“Are you angry or are you boring?” Gilbert and George facetiously asked in 1977, the words scrawled across the top of a fiery, 16-panel image. Their point is unmistakable: you should be angry. If you’re not, you’re probably being negligently complacent. The same question could be posed to the work in California’s 2008 Biennial, but with a strikingly different effect. Is the art angry or[…..]

The Los Angeles Museum of Art has delved into the literate glamour of Vanity Fair, hosting the magazine’s traveling exhibition of historic photographs. Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008 is a collaboration between the magazine and London’s National Portrait Gallery. LACMA will be its only US showing. Sponsored by Burberry and curated by Terence Pepper and David Friend, the exhibition includes photographs by a staggering collection[…..]

Multiverse at the Claremont Museum of Art broaches cosmic mysteries in a surprisingly accessible, relevant manner. The exhibition, which opened September 21st, includes a multi-media array of thoughtful, visually arresting explorations of what is unknown and what is observable. Kerry Tribe re-imagines the Northern Lights; Jedediah Caesar deals with material density; Sebastiaan Bremer uses photography to explore memory’s intangibility. In an email dialogue available on[…..]

I don’t usually get hung up on press releases, but there’s one phrase from the release for Daniel DeSure‘s current exhibition that I can’t forget: “things we use to soften the blow.” DeSure’s work is described as an understated, non-reactionary response to the fact that blows are a given. Things inevitably go wrong; technologies malfunction, people disagree, cars crash, natural disasters strike. But what if[…..]

In an exhibition titled Objects of Wonder, the Columbus Museum of Art has teamed up with Ohio State University to present an assortment of unusual cultural artifacts from the University’s archives. Viewing objects from the collections of a university that opened its doors in 1870s may sound mundane, but the curiosities that Ohio State has acquired and horded for over a century are surprisingly dynamic[…..]

Julian Hoeber’s third solo show at Blum and Poe Gallery, titled All That is Solid Melts into Air, explores aged forms, bronze busts and op-art in particular, and emphasizes the way old recycled ideas shape “new” people and objects. In an insightfully written artist’s statement, Hoeber describes himself as a tube, listing the span of influences that have cycled through his system. What comes out[…..]

Dennis Oppeheim, known for his experimentation in land art and body art, is now exhibiting new work at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles. Cactus Grove features colorful, exuberant, architectural sculptures of cacti – a lighthearted but characteristic venture for an artist who has spent the last forty years adventurously challenging the way people interact with space and nature. Oppenheim has used a span of materials,[…..]