them? Does any of this happen without him? (I challenge you to make the case for yes!!) I’d argue that the blending of these Disney-ish palettes and moods with a more classic approach to underpainting and line makes for an even more contemporary, relevant read on the work, and, in fact, enriches it. Perhaps Disney isn’t en vogue, or it’s overused, or it’s already so embedded in our lives that it goes without saying. Maybe that’s it. Anyway, I liked this work far more than I thought I would, which means that something comes off the canvas in person that doesn’t in the online renderings. Maybe something to do with Bangs’ handling of the paint, the quiet layering, the staccato of the impasto (gosh, I loathe the rhyme but I’m writing quickly so we’ll keep it moving). The watercolors are just sublime and emphasize the power of Bangs’ atmospherics, which again pulls me away from classical references and towards the lush imaginings of C.S. Lewis, videogames like The Elder Scrolls, and CCD imagery of galactic phenomena... Though I know everyone would rather talk about Rococo paintings and Francisco de Zurbarán, so I’ll stop there.

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My Soul is Full of Barking Dogs - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Gabriel Madan
Gattopardo / Sept 14-Oct 19, 2024

ATTENTION, PLEASE!, these paintings shout at us, and they needn’t. We already waded through the virtual muck to find that post with those hours for this show. We braved the streets of Glendale, world champion of uninsured drivers. And now we’re here, by choice, a willing audience... and yet we’re still harangued for attention. By the lurid color, the barrage of source material, the incessant references to Wachtel, Rauschenberg, Kippenberger, et al. Which isn’t to say these are bad paintings – they’re well composed and technically precise – but they do feel overdone, a bit too keen on impressing us with how good they are. Even moments of chance in the paint, on close inspection, reveal themselves as carefully mapped reproductions of risk. Cynicism creeps into view, then, and I trust the paintings less. (An aside: across town, at Elliott Hundley’s studio, Chris Lipomi has some paintings up that cut in on printable perfection with erasure and loose overlap. They have a gentle vein of indecision, and they’re more seductive because of it. Though dated, we liked them, so we’d say they’re worth seeing, but we got an ostensible cease-and-desist in the DMs, so “don’t” go see those). I think of Michel Majerus because the paintings here at Gattopardo are maximal, superflat paintings that remind me of Murakami, the maximal, superflat god who reveres him. What would Majerus have to say about this work, to Madan? Probably something to cool it off, to pare things back. And then maybe something to question its certainty... “What looks good today may not look good tomorrow.” Of course, he would also certainly say the same to me, and likely to you, and to everyone, so…

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WE ARE: Explosion Event – ZERO OR FIVE STARS, DEPENDING
Cai Guo-Qiang, PST:ART
The Getty, LA Memorial Coliseum / September 15, 2024

War games brought to you by Bank of America at the Coliseum. Edgiest work I’ve seen all year. Aerial bombardment, wildfires, and pollution to remind us of aerial bombardment, wildfires, and pollution. The boardroom strikes again.

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September 20, 2024

IF YOU DON’T GET YO SORRY ASS UP - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Oshay Green
C L E A R I N G / Sept 13-Oct 26, 2024

Green’s show has just the right amount of uncaring to make it curious. The question then becomes whether it can carry its own nonchalance, whether it attracts or repels under the weight of a closer look. When successful, the work is unelusive in a coy way, keying us with material hints to help us finish the sentence it started. This is most present in Green’s combine/scrapwood sculptures that swerve toward anthropomorphic (or phantom) while also sidestepping representation. In form and position, they punctuate the spatial rhythms set by the nearby wall-bound works, and far from telling us the answer, they never even let on that there is one. Green’s plywood works do the opposite, and are less successful. Those come emblazoned with RIFF file data – making them illegible to humans – and one completely blocks an entrance to the gallery. It’s clear that they’re meant to resist accessibility, and Green doubles down on this resistance with his 5-page press release, also composed entirely of RIFF data. It’s a strategy that turns a heavy hand on the show because it closes itself to interplay with the audience. Unlike, say, some of Hammons’ work – particularly his 2019 Hauser press release, just a paragraph of squiggled lines – Green’s RIFF work has a correct answer. We see the code and we know: this is representational work, it means something specific, we simply need the proper program. Its resistance is not up to us to decode and consider. In that way, Green strips the viewer of their agency and loses the thread of the show.

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September 18, 2024

One day this will be a long time ago – FOUR STARS
Andrew Cranston
Karma / July 25-September 14, 2024

To look at one of Cranston’s paintings is to long for a place that doesn’t exist, and then to realize all of a sudden that you’re already there. It happens this way almost every time, especially if you watch, rather than look at, the work. Cranston’s high-contrast, frame-within-a-frame compositions attract the eye to bleached bright voids, which, over time, let the indistinct -- what lingers in the shadows -- come into soft focus. (Useful here is Elderfield’s note on Bonnard that some things, in low light, are seen more clearly in the periphery.) All this and the subject matter gives the work a sensory feel in the Vuillardian sense, where the viewer assumes an agential and phantom-like stance in a space that isn’t their own. In Voltaire and Rousseau, for example, we look out a window at an overcast, still bright skyline. As our eyes adjust to the coal-grey interior, we notice a caged bird in the dark (maybe the titular Rousseau, a bad boy... the cat above being Voltaire). So, already, we’ve gone from inside to outside, or at least entered a state of inside outside (or outside inside?). Regardless, we can follow Rousseau’s gaze to find another bird, camouflaged against the silhouette of distant buildings. This bird is outside looking in at Rousseau. To rehash, then: we’re inside, though effectively outside to a bird who’s doubly inside looking doubly outside to a bird looking inside. The (invisible) film of the window thus acts as a site of curiosity here and in many of Cranston’s paintings, a stage for the story’s thematics to unfurl. Specifically, windows contain moments of connection and possibility that can’t be realized to the degree we wish they could. And Cranston’s paintings further stoke that longing in us, since we, too, look through a frame (at the work), a physical window through which we cannot pass. And yet we imagine, and so we can.

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Erasing A Flower – TWO STARS
Nick Aguayo
Vielmetter / July 20-September 7, 2024

Recently in Cultured, Susanne Vielmetter blamed her skidding sales on an art market contraction. That’s either a delusion or an excuse; it’s also a convenient truth. Having seen all her shows this year, I can say with confidence: in Ms. Vielmetter’s case, it’s not the market. Aguayo’s show here is probably the best of the bunch in that it’s not deliriously monotonous (Vielmetter’s expansive spaces contribute to this, no doubt), but it ultimately falls short because the work is unconscious of its own conceit. In other words, it advertises a commitment to ecstatic painting – the boundless colors, the allusion to improvisation, the naïve shapes – yet Aguayo doesn’t actually paint ecstatically. Or even playfully. It really just seems like he’s painting his drawings, which makes things feel contained and sober, like he’s trying to evade the mess entirely (the mess being precisely the place where ecstatic paintings thrive... to find a painter in the mess, tacking his way out of it, ought to be the joy here). Perhaps somewhat ironically, Aguayo’s black and white paintings are his most ecstatic because they indicate a chance taken, a decision followed and stuck with. Regarding these, the exhibition text references Op art and Franz Kline, which is fine, but really only serves as a misdirection from or some sort of feigned ignorance toward the fact that the artist is chasing (though certainly uncomplicating via Joe Bradley) Charline von Heyl in much of his work – her thematics, shapes, stenciling, and, yes, especially her black and white paintings full of warped triangles.

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September 9, 2024

Session - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Lily Lady and Siena Foster-Soltis
Private Residence / August 2024

Hot girls, almost naked. This is Session’s first, and perhaps most essential, move. SPOILERS FOLLOW. Long before the play begins, Lady and Foster-Soltis (co-writers, co-stars) use the allure of femme bodies to sell tickets: Session’s promotion consists entirely of implied nude, Richard Kern-ish photos of the two. Maybe this is the best/only way to do it, considering the algorithm in 2024. More likely, this is how it’s always been done, to a degree (the twin flames of sex work and work work yet again entangle). No matter, Session’s marketing functions as the first act in an expanded theater piece, and primes the audience to think of bodies (specifically Lady’s and Foster-Soltis’), to anticipate the X-rated. As the play escalates, however – mainly through rhythmic, at times too-neat dialogue – the titular and graphic promise evades us. Neither protagonist ever appears as they do in the adverts. In fact, the opposite: we see naked men, sad men, and violence. Though a wanton chemistry does emerge between Lady and Foster-Soltis that evokes the Maries in Chytilová’s Daisies (or even at times the brothers in True West), the play has a fictional layering that stops these moments short of being genuine. The fantasy is continually undermined by the introduction of new realities, new players who wield power and lose it. In Session, then, the bottom is also the top, and neither is ever fixed. At the end of the play, the final boss (as it were) emerges. He was in the audience the whole time, our surrogate in secret. He feels let down, things didn’t go as expected. He bares himself emotionally -- not the nudity we were promised, but something far more poignant -- and we’re left thinking about our own ideal. Can we ever reach it? And what about when we don’t? In about an hour, Lady and Foster-Soltis flip the object from the accessibility of their bodies to the inaccessibility of our ourselves. Clever.

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August 28, 2024

At Los Angeles Galleries... - ZERO STARS
Jonathan Griffin
The New York Times / August 28-?, 2024

EMERGENCY REVIEW: My god. Say what you want about Mark Rodriguez’s show at Chris Sharp. Whatever, who cares. That’s not our concern here. Today we train our lens on the work of Jonathan Griffin, an art critic for The New York Times who recommended Rodriguez’s show a few hours ago (along with four other LA shows), and was presumably (nay, regrettably) paid for it. Tl;dr: he lifted his work almost entirely from the exhibition text. To quickly recount Griffin’s reporting, by paragraph: (1) description, (2) placement of work between painting and sculpture, (3) context of artist’s career, including a reference to Ken Price, (4) discussion of the vanity of the “Forever” designation, deeming it “hubristic.” Got it? Pretty solid, right? Okay. Now let’s look at the exhibition text for the show: (1) description, (2) placement between painting and sculpture, (3) discussion of the vanity of the “Forever” designation, deeming it “hubristically eternal,” (4) a reference to Ken Price. Remind you of anything? Of course, I’m simplifying: the exhibition text contains nuance and pumps the work up to stoke curiosity. Griffin’s review echoes and distills the text in such a milquetoast way that it makes me admire the ranks of middle management for their vanguardism. Very few thoughts here seem to be his own, that is unless he authored the press release, too. (At the very least, right-click > synonyms for “hubris,” my brother in Christ.) Griffin does make a point about the art market downturn as it relates to a “forever” concept, and that has some utility, and I liked the part about Rodriguez’s bootleg cassette works. Those are not in the press release. Everything else is. I know none of us are without fault, but when you ask how we got here, this is it.

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August 26, 2024

Reality Show - FOUR STARS
Peter Shear
BLUM / July 13-August 30, 2024

A good lover loves back, and this is what Peter Shear’s paintings do. Maybe ‘love’ is too strong (and vacuous). Shear brings these works to life, so they live. They mingle with you; they return your serve; like the limousines in Holy Motors, they probably have a lot to say to each other at night, in the dark. These are small paintings that happen in front of you, all of a sudden, and permanently. Yes, there’s the provisional painting thing, but I think that’s a bit off because these feel more assessed and less risky. And there’s definitely an Avery connection, though that, too, doesn’t quite land because Avery’s are somewhat more worked. Shear’s paintings are probably most energetically tied to Ilse D’Hollander’s, even if, still, she takes her paintings materially further, by two or three steps. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Shear’s work has an economy to it that both feels right as an impulse, and practically. A style in approach. I don’t know Shear, but I’ve read he lives in Indiana and is self-taught, and so, being in L.A. with its million-watt sun and loud everything, I wonder about the light in Indiana, the landscape, and the tone of life there. I wonder where Shear got his feedback from, being an autodidact. He posts paintings that he likes on Instagram, so I presume the feedback he got was from them. In my little imaginary, he might show one of his paintings to, perhaps, one of Avery’s (Shear’s painting propped up by a wine bottle sitting directly across from Avery’s on a laptop) and he watches them talk. Do they? And how? Shear takes their vibration, maybe adds another line or smudge to his work, then sits them down together again. He repeats this until, I guess, it feels right. That’s what the artist does. So there’s a slow care to them, even if they communicate something about speed. And there’s precarity, too… uncertainty. Maybe then they remind me of Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer, a film where I can feel the process of indecision through comparatively untight editing and moments of soft darkness, which somehow makes the film more sure of itself than it would be otherwise.

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Display - THREE STARS
Coleman Collins, Ali Eyal, Joseph Jones, Ghislaine Leung, Nevine Mahmoud, Arthur Marie, Louis Blue Newby, Yuri Pattison, Pamela Ramos, Erin Calla Watson, Abbas Zahedi
Ehrlich Steinberg / July 27-August 31, 2024

As far as group shows go, this is pretty good, and it’s not, you know, just a bunch of paintings performing variations on a theme. With group shows, though, it helps to have a gravity center and some sort of weave, whether it be thematic, material, or otherwise. This show, when pressed, lacks both, so it’s difficult to unlock. I find it hard to relate, for example, Ghislaine Leung’s list of jobs to Joseph Jones’ Rainbow Cat painting. One is a labor critique redirected through performance score, and the other a more straightforward, light-wash oil painting of a cat. And while I can connect Leung’s piece to Yuri Pattinson’s clever decay work – which comingles danger and allure with its use of a Geiger Counter, smoke alarm parts, and a Rolex watch – I struggle to find a passthrough from there to Arthur Marie’s figurative and staid pencil drawings. If we’re to take the text’s light exploration of “display” as the show’s thematic weave (which, I will say, feels like a bit of a cop out since every exhibit, to a degree, could fall back on that (and we already have plenty of shows exploring opacity, etc.), but okay) then the closest thing to a gravity center is Pamela Ramos’ Boys Bundle, a work that pushes and pulls with ideas of (in)accessibility, (im)penetrability, and (in)visibility. That piece, though, doesn’t commit in the way the adjacent pieces by Leung and Jones do. It requires more time, more energy, and more space to be untangled. So, as it’s positioned, its charge is deadened by its proximity to conceptually louder works, and we lose the key we need.

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floating over the silent world – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Steve Roden
Vielmetter / July 20-September 7, 2024

A decent survey, though sort of positionless (understandably… it’s a survey). Roden’s Surface of the Moon sculptures – made of carved wood, wire, and wax – are installed in a way that makes me nervous for them. Balanced like corks on a very thin shelf. I wonder if they went down in the earthquake. Anyway, the work’s miniature items and overwhelming scope generate a physical pull: I get down to the floor to inspect things, and even crawl around to see more. Rarely have I been this low to the ground, for this long, with such sustained curiosity, since I was little. And so I think of age, and of time passing, and then, of course, the absent Roden, who died last year. So that is sad. I guess the scores Roden uses to make work are somewhat compelling, too, if only because they’re endlessly generative in a way mankind is not. And so, again, I think of life and its absence.

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August 24, 2024

Pressure Cooker - TWO STARS
Tucker Aüdie, Christopher Belhumeur, Daniel Healey, Jonah Ifcher, Chris Velez, Anja Salonen
Spy Projects / June 28-August 2, 2024

I won’t say anything about the show except this: it belongs at the Hegelian E-Girl Party. By which I mean it aspires to a proto-dimes square scene that no longer exists, accelerating and self-consuming to such a degree that by the time we actually make it to the inauguration the hosts have already dosed all the K and publicly announced that the movement is over. ‘Aspires’ being the key word here, because the only proven way to avoid being derided as the ironic cuck-object of the mainly online Landian meme demons is to move first and fast, so if you’re following (i.e. if you’re aspirational, if you want to be at the party) you might as well be dead. And to chase the dragon from the opposite coast?… Probably not as hard as it sounds, honestly, given the internet, but get out of edgelord angelicism already, it’s mainstream. If Spy Projects, though, wants the danger-red-alert territory it so desires (the text mentions the atomic bomb and how technology ‘has replaced nature as our collective sword of Damocles’), then they need to think ten, maybe twenty steps ahead. Best idea I’ve got: stage a live remake of our martyr Linda Lovelace’s Dogarama, but make it elegant, and use it to champion the equal rights of animals (voting, reproductive, etc.). And name the dog ‘Damocles.’ That’ll hold the downtown pneumatic necropigs at bay, at least for a little while.

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August 19, 2024

GO WILD! – ONE POINT FIVE STARS OR MAYBE FOUR STARS ACTUALLY
Kenny Scharf
Honor Fraser / June 29-August 24, 2024

Matthew Barney could spend ten years wading through a river of his own fundament and still not come up with an installation as dynamically sadistic as this. What’s that, Matthew? You recreated a single football tackle in slow motion for an hour? Awww... In that time, Kenny could do a hundred paintings of Jane Jetson and cover the walls with so many of those demonic grinning amoebas that you’d start to feel like you were inside a sheet of blotter paper for the worst, most lurid trip ever. Then he’d build the tiki bar from the childhood nightmares you never knew you had, and, in the remaining fifty-five minutes, he’d go find a PT Cruiser and ruin it with one of his KARBOMBZ. Kenny Scharf is the id of the art world and I’ll put that on everything.

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Something Bit Me Bad - THREE STARS
Jake Fagundo, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Michael Williams
Curated by Taylor Harriett Payton
Temple Projects / July 13-August 15, 2024

What does it mean to lift a style, completely? The largest and loudest paintings here are by Jake Fagundo, who plainly bites Kippenberger’s aesthetic, yet the text openly frames the show around mimesis and postmodernism (the show’s title is Something Bit Me Bad, after all), so the question really is: to what end do we so explicitly bite? And it’s not a question, really, of appropriation or homage, here, but rather of remake. While remakes, nominally, don’t exist in the art world as they do in cinema, they certainly exist in form, and in our era of speed and image sharing and repetitive scrolling, remakes appear more often, and more quickly, than ever before. Artists, emerging especially, either hide their influences or cite them, but they don’t remake them. In this show, Fagundo remakes Kippenberger, the painter’s painter (along with Oehlen, also being bitten here, just less). A Kippenberger, of course, is impossible to remake because it’s packaged with the artist’s reputation and persona. Fagundo, then, not only fails by recognizably copying (art world heresy), but also by failing to precede the work, by failing to capture the essence of the artist he remakes. And in that failure, Fagundo curiously reaches a different project. Like Gus Van Sant remaking Hitchcock’s Psycho shot-for-shot, to reskin Kippenberger in this naked way is to make a statement about the vanity of remakes and the impossibility of aspiration... to point out the aura lost in an appeal to the aesthetics of yesterday. That Kippenberger’s success came in his performative failure is not lost on me. Fagundo has not failed to fail, so maybe this is the end of his explicit bite?... Cut for time, but it isn’t clear why Williams’ work is included in this show. Mayer’s work is fantastic and adds contours to the mimesis discourse. The show is crowded; could use less to be more precise.

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Tough Joy - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Christopher Culver
Michael Benevento / June 22-August 10, 2024

Have you ever been to the Tiki Adult Theater? The ticket window there is foggy and scratched and covered in post-it notes, which effectively disembodies the cashier as he asks how many hours you’d like inside. The opaque window magnifies the sense that – though there are others around, in theory – you, ma’am, are most certainly alone. Of course, LA reminds us of this all the time, being a city full of drivers stuck in traffic together, alone in their cars. But it is in withholding the body that the ticket window at Tiki haunts us in way that the more transparent (and body-full) windows of automobiles cannot. Culver’s pastel and charcoal drawings play with absence in similarly untethered ways, yet perhaps without the shame. The bodyless scenes here are polluted, yes (implicit in Culver’s use of pale mustard and ochre and tinges of green; explicit in his depiction of, say, turtles swimming through a stream of radioactive yellow water), but they’re polluted in a way that appears even, or unjudged. The work has a filmic grain and sense of frame that push it further toward this understanding: these are compositions staged for subjects who never showed up, documented by a camera left rolling. The gentle push/pull of the vérité allows the work to be at once personal and indefinite, hinting at critiques of modernity while also simply living under its rule. There are moments, however, that do feel somewhat overstaged, like Needle on the Ground, where a syringe and a rabbit doll lay side by side, injecting the show with a more didactic dramatism than it needs. The single ‘ripped’ edge on some drawings, too, feels materially melodramatic. Things, in those instances, are a bit neo-Bukowski: we feel the artist’s hand, we question the honesty of the narratives being spun. Otherwise, it’s a sedate, honest show whose arrangement is spare in an evocative way.

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Elana Bowsher – TWO STARS
Elana Bowsher
Hannah Hoffman / June 29-August 10, 2024

Stained glass if it didn’t glisten. Bowsher is most successful in her work that’s less O’Keeffe, like Pelvis, which is somewhat mesmerizing in its evasive study of anatomical shape within an abstract color field. Very few other paintings charm the way that one does. The rest, in their more plain abstraction, fail to find any textures or gestures or color arrangements that surprise me at all.

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August 16, 2024

Turning Tables – THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Eric Wesley
Timeshare / July 19-August 10, 2024

It’s rare for work to be this nihilistic and purposefully evasive, yet somehow steer well clear of sterility and actually elicit joy. Comedians do this, if they’re successful, so I guess that makes the show sort of a joke. The setup is deadpan: a handful of table-sized, parallelepiped wood sculptures and a few binders that, per the attendant, “unlock the sculptures,” though they mainly contain index cards with throwaway, Prince-ish one-liners. (Notably, the show is without a corresponding text.) The wood works are painted to resemble stacks of blank index cards, each ‘stack’ tarnished in some way (spilled wax, condensation ring, cigarette burn). A walk around one reveals that it’s missing a side, plainly exposing the woodcraft inside, which evokes the false fronts on Hollywood backlots. To do the math here: we have a cluster of blank indexes, physically empty, used as anything but indexes (candle support, drink coaster, ashtray), with corresponding binders (indexes) full of index cards with no clear organizing principle. It’s wordplay that hovers above non sequitur. In semiotics, indexes are the signifier of the signified, yet Wesley, here, gives us the signifier without the signified, or at least a signifier of another signifier. It’s a setup without a punchline, but with a very long pause. Turning Tables, as a title, then makes sense. These works, in a sort of Hammons-ian way (or, more apt, Kaufman-esque), throw viewers in the deep without the raft of laughter, without the comfort of knowing. An affront to institutions that make sense of work prior to viewing. I question, though, almost anyone’s ability to get there. Most will probably look, flip through a binder, and leave unchanged, so it’s ultimately a show with an audience of one. The artist.

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August 14, 2024

Singles - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Antone Könst
CASTLE / July 27-September 18, 2024

Without Pan Immolating – a loose painting of a shadow Pan playing his pipes, licked in flames – this is an overly cohesive, rigid show. The rest of Könst’s paintings feel staged, drafted, and refined. In other words: they’re communicating an effort or expertise that doesn’t mesh with their subjective aspirations. Yes, the paintings are successfully illustrative of tenderness, of metamorphosis, of curiosity, yet those feelings are by and large absent in Könst’s style, which is over-certain (and at times overworked) in its contouring and color. The painter is perhaps too attentive to logic. Still, I love the wrench Könst’s Pan painting throws into the gears of the show. It’s foreboding, joyful in speed, and it amplifies the show’s mystique, functioning almost as a cliffhanger. (Pan is a hectic guy, god of the wild, etc., so it fits...)

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Forever - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Mark A. Rodriguez
Chris Sharp / July 20-September 7, 2024

Middle C played over and over, moderate tempo, consistently. Does it qualify as music? Maybe. Music-al? More likely. But it hardly makes an album, let alone a song, a chord, or even a dyad.

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August 12, 2024

The Miraculous Arms - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Karimah Ashadu, Mohamed Bourouissa, Salim Green, Senga Nengudi, Christelle Oyiri, Pol Taburet, Minh Lan Tran
Curated by Martha Kirszenbaum
François Ghebaly / July 27-August 24, 2024

This show has, maybe by far, the best video viewing room I’ve encountered. Plush rug, muted walls, 5:1 surround, crisp projection, near perfect darkness. (Kordansky had a black box viewing room built in 2020, I think, and that was good, too.) Karimah Ashadu’s videos in here are absolutely the highlight of the show, especially Machine Boys (2024), a short, essayistic film about okada riders in Lagos. In that film, the artist’s cinematography is aggressive and patient at once, and her editing (specifically the duration of her portraiture) allows precarity to bleed through the characters’ hostile fronts. Salim Green’s paintings are a nice counter to the noise and scale of Ashadu’s video work. His small paintings on felt are like Robert Ryman with a Joe Bradley update, though there are moments of color and texture that are unique to him. I’m not sure if the Tetris-style presentation is effective, though: it feels a little too random, and I can’t tell if it’s one work, or nine, or twenty-six (if I counted correctly). I’d prefer something more serial to highlight his moves as a painter. Mohamed Bourouissa’s photos are great and play with fashion aesthetics in a way that’s resistant. Anyway, it’s an exhibit loosely framed around post-colonial identity that’s less didactic, more international, and to be explored, which makes it fresh in its approach.

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August 5, 2024

Time After Time - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Kelly Wall
Various Small Fires / June 29-August 17, 2024

There’s an authority to this work. It’s outside and plain, a casual affront to work that hedges and hides and explains. That’s okay, it says to Art That Cares, go on without me, I’ll chill here. Wall’s lawn chairs are lawn chairs – their frames sometimes seem to be actual frames – and yet, because of their stained glass weave and entwined shapes, they’re also definitively not lawn chairs. If they were sat in, they’d at once shatter and maintain form, and that tugs them toward a curious un-identity. The chairs are then somewhat open and slippery, and so I think of how Rosalind Krauss described the linguistic I, here, and now as “vacant seats” to be filled by those who speak them. You very much see what you choose to see, and that shifts as you move with the light. Wall’s chairs can be typically American, typically summer, typically yard, but as we know chairs can connote all sorts of things. One time on the internet I saw a lawn chair used as a weapon outside a Kenny Chesney concert. Stained glass confuses all that, with its ties to the church and things more medieval. And then, because it's glass, and we’re outside under the sun (the siting of this work is superb), you literally see yourself reflected in these objects while also seeing through them, to the ground, which is not the ground but a mediated, colored image of it. The personal is further emphasized by Wall’s solitary circle of aluminum objects, which encloses nothing, or rather, which encloses a vacant space for you, presumably to be yourself, a chair, with other chairs in the backyard. So there’s agency here, and freedom, and that’s refreshing at a time when art is nothing if not constrained and on defense.

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Cruising - ONE STAR
Dabin Ahn, Stephen Aldahl, Mario Ayala, Tyler Christopher Brown, Drew Escriva, Brittany Fanning, Mark Flood, Zhamak Fullad, Shana Hoehn, Raffi Kalenderian, Mikael Kennedy, Nathaniel Matthews, Liz Markus, Jasaya Neale, Estevan Oriol, Michael Rikio Ming Hee Ho, Jacob Rochester, Sam Sae Jin Chun, Adam Stamp, Eleanor Swordy, Wolfgang Tillmans, Georgina Trevino, Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack
Alabaster Projects / July 13-September 22, 2024

If I made a show called Dick and only included portraits of people named Richard, I would be doing a disservice to dick. Cruising does something similar here by almost exclusively (and redundantly) showing work about cars.

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Lumber – ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Maxwell Hendler
The Landing / July 13-August 24, 2024

If your aesthetic is ‘conceptual Cabela’s’ and you’ve got $40k, boy do I have a show for you. Hendler – known for his excruciatingly precise, realist paintings dating back to the 60s – here shows very little effort as he mounts pieces of wood to the wall. That’s it. Some wood does appear to be sanded or scratched (though perhaps in transit, rather than by the artist), and one work has a handful of nails in it. Yes, when you think of commercially sourced wood you think of Sherrie Levine’s knot paintings or Donald Judd’s plywood sculptures. There is, however, more intention and intervention in those works than Hendler’s, plus they were done in the 70s and 80s, years ago. I also think of more blunt readymades like Merlin Carpenter’s pallet works from a few years back, but, again, those are armored by a concept steeped in Marxist theory and art-labor critique. As far as I can tell, Hendler is interested in the act of noticing and inspecting, of letting material inform artistic choice rather than vice versa, and those are beautiful ideas, and necessary. The work, though, is not.

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August 3, 2024

Worlds Within Worlds – TWO STARS
Srijon Chowdhury, David Muenzer, Erin Jane Nelson, Veronika Pausova
Gene’s Dispensary / July 20-August 31, 2024

Good works by Erin Jane Nelson and David Muenzer. I actually really like Nelson’s quilted wallwork over the contoured stretcher, probably because I like Cosima von Bonin’s work and Mike Kelley’s shaped paintings. The work has a balance that allows it to be felt almost abstractly, and immediately, and enough going on to lure me in for a closer look, an inspection of surface, of staining, and of the photos collaged. I guess all of the stuff here is good, honestly, just the sum of its parts doesn’t amount to much for me.

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Signal Fires – TWO STARS
Tanya Brodsky, Eduardo Consuegra, Yaron Michael Hakim, Saj Issa, Hilja Keading, Hings Lim, Muna Malik, Nobuhito Nishigawara, Hayley Quentin, Sarah Rosalena, Lenard Smith, Claudia V. Solórzano
Tanya Bonakdar / July 20-August 30, 2024

I’m not sure if these works really have much in common. Things feel shoehorned together. I like Tanya Brodsky’s Deadbolt, and Hings Lim’s Flaming Tower… rare to see burning candles in a gallery space.

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August 1, 2024

Valley of the Dolls - THREE STARS
Julia Thompson
Dries Van Noten Little House / July 27-August 31, 2024

There’s something sickly about this work – about the low-lit plastics, the entombed beauty products, the overdose of undersaturated color – and it’s too forward to write off as unintentional. People will dismiss it as “pretty,” or even aspiring to be pretty and failing. That is wrong. Things here are diseased, libidinally. Makeup doubles as an asphyxiant, calcified in wax that creeps along the floor toward us, like runoff from a landfill. The waste of desire. That link to the unconscious, of what’s beneath us, frames the coincidence of phallic and embryonic form in Thompson’s drawings, and the claustrophobic shelves and sublevels in her arrangements. To investigate Thompson’s work, further, is to realize it will probably decay at some point that isn’t now, but might be soon, which relates it more to a sort of anticipated jaundice than something more suddenly nightmarish. And so the potential of decomposition is cleverly (dare I say also accidentally?) positioned here, in the heart of WeHo, the preservation capital of the world, at a luxury fashion boutique that prizes youth and beauty. To imagine a PR exec heading down to Dries from Soho House, expecting to see some pretty Kelley Kandor colors, only to be met with a degenerating, subconsciously startling, sort-of-ugly alchemical beauty installation where teeth become nipples become unplaceable, insidious sinews... well, it’s a lovely little thought. Anyway, nothing is that new here, per se, nor do things feel terribly precise or spirited, and I think the video is a stretch, but situationally I love the show’s potential to meet an audience that least expects it.

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July 30, 2024

Dogs & Dads - THREE STARS
Taylor Marie Prendergast, David Sipress, Karl Haendel
Diane Rosenstein / July 13-August 24, 2024

Prendergast’s video is the highlight of this show, and the gallery undersells it: it’s hidden behind a wall, on a very small monitor, with wireless headphones only for the audio. In a way that the rest of the show is not, the video (Father, Daughter, Holy Spirit) is unending, out of control, lurid, and brash. And, in all of these ways and more, it shakes the exhibit from its didactic and authoritarian middle to chafe at the fringes of what it means to be a father, or, rather, what it means to be absent of one. Instead of coloring and countering the monochrome wallworks with Prendergast’s video, however, the gallery chooses to center Haendel’s video on a big screen with stereo sound, a video that is structural, if not plain, and that merely rehashes the rest of the exhibit. Haendel’s audio, echoing throughout the space, actually simplifies the wallworks, which aren’t really all that simple... i.e. it makes them drab. So, if you want to realize the show’s potential, put on Prendergast’s wireless headphones and take a walk around. (The headphones have good range.) It flips everything. Her audio is leering and unstable, psychosexual and unpracticed – a bit McCarthy, a bit Trecartin, a bit something else. It gives the show the punctum that it lacks, and throws things out of balance in a wonderful way. It’s combative, agential, and alive. And it should fill the space, rather than be sequestered as it is now. I wasn’t around in the 1960s, but I imagine this is how all those people felt when they watched The Wizard of Oz go from black-and-white to technicolor, right there on the television in front of them.

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Flight Paths - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Sarah Cunningham
Lisson Gallery / June 20-August 24, 2024

These paintings speak to concerns of an era we are no longer in, which is how I feel about much of the current run on abstraction. Beautiful, but without updates, aesthetic or otherwise. Cunningham’s most successful works here are less finished and fast, and leave empty or open space unadorned. You can see this in Ghosts in the Throat – where an aggressive, thick stripe of canton rose disrupts an otherwise balanced blue – as well as in Coral Chorus and Sonnets (paintings with mirrored compositions). There are moments in these paintings when subsurface textures run counter to the gesture of the paint, and those are strong, too. Cunningham’s color and movement (and gestural blurring), together, evoke a durational sense of nature, which gives these paintings a more filmic feel in that they’re sculpting in time rather than capturing it. Ultimately, though the works are more than decent, and everything coheres, things just aren’t being pushed forward.

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Progeny - TWO STARS
Chiffon Thomas
Michael Kohn / June 20-August 17, 2024

Are we starting to see through this type of stuff yet?... Work that violently panders to biennial curators and museum boards? It’s art with a very specific aftertaste, something like museum fatigue if it were a drug administered by HR-compliant employees doing the Brat dance at lunch. Which isn’t to say Thomas’ work here is bad. It’s not. It’s good. But it’s the type of good that’s “right,” i.e. it affirms a worldview and elicits nods of approval from the already-converted. Regardless, Thomas has some strong impulses, including two structural interventions, and a material interchange of stained glass (fragile, protected) and human skin-like silicone (resilient, under threat). These moves make me think about visibility and value in new ways. In sheer scale, the inverted cement obelisks are impressive, even if they’re a bit overt in their symbolism and their allusion to Bourgeois’ Femme Maison. Overall, in Thomas’ work, there’s a palpable (and explicit) desire to critique the invisible architectures and erasures that have informed our present, and that’s admirable. It’s hard, though, to see how that can be done here at Michael Kohn, a rich, cavernous gallery that uses a residential back entrance in lieu of its now-locked main gate on Highland, presumably to prevent the people living in tents out front from wandering in and spoiling our view of Thomas’ institutional critique.

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July 29, 2024

Hail Mary - FOUR STARS
Marie Angeletti
Gaylord Fine Arts / July 6-August 17, 2024

We need many more shows like this. Many many many. In The Poetics of Space, Bachelard describes daydreaming as the act of fleeing a nearby object and ending up “in the space of elsewhere.” Angeletti puts us exactly there by gently, yet decisively reframing the room with her found aluminum sheets. To me, the show emphasizes things held together -- Angeletti is even explicit about the rivets in her poetry-as-exhibition-text -- while also asking us what exactly is being held together. To watch the light change over the bronze-ish aluminum sheets -- to watch it overexpose and deflect, to notice how it recasts otherwise ordinary moments on the wall -- is to be brought into the room, to be made more aware of where I am. It also makes me more aware of where I am not, which, by way of the art, is curiously also here. The bracket sculptures in the entryway, in framing absence, further accentuate this point. Angeletti does well to place the work here, at Gaylord Fine Arts, an apartment-turned-gallery on the top floor of a 14-story building on top of a hill in LA. It’s a position we’re seldom in (LA being a horizontal city, full of white cube galleries with searing artificial light), so for Angeletti to make it strange rarefies an already rarified space.

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Crisis Actor - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Brad Urman
Alias Books East / July 12-?, 2024

Dreamcatchers of downcycling…? There’s probably something more substantial going on in the work – like, they’re each made from a single shirt, it seems, so maybe there’s a ‘mutation of the whole’ thing going on. I like that they’re sited in a used bookstore: the webbed fractals encourage a wandering, or an attention to wandering, that feels a lot like scribbling in the margins of a book, or coming across someone else’s notes, as you weave through narrative. Good bookstore.

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Heat – ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Maiya Lea Hartman, Manal Kara, Emma Beatrez, Julia Garcia, Cameron Patricia Downey, Christina Ballantyne, Ish Lipman, Rachel Collier, Tynan Kerr
Curated by HAIR+NAILS
Easy Does It / July 11-August 24, 2024

More of a showcase than a show. I think it’s mainly artists from Minnesota. Julia Garcia’s paintings are always worth a look, but I never feel like I gain much that I can’t see on Instagram. Except for scale, I guess. Other than her work, everything here is skippable, or at least positioned in a way that makes it feel skippable.

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Animal Urns and Evocations – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Nina de Creeft Ward
South Willard / June 30-?, 2024

I always forget if this place is a gallery or not. And not in the sense that their work is so wildly avant-garde that it dissolves the idea of a gallery, just that it sometimes feels like a showroom or design studio. Anyways, fantastic ceramics here, even if they’re repetitive. The stuff is soothing and clever, and the raku firing gives it a forever feel.

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Stage Presence – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Lacey Lennon, Arlene Mejorado, Andrea C. Nieto and Emilianna Vazquez, Sasha Phyars-Burgess
Curated by Keko Jackson
Fulcrum Press / June 29-August 4, 2024

A decent show that asks you to spend time in it. I’m most struck by Arlene Mejorado’s photographs, which wait patiently on sunlight to cut through almost entirely natural scenes. As I look, though, her images sort of rise from their own shadows and reveal something unnatural, or something incorporated which doesn’t naturally belong. In El Patio de abuela (Grandmother’s Patio), for example, it’s that plastic bucket at the base of the tree. These objects and the image compositions – as the show title would suggest – clue us into the ‘staged’ elements of the photographs, or at least get us wondering to what degree they are staged. For some reason I think of Martel’s La Ciénaga, probably because Mejorado has captured something lush, and still, and tainted, all at once. My only complaint is that Mejorado’s photos are a half-step too high contrast, and a little too clean, and so they feel decided... or decidedly dramatic, actually. I guess by knowing what an artist wants me to feel, I struggle to feel it.

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Dandelion – TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Seth Lower
Fulcrum Press / June 29-August 4, 2024

Nothing here really rakes me in. A good show ought to rake you in. Maybe I was raked in? I go to the books first, and then to the corner, then back to the books. I flip through one. I look up at a couple framed photos on the wall. Insofar as Lower was digging when he took these photos, I feel like I am digging more. I’m trying to notice what he noticed, but I don’t have his eyes, and he’s not really showing me – he’s not using light or line to direct my eye. So this is similar to slow cinema, but for photography. And, while slow cinema can be passive and even encourage a drifting of the mind, this type of slow photography really requires an activity, a searching… and it encourages a sharpness of the mind, or at least more caffeine. Emotion is subtle for me here, but it is there. Gosh, I don’t know.

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Hyperobject: Art in the Age of YOLO – ZERO POINT FIVE STARS
Ryan Crudgington, Chandler Dangaard, Mae Noland, Violet Treadwell Hull, Peña Espinoza Peña, Felix Quintana, Gabriel Tolson
Curated by Emma Diffley
Fellows of Contemporary Art

“Art in the Age of YOLO”???

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July 22, 2024

Markus Lüpertz - Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - FOUR POINT FIVE STARS
Markus Lüpertz and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Michael Werner / June 22-September 7, 2024

Brilliantly paired. There’s patience, and a sense of being out of time. Or maybe apart from it. There’s also joy. Aggression. I think I’d get all this from Lüpertz anyway, especially as he gets older, but the pairing with Puvis adds something immortal. I see ghosts everywhere. They’re brought out by gesture. By canvas left unmarked. By Lüpertz’s pallid, sculptural figures. By Puvis’ fragmented arms and torsos. And by the rushes of painters long gone, scattered throughout. The whole show sort of devours and spawns itself, at once. You have Lüpertz paintings that are also plainly studies of Puvis’ studies for his paintings (murals) that served as studies for Gaugin, Picasso, et al, whose paintings fed into the lineage that created Lüpertz. It creates this referential timewarp through art history that allows Lüpertz to meet himself with fresh eyes.

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Salt Water - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
MJ Torrecampo
Steve Turner / June 29-July 27, 2024

Steve Turner is the Death Star of art made for Disney adults. He’s never seen cartoon-adjacent figuration he didn’t like. And I say this respectfully: Turner has three or even four shows running at once, in a labyrinth-like space, with apparently massive storage capacity, so he’s either making good money or about to run out of it. Anyway, this show is one of the few Turner shows that I don’t consider completely skippable. Torrecampo’s paintings are narrative-forward and heavy in proportion play, and each fills into a greater emotional whole that complicates ideas about distance, warmth, and sorrow. Most affective in Torrecampo’s work is their use of an elevated, floating perspective, which makes me think of the space where my long-gone relatives must hover when they’re watching over me. For the artist – who is alive – to paint from this angle adds to a feeling of joy you cannot touch, or despair you cannot heal. I have an urge to comfort the subjects in the paintings, or to reassure them, which reminds me of how I feel when I look at Tetsuya Ishida’s work. The paintings edge toward Nicole Eisenman, too, though definitely without Eisenman’s aggressive style play, and so my mind wanders: can we blame Eisenman for that decade of figurative painting delirium we just had? So many painters aspired toward her work, but lacked the pastiche or the skill or the education to come anywhere close, and for gallerists that was okay, because they’re salesmen and they’ll find a mark (“you see, it creates empathy, and it… um… recapitulates the colonial gaze…”). Enter the Facebook millennials passionate about comic franchises, Corporate Memphis, and, of course, Disneyland, and you have a figuration bubble that has thankfully burst.

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I Never Promised You A Rose Garden - ONE STAR
Brittany Fanning
Steve Turner / June 29-July 27, 2024

How can an artist paint such meaningless paintings and then do it over and over again? Over and over and over again? To what end? I don’t think she’s using seriality as a concept here; I don’t think it’s a redirected critique of labor. She can paint in more meaningful (or at least more striking) ways, I’ve seen it. These feel like pattern tests for wallpaper.

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Sleeping with Ghosts - ONE STAR
Giorgio Celin
Steve Turner / June 29-July 27, 2024

Not really that exceptional. I’m sure people will like them and hang them in their homes. They would also look good in a children’s book, or on Instagram, or in a magazine shoot. In a gallery like this, nothing really feels that special or specific, is what I’m saying. Everything is there to be sold, spaced perfectly and manufactured consistently like products on a shelf.

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July 16, 2024

The Science of Last Things - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Audrey Leshay
Human Resources / July 12-14, 2024

Ohhh how refreshing. All these small paintings are thorough and tricky, yet still plainly ask us to look and decode. They’re not really hiding behind a thing. (Everyone’s always hiding these days...) In a way the show reminds me of the nakedness and cumulative effect of Frampton’s Nostalgia, with each image (and its duration) reframing and also evading your experience of the image prior. An afterthought of a red notebook page in one painting – with the artist’s schoolish practiced signatures and a pencil sketch of an eye – integrates with petrified wood in another, cocooning the personal with the almost eternal, and sort of flipping them, too, through the act of painting. The whole show is hyper-focused, like the artist is proving that a single, very very small dot on a page is not only actually three-dimensional, but also intimate. I can’t really explain it better than that. I probably could’ve done without the sculpture and some of the paintings, but it’s a big space. It works. That the show was only up for three days further serves its point. I also love the artist’s exhibition text, which functions as a part of the show, rather than a supplement to it.

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Thirst for Silence - THREE STARS
Will Sheldon
C L E A R I N G / June 22-July 27, 2024

A bit contrived, though I guess it’s risky work. Or is it risky-kitsch? Either way, it toys with the puritan strands of the art world, and that’s good... The content alone is unlikely to scare anyone, so any effective horror (or taboo-stoking) here has to surround Sheldon’s position and the viewer’s perception of it. In a sense, the exhibition has to perform without us clocking it as a performance. By and large, in the front room, I buy it. It’s creepy. Sheldon’s subjects are almost all pubescent girls, rendered lifeless with black voids for eyes (think Modigliani or Laurencin), stilted and smooth like porcelain dolls (Bellmer), in private and intimate moments. His tonal arrangements are sickly, too, specifically his use of dirty nickel yellows in tandem with green ochre against desaturated pink. Naturally, I consider the artist: how he wields power in his imaginary, how he mixes the macabre with erotics and youth, and how he titles the whole thing Thirst for Silence. Sheldon sews doubt, and sparks a dilemma of acceptability around that age-old question (of the last decade)... you know the one: cAn YoU sEpArAtE aRt AnD aRtIsT? Which is a drab question, but Sheldon is cagey enough to prompt us to think about the contours of the question without attributing the ask directly to him. And then we have the back room... the back room sours the show. It has a small painting, styled after Bacon and also Goya’s Saturn, that shows a seated man (presumably a stand-in for Sheldon himself) tearing the blouse off one of the girl-dolls with his teeth, as she lies limp and unconscious across his lap. Though it’s a strong painting on its own, in the frame of the show it’s a letdown... an unearned, self-conscious bid for shock. Horror illustrated, rather than embodied. With it, Sheldon pulls the ripcord on all the discomfort and tension built in the front room, and reveals his hand as a troll or second-rate edgelord. Like a thriller that waits until the last scene to reveal it’s actually all fake. Play by the rules you set. Don’t be scared.

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Written on Water - THREE STARS
Park McArthur, Diane Severin Nguyen, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Cathy Wilkes
Matthew Marks / June 29-August 17, 2024

A cold show. There’s a lot of distance in here; nothing’s immediate. McArthur’s strange polyurethane monoliths are fantastic. They’re large and centered, and they cue me to think of density and material – and also time and shifting form, because they seem to be used, or unsquished – and that thread runs through the rest of the works seamlessly. They’re also very basic readymades, which unlocks Wang’s approach to the Agnes Martin imitation paintings as a pseudo-material inquiry, as well as a more subjective one.

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Weird Rain - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Daisy Parris
James Fuentes / June 8-July 20, 2024

I can’t quite figure out how to engage with these paintings. They’re awake, yes, and Parris saturates them with punches of yellow that imply electricity or sickness or violence. I like that. And then there are the words and poems, scrawled on scraps of canvas and pasted over the abstractions. The scraps stick out – literally, formally, and materially – so, for me, they’re the focus, immediately. And though the press release argues that these text pieces are a “painterly gesture” and “another form of brushstroke,” they’re actually decisively foreign and internally coherent on an otherwise enigmatic surface. They’re superficial. Their message dictates my read, and overwhelms Parris’ work. They close the paintings. Which is not to say that I don’t like the content of the fragments: they’re at times romantic, urgent, playful, and painful. Just, as a whole, I wonder how I’d feel if things were a bit more incorporated, or obscured, as they are in Your Final Shape, where I have to fight for words erased, and look to the whole painting to make sense of the words that aren’t.

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It Never Entered My Mind - ZERO POINT FIVE STARS
Lindsay Adams, Greg Breda, Grant Czuj, Shanique Emelife, Alexander Harrison, Braden Hollis, Michael Igwe, Harminder Judge, Mario Moore, Taj Poscé, Harmonia Rosales, SANGREE, Hammzat Tahabsim, Thiang Uk, Chantal Wnuk, MELO-X
Curated by Michael Sherman
Sean Kelly / May 18-July 27, 2024

I’m offended immediately upon entering. I get that it’s July, and we’re chilling, but what gallery lets their associates blast Chief Keef (and I like some of the Chief Keef songs...) over the Sonos during open hours? Apparently not this one, actually. Here it’s intentional... somehow worse! The Chief Keef is on a playlist -- which also includes John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, and many others -- that’s part of the show, framed as “music direction” by someone named MELO-X. If this sounds bush league, that’s because it is, though it’s somehow still more lucid than the haphazard show it accompanies, which includes a ceramic vase with Nike symbols on it, colorfield-type abstraction, collage works, and portraits channeling Black speculative fiction. Someone please save Harminder Judge (and Chantal Wnuk, I like her work) from this horror.

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Days of 2024 - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Eve Fowler
Morán Morán / June 28-August 17, 2024

Fowler puts 2024 in her title and nowhere else. Her show may have been useful in the early aughts, or perhaps seen as timely around 2017, but today it feels late. Though, really, the show is two shows: there are the new text-based paintings, and then there’s an entirely separate video installation that showed over a year ago in New York. So it’s hard to approach her show as a singular, current thing. No matter, the video piece (Labor) is strong. It’s frantic and disjointed in a way that’s somehow soothing. The nine monitors highlight women artists at work – painting, folding, molding, sketching – and, taken as one, it’s hypnotic with a beehive-like perpetual motion. The rest of the show drags; the work is redundant and on defense.

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Diving for Pearls - TWO STARS
Bradley Bell, Pippa Garner, Reverend Joyce McDonald, Andrés Monzón-Aguirre
STARS / June 26-August 10, 2024

The works don’t relate. The Pippa Garner drawings and sketches are engaging. STARS doesn’t even bother with an exhibition text. The show knows what it is. It’s summer. Carry on.

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At the Lace Shop and Other Light Drawings – TWO STARS
Lisa Oppenheim
Tanya Bonakdar / May 11-July 13, 2024

History moves fast so we tend to forget about what we forgot. This exhibit tries to remember it. Not much going on, though.

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July 15, 2024

Monuments - TWO STARS
Eli Russell Linnetz
Jeffrey Deitch / June 29-August 3, 2024

When I see Linnetz’s Mount Rushmore pizza oven, I want to stuff his entire show in there and incinerate it without prejudice. The whole thing is a spectacular failure. Has everyone seen Kiyan Williams’ sinking White House at the Whitney Biennial? Well, it’s more obvious than Linnetz’s sinking Statue of Liberty, sure, yet somehow still far more interesting, and it’s objectively not interesting. I’m not being hyperbolic. Everything here feels like oversized merch. Which I guess is sort of what fine art is... And, I mean, if this is “the point” of “the show,” then the artist needs to “get” a “life.” More likely, though, Linnetz really does believe he’s saying something consequential, probably about American consumerism and icons and narrative production of the “end times.” Unfortunately, those bases have been well-covered (in much more subtle and effective ways) since at least the 1920s, definitely the 1980s, and especially (though redundantly) over the past decade. (And, of course, in the final scene of 1968’s Planet of the Apes). While Linnetz’s fiberglass sculptures would function more efficiently at a megamall or county fair, his paintings would function nowhere: they’re monochromes that ignore the durational capacity of monochromes. In other words, they’re meant to be ignored. I spend most of my visit trying to find something I like. What about the color of the walls? Yes, I like that. It’s a matte-fluorescent red, and it’s the key to the show. Up close I see the paint roller tracks and the white wall below. This makes me think of cheap things, and work done quickly with the intent of being undone just as fast. Which reminds me of Los Angeles, a city built to be rebuilt, or taken down, and I think this makes sense in the context of Linnetz’s show, which feels like an examination of American icons through the lens of someone who’s tragically and archetypally “LA,” with a scope so narrowly on trend that they miss out on everything else.

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Gas Station Dinner - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Isaac Psalm Escoto a.k.a. Sickid
Jeffrey Deitch / June 28-August 10, 2024

That Jeffrey still brings street artists into the fine art space is admirable. He’s historically good at it – so I don’t doubt he’ll have collectors to sell to – but the shine from his Art in the Streets show over a decade ago is wearing thin, and fast. And he understands this: the press release is composed and signed by Deitch himself, and written in the first person, which says to me that he feels the need to personally advocate for work that is otherwise meeting a pretty tired market. Escoto’s work is killer on billboards and walls because it's fast and pure and stumbled upon. Out there his characters interact with everything around them – fire escapes, advertisements, patterns in the brick. They grow out of the fabric of LA’s sprawl. His gallery-exhibited paintings are much different. They’re planned and precise, and lack the loose finish that makes his city work so compelling. In here, his narratives are confined to a formal frame and unspontaneous encounters.

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Tone Poem - ZERO POINT FIVE STARS
Aiste Stancikaite, Alexis Mata, Alison Blickle, Amy Lincoln, Austin Lee, Ben Sanders, Eric Shaw, Charline Tyberghein, Daniel Byrd, Felipe Pantone, Gavin Lynch, Jackie Head, JJ Manford, Joe Reihsen, Laurens Legiers, Luke Diiorio, Marina Kappos, Matt Phillips, Michael Craik, Nathan Ritterspusch, Nick Thomm, Peter Mohall, Paul Riedmüller, Richard Burton, Russell Tyler, Ryan Crotty, Sally Kindberg, Seffa Klein, Thomas Trum, Tim Biskup, Tim Brawner
The Hole / June 29-August 17, 2024

No one asked The Hole to make a show more transcendentally awful than their last one, but they did it anyway. I’d rather look at hand-me-downs from Storage Wars, or unsold paintings from the South Beach galleries that sell Alec Monopoly and Kaws. Any synthesis here is nominal: it’s “art.” The Hole defends it all by saying something about a “tight tonal range” (an innuendo?) and by callously referencing monochromatic painting. The jury sees right through this. Just admit you’ve gone to the Hamptons, thank you.

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The Outside World - ONE STAR
Alexa Guariglia
Moskowitz Bayse / May 18-July 27, 2024

Not worth seeing. Reminds me of the style you see in “art deco” restaurants or in old New Yorker issues. Or an imitation of that type of thing. At its worst, it feels like Corporate Memphis.

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Possibility of Misunderstanding - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Aaron Elvis Jupin
Moskowitz Bayse / May 18-July 27, 2024

Why is this not in the main space? Jupin’s show is much more compelling than what’s up front, and it’s cramped back here in the viewing room. His airbrush paintings of layered masks have a subtle spirit, even if something is lost in the digitally drafted feel... and they do get stuck a bit in genre, I guess. Whatever: they’re fun to untangle. The drawings don’t do much, but they’re gentle, and they dissect, maybe, what we’re seeing in the paintings. Masks as a subject are sort of overtread at this point, so I like that there are suggestions of the work moving somewhere else, like the oversized aluminum chair wall decal. His Lighten Up work also edges in the right direction. Anything that gets this work moving away from ‘variations on a theme’ is good. I could do without the sculptures. Please turn the air conditioning on in this gallery.

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Laps of Chrysalis - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Lila de Magalhaes
Matthew Brown / June 28-August 10, 2024

The gesture of working with bedsheets implies intimacy and sensuality, so while de Magalhaes’ wallworks aren’t really dynamic on their own, they do function as a narrative bed for her ceramics to spring from. These ceramic vessels are the show’s forte -- they’re grotesque and nightmarish, and express a dark or even sick counterpoint to the more fertile and “becoming” scenes embroidered on the bedsheets. They collide the unnatural with the seductive, depicting what I think amounts to the poisonous side of being in love... or maybe the euphoric, yet simultaneously dreadful part of it... there are vessels labeled “fertilizer,” “pleasure nest,” and “ON!” overrun by maggots, drunk rats, and dying flies, respectively. So there’s this play between erotics and dread, and then, in the show’s final red room, we get a denouement, a respite from the frantic ceramics and tangled wallworks. The show thrives in its own disjointed, narrative logic.

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Stray Animals - THREE STARS
Charles Snowden
Nazarian / Curcio / June 8-July 13, 2024

These ceramics are dryly and precisely fun. They veer toward camp, yes (somewhere between Sontag and Kelley camp, as in it’s not a calculated misfire, but also not accidental), but the camp is only used as an initial hook. For example: I see the Addams family hand in many of the works, and it makes me want to disengage. It’s a level of genre in an art space that, when presented as sincerely as it is here, makes me cringe. An ‘alive,’ disembodied hand, again and again, in an art show? Still, I keep looking. Yes, it’s a hand, but it’s unpainted and unglazed, so it’s more like a surface that’s shaped like a hand... an adjective to a noun. Already, it’s slipping out of camp. And I spot some small glazed ceramics fixed to the hands – again, the hands are neutral, so the glazed bits pop – but they’re tiny tiny, and I can’t see them, so I move closer. And in that moment Snowden has won. This is a sign of good art: you move closer, necessarily. Up close, his ceramics favor a sort of allusive, enchanted arithmetic. I decode glossy chains full of icons and gnomes and animals and mushrooms that seem to evade or even counter their own associations rather than sit neatly within them. That said, the ceramics could be less ‘perfect’ – they seem to almost be factory made, like ceramic toys – and the show is a bit one note. But also, man, it just works. The same way the camp works, the same way the psychosexual allusions work, the same way the religious iconography works. It’s sincere and it’s curious, and it’s not quite as it seems.

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July 8, 2024

M Y S T E R Y V I L L A No. 1 - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Pedro Alejandro Verdin, Nick Stewart, Frances Stark, Ross Simonini, Kevin Bouton-Scott, Edward Salinas, Jools Rothblatt, Monica Noonan, Lana Nichols, Ruby Neri, Will Milner, Dirk Knibbe, Raffi Kalenderian, Tristan Hirsch, Luke Weapon Haeger, Emily Marie Fick, Joe Fastiggi, Matt Correia, Mia Carucci, Mikol Brinkman, Ida Badal, Negashi Armada, Orion Shepherd, Andrea Franco, Joshua Miller, Paul Pascal Theriault
SALA Mount Washington / July 7-?, 2024

Some good art, some bad, in a rundown house. There’s very little steering the ship and we like this. Maybe we love it. It offers hope for a counterpoint to the hyper-professional, ultra-fluorescent gyre that is the LA art scene. To be clear: there’s something about it that comes a little too close to Burning Man, and it does feel insular. It’s more of a supplement to the art world at this point than a foil, but whatever. Make your own. Make it better. Invite everyone. Absolutely pitch perfect placement of Dirk Knibbe’s blue steel sculpture, by the way, washed with sunlight in the overgrown yard. The sculpture slips around somewhere in the abstract design realm, but anthropomorphizes in the vines and makes itself strange. Negashi Armada’s painting is peculiar and fast and well-placed, too. I also like work by Joshua Miller, Ross Simonini, Tristan Hirsch, Pedro Verdin, and Ida Badal. Orion Shepherd’s paintings feel a little too uncomplicated to warrant an entire room, but his aluminum cast crab shell works make up for it. The whole show interacts with overgrowth and decay and passing light in a way that feels delightfully syncopated.

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Time Force - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Negashi Armada and Reese Riley
Quarters Gallery / June 29-?, 2024

Riley’s collages are worth poring over – they have the levity of something like Kelley’s Reconstructed History drawings, but they seem more mediated, more symbolic or allegorical. They’re to be inspected and also felt, and I think that’s not common. They also have a material instinct and a layering that would probably translate well to installation. I’m interested to see more. Armada’s drawings may have similar allusive aspirations, but they don’t accelerate beyond their anime roots. Fun, though.

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The Theory of the Green Painting - TWO STARS
Theodore Svenningsen, Nick Taggart, Eve Wood, Alaïa Parhizi, Ming C Lowe, Nadège Monchera Baer, Cyril Kuhn, Tulsa Kinney, Michael Falzone, Narsiso Martinez, Alicia Piller, Emily Elisa Halpern, Serena Potter, Ada Pullini Brown, Cameron Masters, Lucinda Luvaas, Mark Acetelli, Jill Sykes
Curated by Theodore Svenningsen and Alaïa Parhizi
Wonzimer / June 21-July 19, 2024

This is a good not-good show. There’s enough holding it together that it makes sense, even though the individual parts aren’t that impressive. It’s aware of what it is. I did like works by Nick Taggart, Jill Sykes, and Mark Acetelli.

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Rainforest Cafe - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Frances Stark, Ben Quinn, Karin Gulbran, Mia Scarpa, Melvino Garetti, Javier Ramirez, Sonya Sombreuil, Maija Peeples-Bright, Jason Meadows, Matthew Sweesy, Nina de Creeft Ward, Athena Paola, Julianne Lee, Ava Woo Kaufman, Rossana Romero, Thomas Linder, Jack Alving, Lara Karadogan, Ava McDonough, and Oskar Peterson
Curated by Higinio Martinez
Guerrero Gallery / June 1-July 6, 2024

A messy, messy summer group show, and wildly overhung. Not sure what’s going on in the backhouse space, either. No continuity. Works worth seeing here are by Frances Stark, Jason Meadows, and Melvino Garetti. Side note, and also relevant: Sianne Ngai talks about art being fundamentally gimmick-prone, and that’s no more evident in LA than at Guerrero Gallery. They’ve painted the floor here with a latticework of leaves and vines, and for their previous show they painted the building like a gift-shop... it all feels a little Mickey Mouse and a bit pick-me, like those Spring Break art fairs that coincide with Frieze every year. To follow the thread a half-step further: creating a contextual facade in this way (“immersion” as the gallery calls it) shows a lack of faith in the art, curation, and/or audience. It’s unnecessary hand-holding by the gallery, and prevents a more layered engagement. Propoganda for the exhibition text. Take out the gimmick, remove half the works, and you probably have a show.

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Soundings - FOUR STARS
Bruce Richards
Sea View / June 2-August 10, 2024

Richards’ paintings are precise and alive and essentialized. The cherry paintings add a sublime counter to the flame works. There’s a little Robert Bechtle in there and a little Ruscha, too, but his work is pretty distinct so ignore that. The gallery spends a lot of time trying to position him within a lineage of his peers at UCI in the 70s, which isn’t really useful. He’s not as innovative as someone like Burden, but that doesn’t really matter because his inquiries are more subdued and, in a way, more immediately accessible. The works also operate at a level of abstraction that’s satisfying: unlike a lot of disaster-core art today, Richards’ work deals with fatal imagery obliquely and without a direct referent. It’s peaceful because of it. Sedated, even. And also stirring. A good show and the space is refreshing as well, being Jorge Pardo’s artwork/house that MOCA exhibited once upon a time.

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California Suite - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Kim Fisher, Lecia Dole-Recio, Nora Shields
La Loma Projects / June 22-July 28, 2024

A solid, yet not quite inspired show. We know what Fisher brings, and it’s gentle and cool. Great. And Shields toys with material in a way that, while not yet risky, is freewheeling enough to keep me engaged. Dole-Recio, though, plays with the boundaries of her process, and, while that’s nice to see, it feels stiff and fatigued in the modernist frame of the show. Her work nakedly observes its labor -- her work is her labor -- and that’s intellectual, not immediate. It reminds me of Thom Andersen’s note that in New York everything is sharp and in-focus, and in LA things dissolve into the distance. Dole-Recio’s work does not dissolve, the subject is precisely the object’s being, and things are parsed through and figured out. Any entropy left by Fisher’s work (and even Shields’) is resolved in Dole-Recio’s and that’s just no fun.

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Abstraction of the Stream - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Bethany Czarnecki and Dan Levenson
Bozo Mag / June 15-July 13, 2024

This pairing is radically misguided, though aesthetically it does work. Yes, the artists share a formal exploration of line through color – Levenson’s is more ‘masculine,’ Czarnecki’s more ‘feminine.’ This is, it seems, where the gallery has drawn a surface-level link between the two. The artists are up to completely different things, though, in substantial ways. Probably aware of this, the gallery tries in the text to draw a more conceptual parallel, but it’s untenable. Czarnecki’s work is very O’Keeffe-y, with less dimension, and it never really rises out of its smooth, spritely comfort zone. It’s work to be gazed at. Levenson’s work is much different -- it’s highly conceptual -- and so I’m confused about the pairing. His project is far more coarse, more of a meta-questioning of knowledge production through worldbuilding than a formal inquiry (though that is there, too). Essentially, he’s made up a defunct art school (the State Art Academy, Zurich), and he imagines the work they created there, their assignments, their furniture, their names. It’s like if Beuys took on a project of reimagining Bauhaus or Black Mountain College to erode the myth of it all. Whereas Czarnecki aimlessly reaffirms (or recycles) the tenets of modernism, Levenson actively questions the process that engenders them (and their offspring). I do wonder about the depth of Levenson’s project, though. As in, how far can he take this? At what point does a concept questioning the contextual framing of art become the contextual frame for the art? And once it does – which it seems to have done – then what? Then he just exhibits alongside painters performing modernism for the market?

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Subjective Color - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Stan Brakhage, Sarah Crowner, Rosha Yaghmai, Julian Hoeber
Probably Gallery / June 15-August 17, 2024

There’s something fresh about this exhibit in that it’s efficient. It teases out ideas about diffusion and dimension of color in a way that feels essayistic, even loosely academic, with each piece referring back to the Brakhage video that grounds the show. The show also tugs each artist away from their sweet spot, marginally repositioning each work as something more than an aesthetic object. It’s hard to explain, but, for me, the Brakhage activates everything else. For example, whereas I usually view Crowner’s work as referring to Ellsworth Kelly and composition, I now see the work as a more active experiment in color and perception. The road doesn’t go both ways, though. The Brakhage is not enriched by the works around it, so its inclusion in the show feels like a bit of curatorial overreach. Nevertheless, it is used wisely, so... okay.

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June 29, 2024

The Hovering Life - TWO STARS
Amedeo Polazzo
Bel Ami / June 4-July 20, 2024

I’m not sure what this all adds up to. Do the still lifes work on their own? Hard to say because the artist painted fresco murals throughout the gallery, so the show becomes about something else. What that is, I don’t know. Material ephemerality? Maybe, but the paintings on canvas will live on, so that’d be a contradiction. The composition and erasure effect in Polazzo’s canvas paintings is skillful and satisfying enough, and the content strings together a loose narrative that I enjoy piecing together. Individually, Lost Flowers, Interiors, and Kitchen Ghost are strong. Single Mother doesn’t fit. I’d like to see this show without the frescos, and with less paintings.

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Flhat Earth Falling Water - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
David Shull
Noon Projects / June 21-July 27, 2024

Fine art that uses the American West imaginary as a conceptual springboard for identity exploration. No matter how good the work is, the motif is overcoded at this point and locks me out of an accurate read. The drawings are somewhat clever.

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Becoming a Swan (Going Through the Veil) - TWO STARS
Darren Cortez, John Erwin Dillard, Kristan Kennedy, Michael Lombardo
Noon Projects / June 21-July 27, 2024

It doesn’t make sense why these artworks are together. Maybe something about the earth? It’s not offensive, though. Boring but it works. I like the paintings on tablecloth.

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A Rose By Any Other Name - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Jerry Peña
Charlie James / June 1-July 6, 2024

On the wall towards the back is what looks like a white monochrome painting. It contrasts drastically with the rest of the exhibit, which is full of multimedia ‘street’ paintings made with stencils and broken glass and airbrush. I was fascinated by the monochrome painting. I looked at it up close, then from a distance. I noticed it had hinges on one side, and I remember a series of Josh Smith monochrome paintings with hinges that opened up to reveal cabinets full of ceramics or jewelry or something. So I approached the attendant to ask if this was that, if I could open up the monochrome painting. She said what monochrome painting. I pointed and said that one, right there. She said, “It’s part of the wall. Not a painting.” “But it has hinges,” I said. She looked at me, did not respond, and went back to working on her laptop. Point taken. I spent the rest of my time in here wondering how far behind the curve Charlie James is, mounting shows that belong in 2018 or even 2017. Maybe he doesn’t get out much. I guess if you don’t live in a city, or don’t participate in a city’s cultural fabric, this type of stuff is novel? I don’t know.

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Between the Warp and Weft - ONE STAR
Patrisse Cullors
Charlie James / June 15-July 20, 2024

Cullors refers to her art objects as “spiritual,” which I’d refer to as “a stretch.” They’re arrangements of items you’d find at a flea market -- mud cloths, shells, antique knives -- in wood frames, each one a banal variation on the last. To look at the work is to be unmoved. What’s more, it’s hard to reconcile the implicit capital drive of a gallery like Charlie James with the stated activist, anti-capital ethos of artists like Cullors. Or maybe their juxtaposition makes it easier to associate the two. Things are murky; I’m not sure. The dissonance is made more pronounced on my specific visit: as I read about Cullors’ self-described “sanctuary of reflection and empowerment,” the gallerists upstairs discuss the euphoria of popping zits. “If there’s anything on my body that’s a little bit raised – a bump of any kind, man – I squeeze it so hard and pop it and it feels soooo good.” The statement resonates as the only honest thing in here. Make sure you notice Cullors’ Abolitionist Handbook by the door, which, again, is a door to an art gallery owned by Charlie James (a former consultant for Microsoft; likely taking 50%) in the heart of LA’s Chinatown, which was built after the city demolished the original Chinatown to make room for Union Station. Not that it matters to me... but to an abolitionist?

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H O R S E S - TWO STARS
Noah Dillon, Mack Ludlow, Vanessa Zarate
Pio Pico / June 16-July 14, 2024

A far from cohesive group show. And maybe that’s by design? Each artist occupies a different room, so I question the degree to which they want these artists to be in conversation with one another. Using logic, it seems like they don’t want it at all. The question then becomes why? What’s the effect of segregating the works, which all deal figuratively with horses? Are they trying to make a statement about the differences in the artists’ views of horses? Or is it, like, an ironic critique of the one-room group show, of the mindless spattering of disparate objects thematically tied to the same idea? Most likely they’re just trying to make it easy for collectors – “Dillon in that room, Zarate there, Ludlow the next.” Dillon’s work is fashion photography in colorful resin frames (likely lifted from Matthew Barney), if you’re into that. Ludlow’s sculptures – and there are a ton of them, too many – can be curious if you’re able to focus on just one. Zarate has a couple decent paintings of horses. None of it is all that compelling, mainly because of how it’s curated.

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history as hypnosis V03 - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Alison Nguyen
Murmurs / May 30-July 6, 2024

Overtrained and overcritted, palpably. As in, I feel like Nguyen would have an answer for every question in a pit crit. The concept, the material choice, the layout – it’s all near bulletproof. Things are clear, concise, based in equal parts personal and ancestral history. So the work is justified (and looks good in documentation), but to what end? Ultimately, the show falls flat because it’s too reliant on the conceptual scaffolding and leaves very little room to feel. The crux of the issue is Nguyen’s video, the centerpiece of the show. It’s a three-channel narrative film that references alienation, geopolitics, and cultural memory. Again, the concept is strong, but the video suffers because it’s too considered, too essentialized. It’s self-certain in a way that inhibits the journey of discovery. (And the acting’s bad.) I’m more taken by Nguyen’s physical objects – especially the cigarette case work – because they act as hints and clues rather than answers. They’re ‘loose’ in a way that allows me freedom to explore. The artist’s strongest moments are the ones where she gives agency to the audience, where she activates a more inquisitive, scavenging mode. When the show slips into narrative/wonky/scripted/road-movie/sci-fi mode, it prompts too many questions – questions about form, about cinema, about hybrid filmmaking, about mimicry – that don’t serve the show.

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Udaya - THREE STARS
Gabriel Mills
François Ghebaly / June 20-July 20, 2024

This show makes manifest all the tropes you’d expect from a material-first, formalist approach: brooding and physical, with aspirations toward ‘transcendence’ and ‘sublimation.’ Lots of pretense. Which is not to say that the paintings are bad – there are really some striking compositions in here (specifically Qhelia and Gethsemane), their textures a joy to inspect – they’re just trying too hard to be spectacular. Still, Mills is one of the better young painters I’ve seen feeding the art world’s return to modernism. He can, with just a thin, cloudy wash of white, quell an otherwise chaotic painting entirely. And he’s precise: at times you get the sense that if he’d just chosen a slightly different shade of blue, or combed through the paint at a slightly steeper angle, he’d have ruined the entire thing. So, in a formal sense, the work is balanced, but it’s a predetermined, studied balance, not an inevitable balance. There’s very little evidence of risk or chance here. And so, the longer you look, the more labored the work reveals itself to be. They are the paintings of a perfectionist. I’d be interested in Mills letting his work get away from him. Let it ruin, make a move or two, and it’s done.

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American Gothic - THREE STARS
JPW3 and Grant Levy-Lucero
Night Gallery / June 22-August 31, 2024

I expected not to like this show... I’m oil stick averse and I’ve seen way too many glazed ceramic shows. But in American Gothic, JPW3 breaks ever so gently from his oil stick approach and varies the register of paint in work like Dead Man Walking; Levy-Lucero’s cookie jars, too, feel substantial and conceptually precise. What I’m saying is that I like the work... yet I still don’t like the show. The problem here is the curation, which is loud and over-considered. There’s a one-to-one-ness that makes things feel cheap. A ceramic reaper beside a painted one... a star-covered wizard fronting a star-covered painting... Get it? I can feel the curator associating at the most basic level, even as the exhibition text insists that this is a big, serious show about desire and truth and ideology. To feel the gallery’s hand is to feel repelled, especially with artists like JPW3 and Levy-Lucero, who are less academic. What’s funny is that the rote curatorial approach establishes an expectation of association that can be broken. And when this happens it’s rejuvenating. I’m talking about the moments that feel fought for. Specifically, there are three: JPW3’s twig & aluminum car wheel piece (Cookie Cutter PTSD Positivity), his soil and storage bin piece (SMD Surface Mounted Device), and his smallest painting in the very back (2). None have an obvious associate. These works stand out because they are flippant within an all-too-logical curatorial rhythm. For me, they are the least rehearsed. Ultimately, what’s strong about both artists is the spirit they imbue in their work. It’s a natural one, and instinctive, and the gallery doesn’t amplify that.

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False Spring - TWO STARS
Kemi Onabulé
Night Gallery / June 22-August 31, 2024

Some moody paintings reminiscent of Gaugin’s Tahiti paintings. It’s ok.

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Seascapes, Snowscapes, Kukeri - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Iva Gueorguieva
Night Gallery / June 22-August 24, 2024

Rauschenberg but make it Frankenthaler. There are a couple strong paintings in here and a few curious works on paper, but the body of work isn’t that strong. The best works camouflage their material (namely gauze) in the gesture, line, and texture of the paint – I’m thinking of Kukeri: Zmei, specifically. Most of the paintings are too crowded, too ambivalent in their material intent, or simply too one-note. Kukeri: Devotion is all three. I simply do not understand what the video is doing in this exhibit – the gallery hides it in the back corner, so it’s hard to find anyway.

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June 24, 2024

Kentaro Kawabata / Bruce Nauman - ONE STAR
Kentaro Kawabata and Bruce Nauman
Nonaka-Hill / May 30-July 20, 2024

A disrespectful show if you like Nauman. The glazed ceramics market overfloweth -- to keep up, Nonaka-Hill is doing the “make it conceptual” move, i.e. shoehorning their decorative ceramicist (Kawabata) into a show with a master conceptualist. In theory, this endows Kawabata’s work with an associative jolt, justifying inflated prices for otherwise “meaningless” art. In reality, the results are no bueno. To start, the show is intensely claustrophobic. Nauman’s sculptures deserve 10x the space they’re given; Kawabata’s ceramics (aesthetically fascinating on their own) line the walls like tools on a pegboard. To grasp Nauman’s work is to understand the power of it being withheld, underexposed, and spare, so to fill a closet with it and call it a show saps its power. It’s a brazen, self-interested gesture from a gallery that does not represent him. Second, Nauman and Kawabata’s artworks really don’t inform each other, a point which the gallery seems to be aware of (they acknowledge it toward the end of the press release). Finally, it just feels like a plain old cash grab, and an effort to move Kawabata’s work away from the simply ornamental (which is where it truly lives) toward something more considered. It’s worth noting that all the Nauman pieces on display have been sold and re-sold at auction, so, to the extent that Nauman even knows about this exhibition, it’s almost certain he wasn’t consulted in its making. There is no logic to why these Nauman pieces are here. They are, most likely, just the works Nonaka-Hill could get their hands on (“sourced from a variety of locations” per the associate) -- some prints from the 2000s here, a sculpture from the 80s there, a couple videos from the 60s in the back. Nothing coheres. The whole thing is unfortunate because it really doesn’t strengthen either artist’s position. I respect the gallery less, now.

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My American Dream: City of Angels - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Keith Mayerson
Karma / May 23-July 20, 2024

It’s hard to be plainly funny in a gallery show – not witty, or sarcastic, or smart, or ironic, but funny – because humor usurps art’s facade of “serious business.” Nobody’s paying 40k for funny, but they might pay it for deep meaning if you sell it right. And so here we have a show that is absolutely funny (though not only or even mainly funny), and equally as genuine, and I respect that. Mayerson takes risks with humor here the same way Sam McKinniss does with dramatics: through an almost cold, sincere lens. It’s a delightful approach that makes McKinniss’ dramatic work funny, and Mayerson’s funny work dramatic. That humor is especially apparent in the front room, where pop culture sings, though the back room has it, too, in a way that adds depth and currency to the figuration up front. Notably, Mayerson avoids repeating himself: each painting adds another note or rhythm to the show, ultimately spinning a narrative about psychogeography and the slippage of media, surveillance, and the extraterrestrial into a city’s fabric (specifically LA’s). None of this is possible without the initial dose of humor in paintings like Space Jam, where Michael Jordan really doesn’t look like Michael Jordan, and Cheech & Chong, where a desaturated approach flips Cheech Marin’s look from spaced-out to something more... normal.

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Sadamasa Motonaga - TWO STARS
Sadamasa Motonaga
Karma / May 23-June 20, 2024

Could be fun to look at.

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Space Between the Lines - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Alicja Kwade and Agnes Martin
Pace Gallery / May 18-June 29, 2024

Pace’s program is seductive in the same way I imagine leveling up an AmEx might be. And why is the gallery this far south on La Brea? Once you enter the right passcode, use the proper door, salute the guard on duty, and get past the gaggle of Big Little Lies associates, the show is ok. There’s some thought put into establishing line and bending it, and there’s an ease in spatiality and light that leaves room to think. I’d say the wall motif that runs through the exhibit is a bit heavy-handed, a sort of all-too-literal connection between the artists, and the melting mirror is an eyeroll. The marble snow piles are clumsy, too. Overall, things here feel like they can next be seen at the Faena in Miami Beach.

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Elements of Space - TWO STARS
Rachel Garrard
Nino Mier / May 18-June 29, 2024

Sort of minimal, transcendental-style paintings if the theme were “Santa Fe.” Not much here. Maybe something nice about the process of creating the pigments.

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Erzählerin - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Kyle Staver
Nino Mier / May 18-June 29, 2024

I can see why Mier underpays his artists. Here you can get a look at the last gasp of the naïve-figurative boom of the 2010s. And to think that we thought it’d last forever...

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The Proliferation of the Sun - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Otto Piene
Sprüth Magers / May 24-August 10, 2024

This is quick and precise, and yet quite affective when it’s viewed downstream of WWII and during the nuclear arms race. There is something lost by the projected performance being automated and not done live, but Piene is much more dead than he was in 1967, so this will do. Hearing him repeat “the sun, the sun, the sun” really does evoke the devastating end to the war, and also begs for a reprieve from that end. In the exhibition text, I saw photos of the original iteration in Cologne in 1967, and the space is small, like an unfinished basement, full of people laying together on the floor to watch the projections. There, the installation seems like shelter, it looks warm; here, in the empty upstairs at Sprueth Magers, it feels more sanitized, cold, and monumental. I wonder about this.

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The Perversion of the Visual - THREE STARS
Gretchen Bender
Sprüth Magers / May 24-August 10, 2024

It’s nice to look at the Pictures Generation because you can trace the lineage from Baldessari to Majerus to people like Wolfson/Ito without working that hard. It does seem, though, like the term is becoming a bit of a catch-all. While I can easily project 80s-laden media/capitalist dread onto Bender’s thirteen-monitor Dumping Core installation – replete with Benjamin and McLuhan’s semiotic entanglements, and the political considerations of someone like Barbara Kruger – I can just as easily see it referring back to the more plainly conceptual work done by Nam June Paik. Maybe it means more now than it did then. Ultimately, Bender’s work is just sort of a hypnotic and symbolic onslaught of consumerism from the 80s, and I’m not really sure if it’s the content that’s being addressed or how it’s packaged or both.

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Kirsten Everberg - TWO STARS
Kirsten Everberg
1301PE / May 18-June 22, 2024

I once saw a Diana Thater exhibit here and it was marvelous. There was also a Petra Cortright that year and that was great. This gallery tends to have good exhibits, this is just not one of them. And I like Everberg. What does it mean for her to go after the Hudson River School, at this moment in time? I don’t think that’s communicated. I can guess that it’s something about a reconsideration of nature, and our effects on it? I’m not really sure…

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June 18, 2024

The Flood, The Vessel, The Commune—how do we find each other? - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Julie Tolentino
Commonwealth and Council / May 25-June 29, 2024

Reminds me of work from the 2021 New Museum Triennial: equal parts machinic and organic, and imbued with a tired fatalism. While ten years ago this type of work might’ve been foreboding, it now reflects the values of a sect of the art world too thick to adapt. No matter, it is absolutely engaging. Concept here is essential, and hard to explain. Basically Tolentino translates a previous performance into binary code, and then uses it to automate machines that dip clumps of hair into barrels of crystal-making chemicals. Over time these objects grow and start to look like spore clouds or crystalline chandeliers. While there’s something beautiful about the clouds, the show’s industrial aesthetics and acoustics – chrome wire, kettle black barrels, jarring automated clicks – urge a far more pessimistic read. Something about the inevitability of industry, or the triumph of modernity over personal and collective history. That the hair is collected from friends and family only serves to reinforce the point. The human body is entirely absent and, in fact, unnecessary: the show will go on without us. The work speaks to a matrix of ideas that erodes agency and amplifies despair. Of course, art doesn’t need to inspire, but, with work like this having spent over a decade in the spotlight, one begins to wonder about the salience of Tolentino’s ideas here. What can be added in 2024 that we couldn’t grasp in 2017? With a pretty spectacular material and spatial approach, Tolentino ultimately rehashes a lot that we already know.

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밤, 낮, 달, 비, Speaking in Tongues - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Jesse Chun
Commonwealth and Council / May 25-June 29, 2024

Something is being communicated, but I can’t tell what it is. The mirrors on the floor feel unnecessary: they add dimension to the room but nothing else. The exhibit needs more context.

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Rumors - THREE STARS
Kim Gordon
O-Town House / May 17-July 6, 2024

This is a delightful little thing. The highlight of the show is upstairs, an “intake video” for Gordon’s long-running Design Office project. In it, Gordon talks to the gallery’s founder Scott Cameron Weaver about the space (which doubles as his home) as he takes her on a tour of it. In spite of the tongue-in-cheek premise, the video is pretty sincere and charming. It’s a sort of rhythmic diary film that activates Gordon, Weaver, and the space itself in equal parts. It has the same warmth and wandering patience that a lot of Mekas films do. There’s a fun doubling, too, that happens as you sit in the same space you see on screen -- you notice history (in the micro sense) and you’re a part of it. There Weaver is, on screen, smoking... and oh, sure enough, you can smell the smoke... and if you follow it he’s right there outside smoking, in real life. So, in a very basic way, the video produces space memory while also reflecting on it. It could be considered expanded cinema and, if it were, it would be considered a subtle, yet strong example of it. On the first floor is a more formal film -- Gordon’s ode, I guess, to Jeanne Dielman, just without the duration (which is, like, Dielman’s whole point). It functions, in a way, to ground the show in the ‘domestic,’ and that is about all it does. Also, don’t worry, Gordon’s drippy word paintings don’t make an appearance.

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Echo - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Raphaela Simon
Hannah Hoffman / May 11-June 22, 2024

One painting in here sticks out: Frosch (Frog), the one with blue checker. The style is something like Charline von Heyl, but underworked and without the risk. I imagine the artist is most comfortable with this painting, though. As in, it’s the most precise with the least amount of effort. Every other painting is a counterpoint to this one, in color, composition, approach, and feeling. Those ones feel uncommitted, like the artist is inching toward an idea that should be surrendered to. In one of Simon’s monographs up front, she speaks in favor of intuition and is quoted saying that too much “intellect and will can make a painting illustrative.” Point taken and, well, these paintings are illustrative.

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John Byrtle and Nicky Lesser - ONE STAR
John Byrtle and Nicky Lesser
Chez Max et Dorothea

What the hell’s going on here? So this is a nonprofit focused on contemporary surrealism? Raising money to acquire Max Ernst’s former home in the south of France? And the gallery is in MacArthur Park, LA’s face of urban neglect? And it’s unironically called “Chez Max et Dorothea”? (?????) That ‘chez’ implies a home and that Chez Max is across the street from a park full of people without homes is not lost on me. I’m not even categorically against galleries moving to neighborhoods with lower rent -- especially if it’s all they can afford -- but it seems like Chez Max owns this whole building? It all feels very 2017, and fits into an unfortunate vein of art history that belongs to women like Dana Schutz and Laura Owens. Why not do this near Silver Lake or Toluca Lake or any other lake that’s giving Saint-Tropez more than MacArthur Park Lake? (They found a body in there last week.) “You know what this neighborhood needs?” we were all thinking, “Surrealism.” If this is some sort of performance piece, or a backdoor commentary on the vanity of art... it’s working. Anyway, I try and fail to focus on the art in here. There are these playful sculptures by Nicky Lesser, of dogs unleashed and unconcerned. They’re made of plush bathmats and rugs and towels. One of Lesser’s dogs rests peacefully on a very clean carpet, and that reminds me of the guy I saw outside sleeping with his head on the concrete. It’s incredibly hard to divorce this space from its context, which weighs on the art, which is probably why Gaga moved out of here in the first place.

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Ra Shu - ZERO POINT FIVE STARS
Roscoe Mitchell
The Pit / June 15-July 27, 2024

Come on, man.

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Garden of Love - ONE STAR
David ‘Mr.StarCity’ White
The Pit / June 15-July 27, 2024

I think they’re just trying to sell stuff.

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Star Roving - ONE STAR
Dee Clements, Tamara Gonzales, Lara Schnitger, and Sydney Beach Zester
The Pit / June 15-July 27, 2024

Decorative?

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June 13, 2024

Ash Tree - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Lucy Bull
David Kordansky / May 11-June 15, 2024

Bull’s horizontal paintings in the North Gallery make me wonder if her studio has windows in it. They’re sort of an all-out attack -- an unrelenting, Kingdom of Heaven-level seige, Lucy Bull-style -- and they leave very little space to wander. And so I was relieved to see what she had in the South Gallery: tall and open paintings, with time in them. These paintings – specifically 4:28, 16:23, and 15:17 – use pools of color to ‘keyhole’ the canvas, to let the viewer dip a toe into, or gain respite from, her hard-charging style. This is a clever tactic, and welcome, as for a while her paintings have lived off essentiality and motion, but I never got the sense that I could fall into them. With these ones I can, so there’s something worth chasing there. The show would’ve been stronger with less paintings, though it’s a commercial gallery, so whatever. Bull uses orange very, very, very well. Maybe better than any painter I’ve seen. She scorches the North Gallery with it (to a screaming degree); she tempers it into a gentle iridescent effect in 3:10; and she structures 1:24 entirely with just a sliver of it. Some people would say her mark making is what makes her paintings hers, but I’d say it’s that orange.

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L’esprit dans le temple de l’âme - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
David Altmejd
David Kordansky / May 11-June 15, 2024

There’s less going on here than in Altmejd’s prior exhibition at Kordansky, which I think was two or three years ago. That I’ve seen his work before is important: part of the appeal of Altmejd’s work lies in the initial physical and subconscious reaction to it. The first time you see it, his stuff is unsettling; you really do get the things are alive. Expecting or preparing for this feeling, though, dampens the experience. You know how they say, with for example a Rothko, “Awww shucks I could go back to it over and over again and never feel the same thing twice.” If Altmejd’s work doesn’t do that – if its effect is tempered on repeat visits – does that make it not worth going back to at all? The second room shows a new wrinkle in his practice – unfinished works, in all white, that hint at and adopt form, but remain in a sort of workshop limbo. That room – smaller, quieter – seems to suggest a welcome collapse of process, a self-interrogation. However, I’m not sure if it’s genuine: Altmejd’s works are so perfect that, even in their “workshopped” state, these works feel very resolved.

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June 12, 2024

Qualia: I Feel You - TWO STARS
Medrie MacPhee
Vielmetter / June 1-July 6, 2024

MacPhee uses second-hand garments as substrate and does so without apparently commenting on industrial processes and downcycling, and in fact rejecting these associations in the exhibition text. Weird. I’m not particularly enchanted by any of the compositions, though the underlying garments do create a chorus of textures and sheens that holds me for a moment. Whatever, they’re still recognizable as textiles – obviously so – and that makes me think about materials, their histories, and ultimately their politics. But that dog won’t hunt, because context is withheld by the artist. It’s, like, one of the few abstract painting shows with the potential to be socially suggestive without being overwhelming… and yet they don’t even want it to be. If you like the vibe of Gee’s Bend quilts or the blockiness of some of Sadie Benning’s work then you’d probably like these.

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Still Life Stories - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
John Sonsini
Vielmetter / May 18-June 29, 2024

Sonsini knows how to *just* finish a painting and go no further, especially in his portraits.

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Primordial Sounds of the Avatar - ONE STAR
Tâm Văn Trần
Vielmetter / June 1-July 6, 2024

There are windows on the door. You can use them to look at the show from the hallway.

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all doors opened - TWO STARS
Chloe Saï Breil-Dupont
Nicodim / June 1-July 13, 2024

Photo realism disguised as magical realism. Technically solid, but that ultimately works against the artist. Feeling is not really there; good training is on display.

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Passage - FOUR STARS
Coco Young
Night Gallery / May 4-June 15, 2024

There are five paintings here and, individually, only one is really worth remembering. It’s a painting called The Pond, of red swans in hazardous water. It’s a painting under attack, it’s the smallest in the show, and it’s flanked by two large landscapes, Monet-like takes on a marsh and a bog. All three paintings have roughly the same composition, which makes The Pond all the more startling. Its searing red takes the place of marshy greens in Bog at Dawn and Le grand ruisseau; its ochre-brown water subs in for their pastel-washed streams. This corner of the exhibit feels very intentional: the three paintings play with the curatorial equivalent of Eisenstein’s cinematic montage theory. And then there are two paintings that, were this intended to be a showcase of Young’s work, I would’ve left out of the show. The show’s titular piece, Passage, is undercooked and streaky, and Yasmin has formal shortcomings (namely, the hard line of the subject’s shin) that pull us out of its content. But, when viewed as part of a whole – as shots in a sequence of shots – the paintings work. The show can be read and felt. I drift from a day dream to an afterthought, then I refocus to reality. And then, with The Pond, I can go to a place that is violent and sweet... I can imagine a revenge, or a hardening... It’s a place we all go, whether we want to or not, and the exhibit gives us permission to go there and then to come out of it. Strong, strong show, gentle and staggering, and very well considered.

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I Blame Nature - TWO STARS
Clare Woods
Night Gallery / May 4-June 15, 2024

These paintings are best absorbed from a distance. At that range, the style communicates gesture and freedom. To approach the paintings is to be let down: it’s easy to see, up close, where the artist laid down stencils/tape and carved out the painting’s figures with a utility knife. This approach allows her to paint very dark and precise backgrounds and let the gestural paint of the figures sing atop the aluminum. For some reason knowing how it’s done bothers me. What started as improvisational and free becomes manufactured.

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What Will You Give? - TWO STARS
Veronica Fernandez and Tidawhitney Lek
Sidecar Gallery / April 27-June 22, 2024

This was my first time in Night Gallery’s new Sidecar space. Did they really need another building in the exact same place? Anyways, this show. Not much here. It feels like it belongs at Sow & Tailor, or in a show with Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. Lek clearly considers using glitter to be worth doing more than once. I’m not sure if it is. Richie’s Liquor has a beautiful moment in the bottom left. I mean these are technically skilled painters, and the colors are vibrant, and the subject matter compelling enough, I’m just feeling forced a bit. Like, I know it’s a “human condition” show, and I know I’m being offered hope amidst chaos, but it all feels sort of vainly romantic. And constructed. (This place needs air conditioning.)

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Chaos Spawn - THREE POINT FIVE STARS
Ian Miyamura
François Ghebaly / May 18-June 15, 2024

A painter’s hoe phase comes just before they settle into a style, or at least an approach. The hoe phase is more visible than ever these days, mainly because galleries trawl MFA programs, scooping up underdeveloped, yet technically overtrained artists who are hyperaware of market trends. It’s so common that galleries have a rote formula for defending it, reminiscent of crisis PR: (1) acknowledge the “disparate” work head on, (2) comment on the myth of the signature style, (3) loosely reference the trail of art history, and (4) frame the artist’s gesture as an educated and formal act of subversion. No matter the gallery’s tack and tenor, though, their frame is smokescreen-y. Artists weilding multiple styles in one show are hardly ever precise (see: Brendan Lynch’s recent show at Good Mother).

Miyamura’s Chaos Spawn is a rare exception. The show is lean, and it’s coherent in spite of itself. The Mondrain-like grid paintings are painfully unpleasant on first look. They’re bleakly colorful in a show otherwise filled with relatively greyscale paintings, and are blatantly and unapologetically De Stijl/Neoplastic to the point of frustration. With time though, as I filter through the rest of the work -- the photorealistic Warhammer models, the impressionistic seagulls, the warped graphic text -- I keep coming back to the grids. They start to function as a tone setter, or a deep breath, or a sort of calibration that remind me of those color correction cards used in photography. This is, of course, what neoplasticism is all about – order and restoring it – and it allows the show’s more figurative works to traverse formal ideas about structure and freedom without feeling disjointed. Just as a painter dips into color theory to chase a desired effect within a painting, Miyamura dips into art history to chase an effect around a painting and within an exhibit. Things are in balance.

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hold shimmer wind - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Maia Ruth Lee
François Ghebaly / May 18-June 15, 2024

This is the type of work fading into the haze of the 2010s: biennialed out, socially and self-conscious, expertly banal. Lee’s video work telegraphs what’s being talked about in the exhibit, namely an exploration of belonging/unbelonging and a connection to land. Something like that. The video is the strongest (and smallest) part of the exhibit, and without it the show’s meaning falls away entirely. In a big way. The abstraction is empty and quick. Like if Heather Day were masquerading as a conceptual artist whose concept was “Heather Day + Netting Shadow.” Netting appears in the sculptures and installation, too – thematics! – and it appears... curiously... brand new? Like brand brand new. Like it was bought at the Home Depot yesterday, installed today, and cleaned an hour ago. For an exhibit so explicitly tied to memory, dissolution, migration, and dislocation, the artist’s material expression is offensive.

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Spring Group Exhibition 2024 - ZERO STARS
Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A.), Lisa Anne Auerbach, Judie Bamber, Deborah Brown, FriendsWithYou, Karen Carson, Nancy Lorenz, Marilyn Minter, Anthony Sonnenberg, Betty Tompkins, T.J. Wilcox, Rob Wynne
Gavlak / March 20-?, 2024

“Spring Group Exhibition 2024”???

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It Girl. - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Emily Ferguson
Nicodim / June 1-July 13, 2024

This is a poorly titled body of work. There’s just too much ‘it girl’ right now, generally. It’s an overcoded term. It’s Dimes Square, Dasha, and post-ironically in favor of the feudal system. It’s cigarettes and retinol. Modeled once for Eckhaus? It girl. Autofiction poetry? It girl. Made your bed? It girl. ‘It girl’ is ‘queen’ for girls with Vince Gallo on their vision board. It’s a woman’s to a man’s edgelord, yet somehow more and less vapid. Everything in this show refers back to the “it girl” -- the exhibition text, the content of the paintings, the press -- so it’s not *just* a title, it’s the show. And, in spite of the artist’s conceit that she’s complicating the “it girl,” one gets the sense that she’s actually just positioning herself as one. (Hard not to think of the hot girl painter trope here.) No matter, the title makes us compare this body of work to other recent “it girl” adjacent shows, most memorable (and effectively critical) being Catherine Mulligan’s Bad Girls Club at Tara Downs last year. This, I think, is not a good thing. What It Girl. really explores is Ferguson herself, in a soft, fleeting wash. Some of the self-portraits are satisfying and curious, especially the one modelled off Vermeer’s Pearl Earring. Her Heaven Sent work expresses a distant joy, an examination of the crowd and her place within (or without) it. We want more. These works feel intensely personal in a way that the paintings of characters like Carrie Bradshaw do not. The connection, then, isn’t really there, so attempting to engage with pop culture here feels like a force. The title sets an expectation of criticality and attitude that the work does not, cannot, and need not live up to.

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Maenads - ONE STAR
Maureen St. Vincent
Nicodim / April 11-June 15, 2024

Studied kitsch is something I least admire. This is a half-step from that.

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Broken Arm - ONE STAR
Vanessa Beecroft
Wilding Cran / May 18-June 22, 2024

The gallery is too small for the work. Just trying to make some sales. Nothing new here anyway.

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June 10, 2024

Páthos - TWO STARS
Nicholas Campbell, Grant Falardeau, Haniko Zahra
Curated by Grant Edward Tyler
Temple Projects / June 7, 2024

Why is Falardeau making work that looks relic-like? The Cloisters is cool because the stuff is old, not because the stuff looks old. Recreating “ancient,” like using optical illusions, can be a good hook/gimmick, but it’s a hook that doesn’t catch if the work doesn’t extend. These feel like props. Maybe Falardeaus’ work interacts with Campbell’s paintings in a positive way because they are sort of up to the same thing. Neither enliven Zahra’s paintings, which are vivid, yet overcooked, and seem like they belong at Steve Turner. Also, please dial back the Plato / Greek / True and Perfect Beauty Exists thing.

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Gazette - TWO STARS
Daniel Taylor
Ehrlich Steinberg / June 8-July 20, 2024

The paintings are, like, three-dimensional. But why? There’d be a little more whimsy in them if they weren’t. As they are, they feel planned. And why the sculpture? And what does this all really have to do with media consumption? The work isn’t good or bad. It’s fine.

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Chorus - THREE POINT FIVE STARS OR EVEN FOUR STARS
Phil Davis
Fernberger Gallery / May 18-July 3, 2024

If there’s one issue I have with this show it’s that everyone’s dancing around the subject matter of the paintings. The exhibition text alludes to the fact that Davis works from pre-existing imagery; Davis does too in his pas d’espoir zine, available right beside the checklist at the front desk; the gallery attendant even brings it up when I’m there, unprompted. Yet no one actually talks about the subject matter, they just gesture vaguely toward it. So, what’s going on, then? There’s probably a fear that the work could be construed as mildly offensive, specifically the two paintings of white children dressed in Native American costumes. This would be a lazy read of the work, but it’s there, and I’ve heard it being made. It’s funny to think that there’s something risky about a rather drab oil painting show that trains a nostalgic, albeit flat lens toward the past. Though, of course, the artist does choose to paint these images – and insists upon their being sourced – and so I think it’s not an invalid question: why these ones? And, maybe, why now? Personally, I wish they’d left all the source imagery nonsense out of the show at all. It feels defensive; it doesn’t serve the work. The images have heat. On their own, these paintings are in tune. And, as a show, they’re in harmony. They’re quick and innocent and loose, framed gracefully. Unfinished properly. They are inaccessible in a way that makes them instant, living only on the canvas, only in the moment that you view them. Subject to change. Most of all, on their own, Davis’ paintings make us wonder about who he is, and where his memories come from. That’s rare today, and it’s a weapon, and he should be aware of that.

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Until Someone Finds You - ONE STAR
Marenne Welten
Harkawik / June 1-July 6, 2024

I wonder how long these took to dry. That’s mainly what I’m thinking about at this exhibit. Which is to say Welten’s style is in question always, and isn’t really in service of a more subliminal purpose. Unless that purpose is thinking about birthday cake, which is the other thing I thought about. I really do enjoy A Room With Two Views, though, but maybe that’s because it reminds me so much of Van Gogh’s Bedroom. Still, it meshes content with form – the overloaded impasto works dimensionally, and the dripping pastels and whites frame a nice moment of autumn tones on the couch.

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In the Beginning - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Matthew Tully Dugan
One Trick Pony / June 1-?, 2024

I don’t know how I feel about Dugan’s obsession with Kendall Jenner. Part of me feels like it’s a device to catch someone’s attention (maybe Jenner’s tbh), to make a sale, etc. It’s also a bit gimmicky: he becomes “the artist who does the Kendall Jenner stuff.” That said, there’s something about it that’s enticing, or at least endearing. I’m generally attracted to artists who give into the gimmick, who pluck at a string that only vibrates for them until eventually it vibrates for someone else. With In the Beginning, Dugan starts to get there. Perhaps more importantly, the show is not afraid. Dugan doesn’t shy away from centering the muse, and he’s not scared to span mediums and styles. He’s also not afraid to be sincere about it. That sincerity comes through especially strong in the small framed paintings, which feel stilted, yet lush like a Rousseau can sometimes be. Even so, the show’s anchor (the Kendall centerpiece), while confident, doesn’t work with the others and has far too much visual and psychic pull. The other works are imbued with a delicate sort of early modern mysticism, and an interest in the allure of imperfection brought about by the hand. The Kendall billboard is perfect and hand-less, and, as such, doesn’t really activate like the other accents of the show.

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Pantheon - TWO STARS
Henry Belden, Richard Bergh, Saoirse Bertram, Trace Black, Zoe Brezsny, Patricia Buckley, Amanda Drożdż, Jamie Fletcher, Ellon Gibbs, L l.8.l.8.l.8.l, Mario Miron, Bobby Morbed, Einar Nerman, D.F. Skelton, Valentina Vaccarella
Curated by Matthew Tully Dugan
One Trick Pony / June 1-?, 2024

A small group show in the back that lacks focus because there are so many objects. It seems like a combination of works that you’d see at No Gallery and Blade Study downtown, and maybe a few that hint at mysticism and ‘the ancient.’

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June 9, 2024

Perfect Angel Protection Force - THREE STARS
Lena Redford, Alana Cloud-Robinson, Meat Stevens, John Pelech, Siena Foster-Soltis, Kennedy Wright
5419 W. Adams Blvd / June 8, 2024

My first and (probably) last reading review, since the scene is sort of tryhard, but a friend brought me here so why not. It’s worth noting that everyone in this reading scene (as opposed to other, more frumpy/anti-racist book club/failed alt-comic reading scenes) is either (a) a hot girl (and I don’t mean hot girl in the physical sense, but in the sense that their affect is in some way modeled off the ion pack 2021) or (b) a non-hot guy (and here I do mean in the physical sense), who writes autofiction exclusively and explicitly about sex (that it doesn’t seem like they’ve had). Those are the categories. As for this specific show, Perfect Angel Protection Force, the best readings were exactly that: readings. Readings designed for the medium, read by readers who played with the form or at the very least inflected it. Best of the bunch was John Pelech who climaxed by singing a scathingly satirical, Zionist rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine. Lena Redford did well in her own way. There was also a girl who read in a handmade mask and seemed to parody the scene itself. Good. Toward the end there were a couple readers who simply read their writing with vocal fry. That was less interesting.

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June 7, 2024

Zanele Muholi - ONE STAR
Zanele Muholi
Southern Guild / May 18-August 31, 2024

I regret going in here. There’s a sort of signaling happening in this show – of empowerment, of activism, of agency, of mourning… something about pain and diasporic femininity (maybe?... likely something about gender, I couldn’t find the press release). The black and white tones, the spot lighting, and the larger-than-life chrome sculptures are all meant to be very dramatic and cathartic. That clear intentionality – with nothing around the corner, no surprises, no misdirection – gives it the opposite effect. The show feels contrived. Not to mention the irony of mounting a show about social justice in a real estate development that screams gentrification at Williamsburg 2014 levels. In trying to think of who might be into this kind of work, I could only come up with white women in their 60s who fantasize about what Edward Said calls ‘Orientalism.’ Muholi’s exhibit here overlaps with a survey of her work at the Tate Modern, which makes me suspicious both of the quality of work we’re getting (is this even the good stuff??), the timing, and the gallerist’s intent. What do we think of galleries that mount “socially important” shows only when the market is primed for them?

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David Zwirner: 30 Years - THREE STARS
Tomma Abts, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Francis Alÿs, Mamma Andersson, Diane Arbus, Michael Armitage, Lucas Arruda, Ruth Asawa, Katherine Bernhardt, Huma Bhabha, Michaël Borremans, Joe Bradley, R. Crumb, Noah Davis, Raoul De Keyser, Roy DeCarava, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Stan Douglas, Marlene Dumas, Marcel Dzama, William Eggleston, Dan Flavin, Suzan Frecon, Isa Genzken, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Toba Khedoori, Paul Klee, Barbara Kruger, Shio Kusaka, Yayoi Kusama, Sherrie Levine, Liu Ye, Nate Lowman, Kerry James Marshall, Gordon Matta-Clark, John McCracken, Emma McIntyre, Sarah Michelson, Joan Mitchell, Juan Muñoz, Oscar Murillo, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Palermo, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Sigmar Polke, Walter Price, Neo Rauch, Ad Reinhardt, Jason Rhoades, Gerhard Richter, Bridget Riley, Thomas Ruff, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Raymond Saunders, Dana Schutz, Richard Serra, Steven Shearer, Josh Smith, Al Taylor, Diana Thater, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Luc Tuymans, Andra Ursuţa, Merrill Wagner, James Welling, Franz West, Doug Wheeler, Christopher Williams, Jordan Wolfson, Rose Wylie, Lisa Yuskavage, Portia Zvavahera
David Zwirner / May 23-August 3, 2024

For Christ. Terrifying. For those unaware, this is the real estate mogul David Zwirner’s new commercial development on Western. I wonder if, before the opening, Zwirner looked over his space and said Oppenheimer’s “I am become death” line. It’s a cavernous, cold, and labyrinth-like complex that feels like it was brought to you in part by Westfield Malls and Satan. The checklist was at least twenty pages long and maybe arranged by a third grader – adjacent rooms listed pages apart, floorplans oriented according to nothing in particular, staples piercing my fingers. The show itself, of course, is full of masterworks. It’s a showcase. Noah Davis, Robert Ryman, Joe Bradley, Elizabeth Peyton, Diana Thader, Jordan Wolfson, and Dana Schutz are all highlights among many other highlights. Jason Rhoades is getting more and more action recently, too. I can’t stand Isa Genzken’s Nefertiti works, but I can see why people enraptured by the Obama years would like them. Anyways, Here lies the LA art scene.

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‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ Chapter I - ONE STAR
Maia Cruz Palileo, Nancy Evans, Rema Ghuloum, Roxanne Jackson, February James, Harminder Judge, Naomi Lisiki, Jess Palermo, Clare Woods
Sargent’s Daughters / June 1-July 20, 2024

Some good paintings by Maia Cruz Palileo, Jess Palermo, and Harminder Judge. It seems like we’re getting into summer group show nonsense territory, though: here we have a ceramic swan on a Valentine’s Day cake anchoring a show with abstract color field paintings, heavy impasto landscapes, and a massive February James painting that, in the right context, might prompt some sort of conversation about identity politics. This show is confused.

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Little Stars - TWO STARS
Loren Erdrich
SHRINE / June 1-July 13, 2024

I’ve seen Erdrich’s work on Instagram. For a lot of people, that’s where it lives. It is pretty much the same in person: there’s very little about this work that can’t be captured by a camera. The figures are overpowering and starting to look too Katherine Bradford-y. I’d rather Erdrich lean more into abstracting the subject, which she does very well in A Beckoning, a mustard-toned work that toys with colorfield but establishes enough structure and rhythm with spotty shards of bright turquoise that it stays somewhere satisfying. It’s an assertive painting. The others feel manufactured, and the artist leans too heavily on magenta.

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Wellspring - TWO STARS
Michael Angelo Bala, Tomasz Kowalski, Eric McHenry, Yan Xinyue
C L E A R I N G / May 11-June 15, 2024

As a show, there’s very little holding these works in conversation with each other. The press release argues that these artists all “codify space,” and, to be frank, I don’t know what that means. Context clues were not available in the exhibit. The Tomasz Kowalski paintings, especially leaves and siblings, were subtle and restrained and in fact expansive in their use of depth and shadow. So maybe this codifies space. Perhaps if Yan Xinyue’s colorful and (a bit too) allegorically inclined paintings were removed, the show would be a little more cohesive.

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June 5, 2024
SECONDARY: commencement – THREE STARS
Matthew Barney
Regen Projects / June 1-August 17, 2024

Maybe because he is so influential (and a man, and white, and inarguably pretentious), Barney isn’t mentioned as an influence very often. A lot of artists pretend not to like his work. Almost undeniably, though, artists straddling sculpture/installation/video/performance can’t really avoid his influence. It’s him if you like sharp things, and Mike Kelley if you don’t. Pipilotti Rist is in there somewhere. There are others, too, of course. Who cares. He may not have been the first, but he was ahead on transhumanism and he was ahead on mythos… two undercurrents that have run through every biennial in the last 5 years.

Anyway, this is a good exhibit with great sound design that seems to be entirely done by foley artists. As far as Barney’s work goes, his early stuff is best, so he’s working against that, competing with himself. There aren’t many surprises. Initially, the exhibit felt underwhelming because of the replicas. There is something a bit less about replicas, especially when they feel like props. Barney usually doesn’t veer into replicas, but he does here, specifically with the jumbotron (smaller; clearly not fit for a stadium) and eight-channel design (replicating the image). In my mind, monumental things ought to be loud and free and expansive -- Paul Pfeiffer’s The Saints comes to mind. SECONDARY felt contained and controlled and almost miniature. Telegraphed, even. Not loud enough. Not corporeal enough. Barney’s physical objects are usually warped or in some way removed from the ones in his corresponding videos, which activates them. Here, though, on the floor of the exhibit, is an exact replica of the Astroturf in the video. The biggest and most obvious aspect of the show -- the turf -- is a replica. And I know it’s a replica because Barney’s running the same exhibit in four separate galleries, all at once. Which means the exhibit is a replica, too. So Barney’s using his tendency against himself to underwhelm the audience -- we expect him to augment, and he instead replicates -- which is a sharp move considering the crux of the video lies in the media’s reproduction (replication) of Stingley’s hit -- in slow motion, on television, ad nauseum. Miniature. This is effective. So, I have very few gripes. Maybe that the paintings on aluminum feel a bit forced? As in, they’re made to be sold, and don’t cohere as well with the rest of the exhibit. Also, I feel like the Cremaster emblem is beginning to get a bit tired, even if it’s supposed to feel tired.

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Body of Work - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Marika Thunder
Reena Spaulings / May 10-June 22, 2024

There’s a discontinuity of style here that makes the paintings feel like they were done by multiple assistants trying to replicate each other, and coming up just short. In some paintings, like Canyons and Suzuki, there’s a sort of flatness and handedness that I like. I can almost track the work to see how they’ve been figured out; I can feel a discovery. Moments of color, in those ones, pop. Others, though, run smooth and look too essentialized (Frederick and Bernadette). Color in these feels incorporated, the focus is overworked, and I don’t like that. And then there are still others -- crystal clear closeups of exercise machines -- that don’t invite much curiosity at all, but they sort of ground the concept of the show. So I guess that left me confused. I don’t know Marika but maybe I would guess that she is just living life, and in flux, and that’s cool.

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Nectar - TWO POINT FIVE STARS
Jack O’Brien
Matthew Brown / May 17-June 22, 2024

Whatever a gallerist’s equivalent of conspicuous consumption is, the lamp installation here qualifies. I can imagine Matthew Brown using it as a lure for artists... “We get behind projects that other galleries won’t!”... But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should: the piece overpowers the show and doesn’t belong. The other works play with two trends -- trompe l’oeil and opacity -- in a way that feels refreshing, if still underdeveloped. They’re like those Seth Price paintings, but in reverse. Here everything really does exist – the polycarbonate film really is there, you really can touch the ribbon, there really is dimension to it all. And viewing is more physical because of it. The polycarbonate disorients, its ridges and crinkles refract and obscure. So, you move closer... And yet the work still disorients, albeit in a new way. Whereas more blatantly opaque works might draw the viewer close only to render things inaccessible (Hammons, yes, but also someone like Mimosa Echard), the works in Nectar draw us closer to start the search over again. This is nice, though I do get the feeling that there’s not much at stake.

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Mitty Mag - ONE POINT FIVE STARS
Andrew Kerr
Matthew Brown / May 17-June 22, 2024

A show that would make more sense in the Hudson Valley or Maine. It felt wrong to be able to see these paintings and Pink’s Hot Dogs (through the window, across the street) at the same time. I wasn’t taken elsewhere by the work, probably because I couldn’t stop staring at those god damn frames. Kerr works with fabricators in his home city of Glasgow to construct the frames that house his paintings. They often extend well beyond the bounds of the painted work, presumably to emphasize their presence. They’re also explicitly “part of the work,” but really they don’t feel like they’re part of the work, and that says to me that Kerr’s leaning on them for concept. This all ends up being rather distracting, but maybe necessary: I’m not sure the paintings would work without the frames, either.

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Hollywood Dream Bubble - ZERO POINT FIVE STARS
Adam Stamp, Aaron Curry, Adam Rabinowitz, Alfred Steiner, Allen Ruppersberg, Amir Zaki, Analia Saban, Bart Exposito, Benjamin Weissman, Bettina Hubby, Brice Bischoff, Carly Jean Andrews, Catherine Opie, Chaz Bojorquez, Chris Johanson, Dan Attoe, Dani Tull, Daniel Hawkins, Dave Muller, Deborah Kass, Dennis Hopper, Doug Crocco, Eddie Ruscha, Ellen Jong, Eric Yahnker, Frances Stark, Francesca Gabbiani, Friedrich Kunath, Gary Simmons, Greg Colson, Hamilton Press, Harland Miller, Jaime Muñoz, Jason Mason, Jason Rhoades, Jeffrey Vallance, Jennifer West, Jeremy Shockley, Jim Shaw, Kelly Wall, Kenny Scharf, Kim Gordon, Kristopher Raos, Lari Pittman, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Mark Hagen, Matt Murphy, Michael Bevilacqua, Michael Decker, Michael Ho, Michael Lombardo, Mike Kelley, Mitchell Syrop, Mungo Thomson, Nick Taggart, Nicolas Shake, Norm Laich, Pae White, Pentti Monkkonen, Pippa Garner, Raymond Pettibon, Renée Petropoulos, Ricci Albenda, Rives Granade, Rob Pruitt, Roni Horn, Ry Rocklen, Sam Durant, Senon Williams, Wallace Berman, Wendy White, and Zoe Crosher
Curated by Jessica Gallucci and Dani Tull
The Hole / April 27-June 15, 2024

In the exhibition text for Hollywood Dream Bubble, the curators acknowledge that the show is not a “tightly curated” one, and they are right about that. The show is packed with text-centered, pop-adjacent paintings, ostensibly positioning them somewhere in Ruscha’s lineage, though it’s never really clear where. Artist books – a foundation of Ruscha’s practice – are glaringly omitted. Another one of the artist’s foundations, the readymade, is so neglected that it makes the inclusion of Jason Rhoades’ Junk (Idol 36) (2005) – a sublime sculpture made from a hookah pipe, glass fruit, and other everyday objects – seem like an accident.

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Sturtevant - THREE STARS
Sturtevant
Matthew Marks Gallery / April 13-June 15, 2024

One issue with Sturtevant generally, and especially here, isn’t in concept or technique, but in affect. The viewer is so distant from the emotion of the initial idea, which Sturtevant has then “disrupted” through repetition (or copied, depending on who you believe), that the work starts to feel a bit cold. What is lost on the viewer is very likely the thing gained by Sturtevant for herself, which is the joy of the process of investigation and reinterpretation, rather than its product. That said, her reperformance of Paul McCarthy’s Painter is thrilling.

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June 3, 2024
Pluto - TWO STARS
Tallulah Dirnfeld, Federico Fellini, Luke Haeger, Jenny Holzer, John Kacere, Richard Kern, Yves Klein, Nicolette Mishkan, Andy Warhol, et al.
Curated by Grace McGrade and Luke Haeger
Kaspia / June 1-23, 2024

A group show at a caviar-themed restaurant on Melrose Place with works mainly behind or beneath glass. Much of the show seems to be from the owner’s personal collection – a Warhol edition, a Picasso print – though it does include work added by artists like Luke Haeger and Tallulah Dirnfeld. With the exception of Haeger’s work (which offers a playful, yet genuine reframing of Richard Prince’s New Portraits series), the show offers very little and feels more like it was put together to showcase the restaurant itself, which it probably was.

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