Review | Jonathan Griffin

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 »

April 15, 2013

Made in Space

Night Gallery, Los Angeles
Made in Space 1

Is it possible to talk about art made in Los Angeles without crediting the city with everything that makes its art unique? Why are artists in Southern California so often asked to explain how their work is influenced by its infrastructure or climate? Is “Made in Space,” the exhibition curated by artists Peter Harkawik and Laura Owens, an antidote to these tendencies or is it a symptom? Read the rest of this entry »

March 22, 2013

Jordan Wolfson

REDCAT, Los Angeles

The HIV virus, in case you didn’t know, is depicted in molecular biology as an icosahedron (a 20-sided polygon) or a sphere, out of which protrude peg-like nodules representing the glycoproteins that fix onto and infect other cells. Dozens of these jolly red forms bounce across the screen in Jordan Wolfson’s part animated, part live-action film Raspberry Poser (2012). Their rubbery pegs wobble as they jump on the sinks in posh showrooms and across the wooden floor of a luxury gym. They bound through the sunny streets of New York’s Soho, and swell to bursting against photographs of scantily clad teens on spring break. As they frolic amongst these scenes of shameless desire they are buoyed by the heavy, synthetic beats of Beyoncé Knowles’ Sweet Dreams from her 2008 album I am … Sasha Fierce. Read the rest of this entry »

March 4, 2013

Lutz Bacher

Ratio 3, San Francisco

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

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 »

January 26, 2013

David Ostrowski

Ltd Los Angeles

The day I visit David Ostrowski’s exhibition, it’s raining. The unusually inclement weather seems appropriate for these battered, defeated-looking paintings. I am reminded of the terrible storm that hit New York recently. Ostrowski’s work corresponds to images of Chelsea-gallery employees hauling drenched canvases out of waterlogged crates. Read the rest of this entry »

December 17, 2012

Alika Cooper

Night Gallery, Los Angeles

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

Rachel Foullon

ltd los angeles, Los Angeles

In contrast to an art gallery, a barn is designed more for efficient storage than for carefully poised display. Rachel Foullon has transformed the white space of ltd los angeles into an uncannily refined vision of a barn, and filled it with artworks old and new, some rescued from her archive and some made specially for the exhibition. Read the rest of this entry »

October 5, 2012

ACIREMA

Honor Fraser, Los Angeles

Have you figured it out yet? It took me a while. ‘ACIREMA’ is America spelt backwards; this exhibition, curated by Cesar Garcia, takes as its conceptual motif the famous drawing by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García of South America upside down. América Invertida (Inverted America) (1943) does not feature in the exhibition. Instead, curator Garcia has convened eight artists from South and Central America born since 1980 who, he argues, ‘actively challenge the conventional framing and contextualizing mechanisms through which their practices are often situated’. Read the rest of this entry »

September 26, 2012

Standard Operating Procedures

Blum and Poe, Los Angeles

What is the difference between a “standard operating procedure” and a formula, an algorithm, a set of instructions, a program, a system, a recipe or a run book? This exhibition, which takes SOPs as its theme, never makes it quite clear. But its curator, Piper Marshall, contends in her press release that “Today, SOPs are determining the conditions of everyday life,” through such esoteric formulations as search engines, dating sites, self-help books, and targeted advertising.

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Category: Review