Jonathan Griffin

Criticism and essays on art and culture

Category: Frieze

June 10, 2013

MHMMML

International Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles

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The cartoon is from the Daily Mirror, 6 January 1967. In an art gallery, a man is pinned to the wall inside a picture frame. The caption underneath reads ‘… and then I thought to myself, what can I put in the exhibition this year?’ It’s a lame joke. But it seemed fitting in this extraordinary exhibition, in which intense blooms of sensation were prised from their original habitats and transplanted into the subdued environment of an art gallery. Read the rest of this entry »

May 17, 2013

Llyn Foulkes

Hammer Museum, Los AngelesLlyn Foulkes

‘I guess I do a lot of complaining,’ admitted Llyn Foulkes recently. ‘But I think I have a lot to complain about!’ His comment came during a performance at the Hammer Museum of the byzantine musical apparatus he calls the Machine; it is just like Foulkes to toss out an acerbic aside even when it looks like he’s having fun. Over half a century since Foulkes began his career, he shows little sign of mellowing. Read the rest of this entry »

April 15, 2013

Laura Owens

356 South Mission Road

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You should have seen them at the opening. The people, that is – moving slowly through the large warehouse and thronging around two bars, a taco stand, a ping-pong table and a dance floor in the yard behind the building. The paintings, too, looked terrific. Twelve huge canvases, each approximately three-and-a-half metres high, faced each other on opposite walls of the space. They seemed to smile down on the bustle of sociability that unfolded between them. Read the rest of this entry »

March 7, 2013

Anthony Pearson

The Man Who Wasn’t There

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‘A painting that is an act,’ wrote Harold Rosenberg in his trenchant 1952 essay ‘American Action Painters’, ‘is inseparable from the biography of the artist. The painting itself is a “moment” in the adulterated mixture of his life.’ He continues: ‘With traditional aesthetic references discarded as irrelevant, what gives the canvas its meaning is not the psychological data but rôle, the way the artist organizes his emotional and intellectual energy as if he were a living situation. The interest lies in the kind of act taking place in the four-sided arena, a dramatic interest.’1 Read the rest of this entry »

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March 4, 2013

Lutz Bacher

Ratio 3, San Francisco

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Have you seen ‘The Twilight Saga’ (2008–12)? Me neither. But, like you, I know who Robert Pattinson is. For a spell last year, the vampire movies’ British star seemed to be everywhere, the dramas of his private and professional life broadcast on all channels of the news media. Perhaps it should have come as no surprise to find him framed, glowering through darkened glass, in Lutz Bacher’s exhibition at Ratio 3, the first at the gallery’s new premises in San Francisco’s Mission District. But it was a surprise, nevertheless, despite Bacher’s reputation as one of the most consistently surprising artists working in the US today. Dissonance, elision and confusion have been her stock-in-trade since her career began in the 1970s. Even Lutz Bacher is reportedly a pseudonym. Read the rest of this entry »

February 27, 2013

Liam Everett

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Liam Everett’s art stands, first and foremost, as testament to the processes of its making. In spite of their rich optical pleasures, his art works claim a solemn dignity as battered survivors of previous punishments. It is fun to imagine just what these wild, intense forces might have entailed. Read the rest of this entry »

December 29, 2012

Learning by Heart

Ken Price, Echo (1997) ©2012 Ken Price, photo ©2012 Fredrik Nilsen

Ken Price, Echo (1997) ©2012 Ken Price, photo ©2012 Fredrik Nilsen

Adrian Searle once claimed, in the pages of this magazine: ‘Everything I know, I think I’ve learnt from artists.’ In wondering, as I often have, whether what he said could be true and, if so, whether it could be true for me too, I’ve found myself asking what an education solely directed by art and artists would consist of. Read the rest of this entry »

December 17, 2012

Alika Cooper

Night Gallery, Los Angeles

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A blacked-out gallery, with opening hours of 10pm to 2am, is liable to give the art on its walls a certain transgressive frisson. Night Gallery is such a location. For more than two years, it has staged exhibitions in a space that seems more like a club than a gallery. ‘Upbraid’ by Alika Cooper – the final show at its original Lincoln Heights premises before it moves into whitewashed architecture and daytime hours – both plays up to and dissents from the louche tone of the space. Read the rest of this entry »

November 21, 2012

Frames of Reference

In recent years, the work of self-taught artists has come to be contextualized within larger narratives of contemporary art. How is Outsider Art best understood and what does this definition mean when ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ become blurred? How does it relate to fraught issues of education and exclusion, originality and exploitation? Jonathan Griffin invited Robert Gober, Matthew Higgs, Paul Laffoley and David Maclagan to discuss these questions.

John Hiltunen, Untitled, 2012, collage, 30 × 21 cm

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August 30, 2012

Made in L.A.

Hammer Museum, LAXART, and LA Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles

Who needs another biennial? Los Angeles does, according to the Hammer Museum. The reason: ‘Simply put, the artists,’ says Hammer curator Anne Ellegood in her catalogue essay. While artists are undeniably thick on the ground in LA, not all are good. The curators of ‘Made in LA 2012’ – Ellegood and Ali Subotnick from the Hammer, joined by Lauri Firstenberg, Malik Gaines and Cesar Garcia from its ‘sister institution’, LAXART – set themselves the challenge of finding 60 biennial-worthy artists who are either emerging or under-recognized. These criteria allowed for the inclusion of several artists born in the 1980s alongside more established elders such as Channa Horwitz, now in her 80s. Read the rest of this entry »