Jonathan Griffin

Criticism and essays on art and culture

Tag: Spruth Magers

October 12, 2022

Kaari Upson

Kaari Upson, Portrait (Vain German), 2020–21, urethane, resin, Aqua-Resin, pigment, fiberglass and aluminium. 74.3 × 59.7 × 5.7 cm. Courtesy: © The Art Trust created under Kaari Upson Trust and Sprüth Magers; photograph: Ed Mumford

‘never, never ever, never in my life, never in all my born days, never in all my life, never’ is and is not a posthumous exhibition. Kaari Upson passed away only in August of last year; many of us are still coming to terms with her loss. But to think of this, her first solo show in Los Angeles in over a decade, only in the memorializing terms of the posthumous tribute is distracting, limiting and inaccurate. Comprising work produced between 2015 and 2021, it was planned, in part, by the artist herself, but was repeatedly pushed back due to the pandemic. It was Upson who came up with that exclamatory title.

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November 17, 2016

Hanne Darboven

Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles

hda_install_sm_la_2016_61

Hanne Darboven, For Abraham Lincoln, 1989, 776 sheets, 29,5 x 21 cms each, mounted on 97 70 x 100 cm plates, with 8 sheets each. © Hanne Darboven Foundation, Hamburg / ARS, New York 2016; Courtesy Sprüth Magers and Crone Gallery. Photo: Joshua White, 2016

Rows of numbers instill in me a sickening panic. I got that feeling, familiar from childhood mathematics lessons and annual tax returns, in Hanne Darboven’s current exhibition at Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »

February 23, 2016

Ed Ruscha

D2015.51 - METRO MATRESS #2, 8/3/15, 3:36 PM, 16C, 5940x7576 (0+160), 100%, Repro 2.2 v2, 1/15 s, R88.6, G82.5, B104.7

One Sunday in 1966, Ed Ruscha was driving a Buick Le Sabre back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas with his friends Patrick Blackwell, a fellow artist, and the guitarist Mason Williams. With them they had an old manual typewriter, a Royal ‘model X’, its frame bent beyond repair. For a lark, they decide to heave the thing out of the passenger window, at ninety miles an hour. It exploded on the tarmac, disappearing in the rear view mirror as they sped onward through the desert. Read the rest of this entry »