On a sunny autumn morning, in Jessie Homer French’s garage-studio, up several miles of mountain switchbacks from Palm Desert, Calif., a dozen canvases are propped on shelves in various stages of completion. Most are landscapes. Three depict cemeteries, a recurrent subject for the 83-year-old self-taught artist. Standing out among the browns and the greens, however, are two pictures of wildfires, in furious tones of orange, yellow and black.
Read the rest of this entry »Alex Israel and Brett Easton Ellis, Gagosian, Beverly Hills
Catherine Opie, MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles
“West Hollywood”, AA|LA, Los Angeles
Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis: Different Kind of Star, 2016, acrylic and UV ink on canvas, 7 by 14 feet; at Gagosian Beverly Hills. © Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis; image courtesy iStock and Gagosian Gallery. Photography: Jeff McLane.
Type “Los Angeles” into the search box of iStockphoto.com and you will see over seventy thousand images, many of which look very much the same. For the works in a recent exhibition at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, Alex Israel spent what must have been many grueling hours scouring the database, finally selecting a group of images that distill the clichés underwriting the romantic fantasy that—for some—is Los Angeles. He then UV-printed the photos on large panoramic canvases, with words by Bret Easton Ellis, his collaborator for the show, displayed across them. Read the rest of this entry »
Jonathan Griffin 