We Want a New Object, California Institute of the Arts‘ 2008 MFA show, recently opened in an L.A. art scene hot spot. A hefty handful of Chinatown galleries and venues are hosting the exhibition, which features work by 34 students. A sea of multi-media work, the exhibition is heady, youthful and vibrant, just like CalArts’ reputation. A sizable number of students – including Carlin Wing,[…..]
The Whitney Museum‘s current exhibition offers a telling glimpse into photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s artistic development. Mapplethorpe, who became controversial because of his S&M inspired photographs in the 80s, helped bring beauty back into the art dialogue. Influenced by Andy Warhol‘s cultural connoisseurship and classical perceptions of beauty, his sleekly formal images were at once traditional and culturally relevant. When his lover, collector and curator Sam[…..]
Kader Attia: New Work is French-Algerian artist Kader Attia’s largest US exhibition to date. The exhibition, on display at the Henry Art Museum in Seattle, features site-specific installations that are at once apocalyptic and unassuming. Attia’s aluminum foil ghosts exude a ritualistic, ominous serenity but they also have a low-tech, ephemeral quality. The same goes for Attia’s Rochers Carres: the tilted sheetrock and plywood boxes[…..]
A museum retrospective for the late Allan Kaprow almost seems paradoxical. While Kaprow wasn’t an anti-establishment artist, he certainly functioned outside of institutional constraints. Nonetheless, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art has taken on Kaprow‘s spontaneous aesthetic, hosting a flexible off-site exhibition that reinvents Kaprow’s Happenings of the 1970s and 1980s. Artists throughout Los Angeles are restaging Kaprow’s collaborative performances for this sporadic exhibition[…..]
Cathy Akers‘ current show at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles takes on a big issue: the history of the human race. Akers’ dioramas depict Adam and Eve like figures in surroundings that resemble Eden. Yet the world depicted in Akers’ exhibition, titled Hertopia: An Illustrated History of the New World, is more delinquent than it is idyllic. This is Akers first solo exhibition since[…..]
Patrick Jackson’s debut solo exhibition at Los Angeles’ Chung King Projects will be a chorus of stuff. Found objects, construction, and ephemera all make up Jackson’s work, creating an environment in which dirt and technology have equal footings. Recent MFA grad, Patrick Jackson has quickly made himself known in the LA art world. He initially studied at San Francisco Art Institute and attended the Skowhegan[…..]
All images Evan Holloway Project Series 35, 2008, Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer Polka dots aren’t typically transcendental. They aren’t autonomous and they aren’t monumental. Yet in Evan Holloway‘s current exhibition, Project Series 35 at the Pomona College Museum of Art, polka dots take on some serious questions. Read below for the full article by Catherine Wagley.
