Donald R. Blumberg. Untitled from the series Daily Photographs, 1969–1970; gelatin silver print; 16 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Much of the work in the show simply reproduces images from print and televised media, reframing them in subtle but meaningful ways. In the series Daily Photographs 1969–1970, Donald Blumberg photographs newspaper pages, focusing on images related to the Vietnam War while including surrounding text and advertisements. The works reveal the newspaper as a subjective nexus of interrelated information and opinions, instead of as an objective assemblage of discreet facts. His Television Political Mosaics and Television Abstractions (1968–69) are created similarly by photographing evening broadcasts on the television screen. Images of politicians, including Nixon and LBJ, are arranged either in orderly grids or in more chaotic compositions that threaten the intended stability of their original messages. In some works, Blumberg uses darkroom techniques such as solarization to give these familiar faces a more sinister appearance.

Japanese artist Masao Mochizuki also turns his camera towards the television, reproducing images on tightly composed grids in his Television series (1975–76). Mochizuki’s works, however, lack any of Blumberg’s authorial voice. With each frame taken at regularly timed intervals, his composite images do not discriminate between show credits, program drama, or advertisements. The images are all laid out as a constant stream of information and are reproduced at an intimate, miniature scale to draw viewers in, forcing them to actively gaze at content that might otherwise be passively absorbed.

Masao Mochizuki. The Air Power of the World from the series Television, 1976; gelatin silver print; 8 15/16 x 7 7/8 in. Courtesy of Osiris.

Produced thirty-five years after Blumberg’s photographs, Catherine Opie’s Polaroids are a departure from her highly polished portraits and landscapes. Snapped while watching TV, the photos reflect a raw immediacy and are tinged with frustration and humor. Opie assembles groups of Polaroids, mostly depicting newscasts of hot-button issues of the aughts (John Roberts’ Supreme Court hearings, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina), and arranges them to highlight certain themes, often counter to the original intent. In Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul (2004–2005), she juxtaposes images of the brain-dead woman and the pro-life Pope, their faces contorted into similar grimaces.

One of the standout works from the exhibition is Omer Fast’s video CNN Concatenated (2002). Cutting and pasting from multiple news broadcasts, Fast takes one word each from a chorus of talking heads and strings them together to form direct, patchwork addresses to the audience, such as, “I need you to stop pretending to care, to get off your ass, and start acting like you do, all right? This is not a lot to be asking for, is it?”

Catherine Opie. Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul from the series Close to Home, 2004–2005; dye diffusion prints; 15 1/2 x 14 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

David Lamelas and Hildegarde Duane’s 1978 video The Dictator is one of the only works that doesn’t appropriate already printed or broadcast imagery. Taking the form of a news interview between Duane’s Barbara Walters-like character and Lamelas’ newly deposed Latin American tyrant, the work has a dark humor that takes on a special relevance given our current president’s infatuation with the media, and vice versa. Despite Duane’s probing questions about human-rights abuses or plans for an anti-revolutionary coup, Lamelas’ character evades any judgment or condemnation, revealing the power of media appearances to legitimize the illegitimate.

In addition to the content of the news, some of these artists take aim to reveal its structure. Dara Birnbaum and Dan Graham’s video Local TV News Analysis (1980) is a straightforward reminder that news is not simply facts, put out into the world, but part of a system of consumption that is assembled, produced, and packaged. The hour-long video work depicts a typical American family watching the evening news, while in the upper left corner is an inset video of the newsroom. The piece compresses into one scene: the message, medium, and audience.

Robert Heinecken. A Case Study in Finding an Appropriate TV Newswoman (A CBS Docudrama in Words and Pictures) (detail), 1984; dye bleach prints; 44 1/4 x 42 1/2 in. Courtesy of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Robert Heinecken—an artist who is famous for adeptly reflecting and refracting media images—offers a parodic take on the search for the perfect newscaster with his multi-panel text and image work A Case Study in Finding an Appropriate Newswoman (A CBS Docudrama in Words and Pictures) (1984). By layering images of different broadcasters over each other, Heinecken creates a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, pointing out the absurdity of prioritizing the person delivering the news over the news itself.

Breaking News provides a well-rounded and focused, if not comprehensive, survey of artists who question the media’s subjectivity, using its own images and words to do so. The one missed opportunity is that by featuring works that engage primarily with print and broadcast sources, the exhibition stops too soon, overlooking the way almost all of us get our news today, with tweets and Facebook posts becoming as important as long-standing journalistic institutions. This does, however, leave room for another, more contemporary look at artists examining the current, arguably more fraught state of journalism.

Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media is on view at the Getty Center in Los Angeles through April 30, 2017.

Alex Da Corte. A Season in He’ll; installation view. Courtesy of Art + Practice, Los Angeles. Photo by Joshua White.

Upon entering the gallery, it is clear that the viewer is not in a conventional white cube. Da Corte has created a phantasmagorical wonderland, transforming the space through tile flooring, painted walls, and colored lights, while also incorporating olfactory elements with rose, sage, and clove-scented misters. The exhibition takes its title from Arthur Rimbaud’s 1873 prose poem A Season in Hell, which describes the young author’s drug-fueled descent into madness after the dissolution of his tempestuous affair with fellow poet Paul Verlaine. Rimbaud has provided inspiration to a long line of cultural and countercultural figures, from the Surrealists to the ’70s East Village punks like Patti Smith and Richard Hell (who took his stage name from the same Rimbaud poem). Da Corte is drawn to Rimbaud’s work, not only for the way it breaks with conventional reality, but also for its frank and uncompromising descriptions of queerness.

The first object encountered in the installation is a large black cone rising up from a flat circular disc: a witch’s hat blown up to the size of absurdity, referencing both lighthearted escapist fantasy as well as the historical trauma of persecution. A large vintage photograph mounted on the wall continues this sense of ambiguity, capturing a weeping young woman being consoled by a shaggy haired figure. What at first appears as the aftermath of a tragedy is actually a wedding photo—tears of joy rather than tears of pain. A neon sign spelling out “night” with twinkling stars hangs on the wall—a direct, if somewhat cryptic, quotation from Demons 2, where an identical version oddly graces the protagonists’ apartment wall. But viewers need not be familiar with the reference to get the allusion to “the witching hour,” the nocturnal period when occult and supernatural powers are at their peak.

Alex Da Corte. A Season in He’ll; installation view. Courtesy of Art + Practice, Los Angeles. Photo by Brian Forrest/Hammer Museum.

A trio of short films, each named after a different chapter of A Season in Hell, plays sequentially in the second part of the exhibition. An actor resembling the artist stands between a colored backdrop and a table covered in a set of odd, everyday objects: a watermelon, a candle, a soda bottle. In each video, he performs a single ritualistic action in slow-motion sequences set to a creepy synth score—a nod to Bava and his fellow Italian horror director Dario Argento. In one, he injects what appears to be soda into his arm with a syringe. In another, he sucks liquid through a tube, then removes a knife attached to a set of brass knuckles from a watermelon, punches himself in the face, and subsequently spits out the liquid as if it were blood. There is a brooding unease at work, resulting from the altered sense of time, spooky soundtrack, and transgressive acts being performed. In the end, however, these performances can be seen as DIY, slapstick one-liners in which the blood is fake and the drugs are no more harmful than sugar.

Behind a curtain that is printed with a scene from Disney’s Fantasia, a viewing room plays another slow-motion film, A Night in Hell, Part II (2014), in which a flaming man covered in mummy bandages falls before our eyes. As seen in his other films, there is again the mixture of violence and danger, tempered by benign artifice, though this time with a higher production value. The seating cushions in the room resemble hamburgers and help to take the edge off as well.

Alex Da Corte. A Season in He’ll; installation view. Courtesy of Art + Practice, Los Angeles. Photo by Brian Forrest/Hammer Museum.

A Season in He’ll should not be seen as a direct interpretation of Rimbaud’s poem so much as an exploration of the themes of otherness and alternate reality that it conjures up. The word “conjuring” is especially apt in Da Corte’s work, filled as it is with references to the occult, witchcraft, and mysterious ceremonies. Instead of presenting these supernatural tropes as arcane or impenetrable, Da Corte offers the possibility of transformation through everyday items and popular cinema. While his field of references is varied and not always easily discerned (the intersection of Disney viewers, Italo-horror fans, and lovers of symbolist poetry is presumably small), there is an open-ended approach to Da Corte’s constructions that allows viewers to find their own paths through his theatrical fantasy landscapes.

Alex Da Corte: A Season in He’ll will be on view at Art + Practice in Los Angeles, CA through September 17, 2016.

Andrew Birk. Callejero, 2016; installation view, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City. Courtesy of the Artist and Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City.

In Spanish, callejero translates to an adjective form of “street,” indicating something as being of or from the street. It also connotes a wanderer, similar to the European flâneur, who traverses the city without purpose, absorbing a constant stream of urban sights, sounds, and smells. Birk does more than simply depict la calle (the street). He has created an evocative environment that is street-like. As curator Daniel Garza Usabiaga notes in an essay, “Birk’s work transcends the simple domain of representation, in the manner of a stage… Callejero does not aspire to realism.” Through an immersive installation that incorporates paintings, sculpture, light, and sound, he channels the myriad sensations of the world outside the gallery. In other hands, this endeavor might have been doomed to misguided essentialism, but Birk’s enthusiasm, sincerity, and keen eye make for a captivating experience.

Upon entering the gallery, visitors encounter a large piece of twisted aluminum that rises up from the ground to form a peaked arch, supported in the middle by a thin pole. Flyers advertising wares for sale are affixed to the structure, and packs of cigarettes dangle from a strap, similar to the ones displayed by vendors selling loosies on seemingly every other corner. Birk told me that the sculpture, El Caminero (2016), is based on a similar object he encountered on a grassy median near Cuernavaca. It seemed like it might just be a piece of urban detritus, but the fact that it was supported by a pole gave him the impression that someone had created it as a piece of DIY street art. It stood there for months without anyone carting it off as garbage or laying claim to it as artwork, occupying a liminal space between accident and intention that so often characterizes the city.

Andrew Birk. Centro de Tlalpan (Maxfield Parrish), 2015; aerosol enamel, Xerox pigment, bond paper, silicone, ballpoint pen ,and wheat paste on canvas; 78.7 x 59 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City.

The sculpture resembles the work of another artistic outsider: the German émigré Mathias Goeritz, who moved to Mexico City in 1949 and had a major influence on generations of artists there. Goeritz’s well-known sculpture La Serpiente de El Eco (1953) is a dynamic piece of geometric abstraction—a twisted black zig-zag, like a crooked lightning bolt on its side. Birk updates the iconic work, dirtying up Goeritz’s idealized form with the grit and grime of life as actually lived.

Further in the gallery sits the front half of a car, stripped of its engine, wheels, and anything else of value. Birk had left a car outside the gallery, allowing scavengers to take it apart before hauling inside what was left—a carcass picked clean of its meat. This neighborhood collaboration is a process-based subtractive work that reveals action in absence as opposed to accretion.

Andrew Birk. Callejero, 2016; installation view, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City. Courtesy of the Artist and Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City.

The most conventional aspect of the show is a number of paintings that line the walls. Made with industrial and common materials like spray paint, Sharpie, and the auto-body filler Bondo, the pieces also incorporate wheat-pasted posters for lost dogs, stickers, and Hawaiian shirts. Some of the work hews too literally to conventional street art, incorporating crude graffiti tags and pop-cultural references like a pot leaf symbol or Thrasher magazine sticker. The more successful works are dingy, abject abstractions in the vein of CoBrA, conjuring the energy of street life without mimetically reproducing it.

Painted on the walls, a meandering white-on-black geometric pattern ties the disparate elements of the show together. The pattern resembles an aerial view of an urban plan—not as rectilinear plots, but as an organic and haphazard arrangement more common to cities that have evolved over hundreds of years. It is fitting for Mexico City, one of the oldest cities in the Americas, predating the arrival of Europeans at the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán. Shift this design ninety degrees, and the pattern references the walls around the city: volcanic rock painted black with interstitial areas painted white. It represents both the abstract notion, as well as the actual experience, of urban wandering common to the flâneur—that European import that makes perfect sense in this early New World city.

Andrew Birk. Calzada de Tlalpan, 2016; aerosol enamel, Xerox pigment, bond paper, packing tape, sharpie, vinyl sticker, and wheat paste on canvas; 78.7 x 59 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City.

One of my favorite details are the shards of broken glass bottles that jut out from the tops of the walls circling the gallery. These homemade security measures can be seen everywhere around the city if you simply look up. Birk picks up on this ubiquitous symbol of resourcefulness, bringing it into the gallery where it takes on new role as abstract sculpture without losing its original identity.

Callejero is a show that you either love or you hate. I can’t imagine someone walking into the darkened gallery, with Birk’s narrated soundtrack of urban exploration playing through speakers on the floor, and not feeling something among the husks of rusted metal and grungy canvases. If you don’t buy into the premise, you might to find the show hokey or tired. But for those of us who can suspend our cynicism and delve into Birk’s theatrical vision, it’s worth the ride.

Andrew Birk: Callejero is on view at Anonymous Gallery in Mexico City through March 26, 2016.

Jennifer Moon. JLS (Jennifer Laub Smasher), 2015; K’NEX, Habitrail tubes, Popsicle sticks, foam sheets, ceramic 3D print figurines, electrical wire, electrical tape, dental floss, hemp, duct tape, wood, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table; 2 parts: approx. 68 ½ x 156 x 152 in.; 77 x 48 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

With her Phoenix Rising series, Jennifer Moon explores the revolutionary potential of love, with ample doses of candor and humor. One particularly memorable image from Phoenix Rising, Part 2 features Moon seated in a “Black Panther”-style wicker chair, with her Pomeranian at her feet, both of them wearing matching red berets. For Moon, the personal is indeed political. A far cry from Kazimir Malevich’s severe, stark black square, Moon’s work is idiosyncratic and playful, though her aims are no less radical. Phoenix Rising, Part 3: Laub, Me, and The Revolution (The Theory of Everything) resembles a junior-high-school science fair exhibit that provides a blueprint for revolution on both a macro and micro scale. The centerpiece is JLS (Jennifer Laub Smasher) (2015), a model made of Popsicle sticks and construction toys that snakes through the gallery. It resembles a DIY version of the Large Hadron Collider, only instead of smashing protons together, it will send Moon and her partner Laub hurtling toward one another at the speed of light. Instead of the Higgs boson particle, they are searching for a new form of love free from “hierarchies, binaries, and capital,” as an explanatory panel states. 3D-printed figures of the pair stand at the entry point, ready to embark on their experiment. It is a charming and whimsical riff on quantum theory.

Jennifer Moon. 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey, 2015; HD Video; 11:15; edition of 3 + 1 AP. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

The two have also produced a video, 3CE: A Relational Love Odyssey (2015), modeled on the reboot of the popular science series Cosmos. Adopting the wide-eyed wonder of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Moon and Laub appear in front of the green-screened cosmos, or idyllic nature scenes, as they narrate our journey toward a new society. The work has a lighthearted tone, but there is no irony as they implore us to “surf the empathic waves of relational love.” The sincerity of their welcoming and expansive revolutionary vision is compelling.

Jennifer Moon. GFT (Gut Fairies Transplant), 2015; mouth blown glass, wood, vinyl tubing, fecal matter, condom, ass-wipe, rocks, sand, charcoal, filtered water, corks, Prehnite with Epidote crystal, Blue Calcite crystal, Smoky Quartz crystal, refrigerator, inkjet prints, cardboard, construction paper, foamcore, fabric, folding table; 2 parts: approx. 64 x 275 x 21 in.; 77 x 48 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

Moon turns from the abstract concept of love to the very concrete trillions of microbes that make up our gut biome with GFT (Gut Fairies Transplant) (2015). It resembles a mad scientist’s lab, with curiously shaped glass vessels—hand-blown by Laub—flanking a fridge full of corked jars of, well, shit, discreetly labeled with “LAUB” or “JENNIFER.” The piece sets the stage for a symbiotic fecal transplant merging their “second brains,” as the gut biome is often referred to. What kind of empathy would be engendered if we were united not by beliefs, but by the trillions of microscopic organisms that literally make us up? Moon’s revolution is not characterized by a joyless severity often associated with radicals. On the contrary, she makes the complete overthrow of society seem fun and altogether possible.

Jemima Wyman. Conjuring Radical Openness, 2015 (center); bronze; 20 x 19 x 9 in.; unique edition of 3 + 1 A.P. Conjuring Power, 2015; DIY fabric-prints on cotton poplin, painted steel rods; site-specific installation; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

In her exhibition Conjuring Radical Openness, Jemima Wyman looks back to the historical use of design in service of revolution. Influenced by Soviet propaganda textiles of the ’20s and ’30s, Wyman’s fabric swaths feature hypnotic patterns that incorporate the masked faces of various contemporary protesters. She throws together disparate groups of the disgruntled, with little concern for shared geography or ideology. Michael Brown, Scientology, Free Gaza, anti-war, and pro-LGBTIQ all blend together in flowing fabrics of outrage. The ideas driving them are not Wyman’s; it is their methods she is interested in. From anonymity comes power and freedom. At the center of the hanging bolts of fabric, Wyman has placed a bronze bust made from a T-shirt wrapped around a head. There is only an empty void where the eyes should be, a monument to the communal protester that takes on a sinister tone. Contrasted with the breezy, cheerful prints, we are reminded of the divide between the hope of progress and the too-often disappointing post-revolution reality.

Robby Herbst. Body Surfing, 2015; colored pencil, gouache on watercolor paper; 22 ½ x 30 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles.

Robby Herbst’s work also reflects a disconnect between idealism and how it is manifested. His series of colored pencil and gouache drawings depict scenes from the New Games movement of the early ’70s. Conceived as a non-competitive, community-based alternative to traditional sports, the first New Games Tournament was held in 1973 in Marin, California, ground zero for post-hippie New Age humanism. Herbst has rendered activities, like Hug Tag or Parachute Games, in luminous cyan, red, and yellow, with an illustration style reminiscent of progressive books of the time, such as The Joy of Sex. The colors don’t line up, giving the impression of an off-register printing press. The sensation of something being amiss is echoed by the intrusion of technological symbols in these bucolic images of teamwork. Some are a bit heavy-handed, like an iPhone hovering over a shaggy-haired group engaged in an amoeba race. In other pieces, Herbst nails the manner in which the inclusive, nontraditional culture of the Bay Area gave rise to an entrepreneurial tech industry that has co-opted the very values that made it possible. (How else to explain a company whose motto “Don’t Be Evil” seems sharply at odds with its decision to support the NSA’s far-reaching surveillance plan?) Across an image of people bodysurfing, Herbst has overlaid a corporate graphic that charts various stewards of the new economy, such as Airbnb and Uber, against an axis labeled “Increased Rate of Disruption.” Ironically, the chart bears some similarity to Moon’s explanatory panels, though containing vastly different notions of disruption.

Jennifer Moon: Phoenix Rising, Part 3: Laub, Me, and the Revolution (The Theory of Everything); Jemima Wyman: Conjuring Radical Openness; and Robby Herbst: New Games are on view at Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles through December 19, 2015.

Tom LaDuke. French Cemetery, 2015; acrylic and glitter on canvas over panel; 41 x 71 ½ x in. Courtesy of the Artist and Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.

Each work in the show begins with an airbrushed rendering of a painting by an Old Master—Vermeer, Bosch, Velásquez, etc—although you wouldn’t know this by looking at them, and you don’t need to know it to “get” them. On top of this background, LaDuke layers a hodgepodge of images and marks, many autobiographical, although here too the provenance is less important than the effect. Realistically painted disco balls, candles, kitschy animals, and candy-colored geometric shapes float alongside smears, drips, blobs, and crudely rendered abstract forms. The most successful paintings are the larger ones (some over ten feet long), where the breadth of visual and tactile variation can spread out. LaDuke creates a shallow pictorial depth, as all of these elements press up against or sit atop the picture plane, threatening to tumble into real space. It makes sense that one of his source images is Manet’s Dead Toreador (1864), whose titular subject similarly seems to emerge from the canvas, jutting toward the viewer. Polyrhythmic Looping (2014) provides one of the only indications of depth behind the canvas, as a trompe l’oeil fissure, reminiscent of the fake tear in Duchamp’s Tu m’ (1918), reveals painterly swirls beneath the serene, airbrushed surface.

Tom LaDuke. Polyrhythmic Looping, 2014; acrylic and glitter on canvas over panel; 53 x 95 x 2 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.

In contrast to his art-historical background visuals, LaDuke also pulls from a grab bag of contemporary and personal imagery. In the provocatively titled Gloryhole (2015), Day-Glo TIE fighters from Star Wars zoom out from an orange-ringed portal. Instead of resembling their cinematic sources, however, the spaceships are based on vector graphics from the first Star Wars video game, presumably recalling LaDuke’s own childhood experience from the 1970s. There are other glimpses of personal nostalgia: a cookie jar, kids’ toys, a Christmas elf. In French Cemetery (2015), streaks of paint define the outlines of a car, maybe a Cadillac or a Lincoln. In Lap, Trickle, Lap (2015), a monster-like figure composed of paint smears and glitter stands at the center, a viscous golem willed into existence by youthful enthusiasm. Similar to a child’s early artistic efforts, it captures the moment when just pushing paint around coalesces into form. In a couple of works, the artist’s head appears as an ethereal, neon apparition, a ghostly witness to the fantastical visual tableaux.

Tom LaDuke. Gloryhole, 2015; acrylic and glitter on canvas over panel; 50 x 42 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.

As the title of the show, Candles and Lasers, implies, LaDuke has an interest in different forms of light, from Renaissance flickers to sci-fi beams. Candles, mirror balls, rainbows; hazy, glowing spots; and thin colored lines that could be read as lasers all make appearances. The glitter contrasts with these faux illuminations as the only literal source of light (via reflection). Historically, candles in paintings serve as memento mori, reminders of the fleeting nature of existence. LaDuke updates this classic symbol with more contemporary stand-ins for mortality—the flash of a laser or the glimmer of the dance floor.

Tom LaDuke. Lap, Trickle, Lap, 2015; acrylic and glitter on canvas over panel; 68 x 110 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.

Packed with imagery and abstraction, precision and coarseness, memories, history, and fantasies, LaDuke’s paintings are willfully awkward, fragmented almost to the point of indecipherability. They share something of the internet’s democratization of imagery, but here the aesthetic is less chat room and more wood-paneled rec room. They border on bad taste but they’re good fun. The joy in contemplating these weird and wonderful works comes from trying to figure out what we’re looking at, even if we never find out.

Tom LaDuke: Candles and Lasers is on view at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles through May 20, 2015. 

Stan VanDerBeek: Poemfield at The Box, Los Angeles; installation view. Courtesy of the Estate of Stan VanDerBeek and the Box, L.A. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.

On view are five of the eight films that compose VanDerBeek’s Poemfield series, created between 1966 and 1971. They combine poetic texts and abstract graphics designed with an early computer language. Words emerge from a glittering mosaic of colored pixels, and then fade back into the blinking, swirling digital ground. With the exception of Poemfield No. 5 (1968), which uses footage of skydivers, all of the films represent purely computer-generated landscapes. The graphics transform and flicker at a frenetic pace while the poems slowly unfold over about five minutes. The visuals entrance and draw viewers in, but it is the enigmatic texts that hold the attention. VanDerBeek likened his films to illuminated manuscripts, wherein gilt illustrations would entice the reader to focus on the word.

The artist made these films at Bell Labs in collaboration with engineer Ken Knowlton, through Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), an organization founded in part by Robert Rauschenberg. Knowlton had developed BEFLIX, perhaps the earliest computer animation language, which they used to write the scripts for the Poemfield films. These scripts were then run through a computer and channeled into a cathode-ray tube output that was filmed. Artists Bob Brown and Frank Olvey added color. The Box has transferred the original 16mm films to video and restored Poemfield No. 1 (1967) in HD; the difference is striking. The other films jump and stutter with wobbly focus, so that making out the words is a challenge, but the HD version is clear and sharp. This is especially true in a two-tone variant, Poemfield No. 1 (Blue Version), which strips away the color so that the original programming is highlighted. Restorations of the rest of the Poemfield series are hopefully underway.

Stan VanDerBeek: Poemfield at the Box, Los Angeles; installation view. Courtesy of the Estate of Stan VanDerBeek and the Box, L.A. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.

VanDerBeek viewed technology as a source of potential liberation and empowerment, not alienation. This was true for the creation of art as well as for its ability to reach a wide audience. “What spellbinds me as an idea is that I’ll be able to sit someplace in a railroad station and write a movie, or maybe even pick up a telephone eventually and write a movie,” he said in the 1968 film Incredible Machine. He saw the ubiquity of television as an ideal vehicle for the dissemination of artwork. “If the world of the future is a world of ephemeral TV programs and houses which we change as often as we change cars, it may be a world which calls for an art as ephemeral as much of the music which eighteenth-century composers provided for social occasions. Art is more than eternal masterpieces,” he wrote in a 1969 document included in the exhibition catalog.

On the cover of the catalog are images of the punch cards VanDerBeek used to program his films, all numbers and raw data. They resemble the punch cards in Errol Morris’ film The Fog of War, cards that Robert McNamara employs in his coolly efficient planning of the Vietnam War. Technology is not inherently good or bad, but it has the potential to be used for vastly different ends. VanDerBeek realized this dichotomy, noting that his work offered “a possible way to replace ‘war’ games with ‘peace’ games.” The most lucid example of this is Poemfield No. 7 (1967-8), which reproduces the poem “There is no way to Peace – Peace is the way” by anti-war activist A.J. Muste. The most serene film in the show, the poem’s words unfold across a cruciform mandala that recalls multiple spiritual sources.

Stan VanDerBeek: Poemfield at the Box, Los Angeles; installation view. Courtesy of the Estate of Stan VanDerBeek and the Box, L.A. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.

The one drawback of the show is the works’ sonic environment. VanDerBeek used notable musicians like John Cage and Paul Motian to create soundtracks for each film, but the sounds are not isolated, and in the Box’s cavernous main space they play over each other in a sea of aural cacophony. In adjoining galleries, other films are played on monitors that have headphones, making it all the more apparent how important the unique soundtrack is to each work.

Despite this limitation, the exhibition is a welcome restoration of a digital pioneer whose work bridged high art, progressive ideals, and technology. Instead of encouraging isolation, VanDerBeek saw the computer and the cinema as tools to connect people and enable communication. As he writes in an article on “Disposable Art” (also included in the catalogue), “I believe that motion pictures and related image-thinking holds out a hope for ‘seeing’ ourselves and thus to evolve the ecology most suitable for life, for living…can you see me! can you hear me!”

Stan VanDerBeek: Poemfield is on view at the Box in Los Angeles through November 1, 2014.

Doug Aitken. NOW (Blue Mirror), 2014; wood, mirror, and glass; 48 1/4 x 108 1/2 x 18 in. © Doug Aitken. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Aitken has created a fantasy landscape in the gallery, punching holes in some of the walls, artfully building out others so they appear to have been partially knocked down. It is visibly artificial, but impressively so, and paired with the absence of light, goes a long way toward erasing or at least diminishing the impression of a white cube. It also serves to slow down movement through the space—viewers are not as likely to rush through an exhibit if they’re wandering in an unfamiliar setting in the dark.

The works in the show take familiar objects, images, or words and present them in a way that is foreign or unsettling—making spectacular the mundane. A series of mirrored pieces depict single words—“END,” “NOW,” “EXIT”—that are about a moment in time, rather than duration. They are impeccably made, each gem-like (crystalline) letter crafted out of multiple planes of colored glass. They encourage gallerygoers to spend time moving around them to see how the other works are reflected in their facets. It is not difficult to get lost, but the construction is so compelling that the words can seem like little more than a linguistic substrate for infinite visual permutations.

Doug Aitken. END/RUN (Timeline), 2014; clear mirror, resin, concrete powder
coated steel; 72 x 132 3/4 x 36 in. © Doug Aitken. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Another text-based work that takes this sense of absorption a step further is END/RUN (Timeline) (2014), a massive concrete rectangle that bisects a hole in the gallery wall. On one end, the word “END” is cut out of the concrete, and on the other end, “RUN.” Looking into the piece through the letters on either end reveals a long, kaleidoscopic mirrored interior, with the gallery visible through the cut-out letters on the other side. An end run is the long way around something, an evasion or an attempt to go around the defense instead of through them. This is precisely what viewers are compelled to do: to enact a kind of performance of their own as they walk all the way around the gallery wall to fully grasp the work. Once there, the interior is similarly enthralling, changing with every shift of the viewer’s gaze.

Doug Aitken. Twilight, 2014; cast resin, acrylic, and responsive/generative LED system; 71 3/4 x 54 1/4 x 54 1/4 in. © Doug Aitken. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

In addition to these text-based works are interactive sculptures that inspire contemplation. Twilight (2014) is a cast resin-and-acrylic reproduction of a payphone that glows from within in response to a viewer’s proximity. Amidst the hustle of the streets, the pay phone is one of the few places where you are encouraged to stop moving. It is also an obsolete form of communication, and the glowing, pale white beacon can be seen as an elegiac monument to slower forms of interaction. It changes in response to the nearness of a body as if trying to communicate, but its message is indecipherable. Down a long, dark corridor is another glowing white sculpture, a miniature cave scene of stalactites and stalagmites around a small pool, Eyes Closed, Wide Awake (Sonic Fountain II) (2014). Water drips into the pool and the sound is amplified. The effect is mesmerizing, but it is unclear if this is the result of the expertly manufactured artwork as much as the natural scenario it replicates.

Installation view of Still Life at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. September 6 – October 11, 2014. Photo: Brian Forrest. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Next to these works, a series of light boxes fails to elicit much wonder. They depict tropes of southern California life—cars, pools, roadside signs—and attempt again to make alien the familiar. The outline of a car is filled in with rocks, and the pool is paired with an astronomical image of a red sun, for example. A moonscape in the shape of the letters “HOME” comes off as trite. These works share all of the cinematic polish of Aitken’s other works but lack their dynamism.

With Still Life, Doug Aitken has slowed down his pace but lost none of the spectacle of earlier works. Much of the show is entrancing; the high production quality and craftsmanship draw us in but risk becoming the focus at times. The best pieces in the show work because, as with the best Hollywood films, they present a glittering surface, beneath which is a strong underlying narrative.

Doug Aitken: Still Life is on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles through October 11, 2014.

[1] Exhibition press release

[2] http://www.latimes.com/fashion/alltherage/la-ar-doug-aitken-exhibition-20140908-story.html

Matt Sheridan Smith. Widow – Fig. 3 Ep. 1; installation view. Courtesy of the Artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White.

And what a subject he has chosen. The title of the exhibition, Widow Fig. 1 Ep. 3, refers to the widow Clicquot, who is perhaps better know by her French name: Veuve Clicquot. Born into a wealthy family in 1777, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin was only 27 when she inherited her husband’s wine business upon his death (either from typhoid or suicide, depending on who you ask). At the time, the British had developed a style of champagne that was cloudy with yeast residue and large, inelegant bubbles. The widow perfected a process of drawing out the sediment into the neck of the bottle so it could be removed, giving us the clear, sparkling, fine-bubbled beverage we celebrate with today. Clicquot died at the age of 88, her legacy established as “a woman who was a smashing success long before anyone conceptualized the glass ceiling.”[2]

Matt Sheridan Smith. Scratch (Untitled), 2014; paper mounted to aluminum; 50 ¾ x 35 ¾ X 1 ½ in. Courtesy of the Artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White.

Sheridan Smith doesn’t focus much on the biographical specifics of her life, choosing instead to represent her through opaque symbolism. As portraiture, this yields mixed results, but he has created some individual works that are truly compelling. A number of pieces on linen, each titled Pattern Portrait (Widow) (2014) feature gold bubble patterns on faint white grids. The bubbles range in size—on some canvases they are large and clunky, and on others they are delicate and dense like those in champagne. The artist created these works by placing a Xerox coated in acrylic gel medium on the linen and then rubbing most of the paper away, until only the image and bits of paper (the faint white grid) are left. The resulting ghostly image is the product of erasure instead of accretion. The artist’s hand is absent, but the work bears the trace of his physical interaction. The results are hypnotic and haunting.

Matt Sheridan Smith. Pattern Portrait (Widow), 2014; acrylic gel medium transfer, paper, linen; 56 x 80 X 1 ½ in. Courtesy of the Artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White.

Image creation by obliteration is also at play in a series of Scratch works. Here, Sheridan Smith begins with a tight bubble pattern, which he has covered in scratch-off ink (think lottery scratch-off tickets). On some, the ink is the signature Clicquot yellow-orange, on others gold or black. Two are left untouched, the pattern barely visible beneath sublime, glowing monochromes. On the rest, he has used his hand or a knife to scratch off areas of the ink, revealing bits of the pattern beneath. To reveal the entire pattern—thus achieving revelation—would require destruction of the work. Sheridan Smith has provocatively begun this process, challenging us to follow him, if not with our hands, then with our eyes—to attempt to see beyond the surface.

Other attempts at portraiture are similarly obscured but less satisfying. On top of a digitally printed portrait of the widow herself (from an 1861 painting by Léon Cogniet), Sheridan Smith has placed a grid of polished aluminum. When we try to visually piece together the entire image, we see slices of ourselves staring back. It is an interesting optical trick, but it falls flat next to the nuanced and subtle pattern works.

A large installation, Untitled (Skin Contact) (2014), includes a pile of dirt, deadly nightshade plants, and champagne glasses perched on two yellow-orange Formica pedestals. Two of the glasses are filled with champagne (replenished periodically by gallery staff), two others with the residue of lees, the yeast used in champagne production. The dirt could be seen as an allusion to the terroir so important to wine production, while the champagne glasses might serve as a kind of obtuse vanitas image. The poisonous plant comes off as a failed attempt at edginess. Although intriguing, the piece feels on the whole unconvincing, pointing in different directions without following through.

In building a portrait of the widow Clicquot, Sheridan Smith problematizes a facile definition of identity. His work makes the case that representational images hold no more claim to biography than colors or patterns. Not all of his works hit the mark, but the ones that do are well worth the visit.

Matt Sheridan Smith: Widow – Fig. 3 Ep. 1 is on view at Hannah Hoffman Gallery in Los Angeles through August 23, 2014.

[1] Exhibition press release

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/books/review/Stern-t.html

Pia Camil. Los Angeles, 2014; hand-dyed and stitched canvas, 94 1/2 x 94 1/2 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.

These works are based on abandoned billboards found in and around Mexico City. Unlike recent projects that utilize actual billboards, which adapt their original promotional function for the dissemination of art, Camil’s works look at the failure of this commercial system to deliver comprehensible messages. On the original billboards, pieces of earlier advertisements are visible alongside the owner’s phone numbers, presenting a mosaic of piecemeal and incomplete information. In Camil’s handmade works, she captures the entropic aesthetic quality of her sources, while subverting the mass-market consumer culture they once espoused. Public enticements to the marketplace are transformed into personal explorations of craft.

It is telling that the word for billboard in Spanish is espectacular, alluding to its function as a spectacle. Billboards demand attention as two-dimensional visual stimuli, but Camil’s works call attention to their own objecthood. Although her works are visually composed of flat planes of color, they are physically constructed through a labor-intensive process of dying and sewing. Although they are made of stretched canvas and assembled by hand from smaller elements, they are not quite paintings and not quite sculptures.

Pia Camil. Fragmento 6 I y 6 II, 2014; enameled low-temperature ceramic; two parts: 15 3/4 x 10 x 5 1/2 in. and 16 x 10 x 5 1/2 in.; installed: 16 x 23 x 5 1/2 in.; edition of 3. Courtesy of the Artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.

Camil further explores the relationship between the visual and the physical with Espectacular Transparencia (2014), a large sign-like structure with a transparent scrim in the center of the gallery. This work possesses a theatrical quality; visitors are meant to walk around the work and see through it. (Looking at this work, it is not surprising that Camil often engages in performance, and formed art-rock band El Resplandor in 2009.) Unlike commercial billboards that offer only one surface, there is much to be seen beyond the façade. On the other side are shelves that support a number of small, brightly colored ceramic works. These Fragmentos resemble the linguistic fragments from her wall works, removed from their previous context and given new life. Here, too, Camil counters disposable consumerism with handmade craft. Rendered on a modest scale, they hover between domestic objects like vases and quirky minimalist sculptures á la Richard Tuttle.

Pia Camil. The Little Dog Laughed, 2014; installation view: Blum & Poe, Los Angeles. L: Asfalto, 2014; hand-dyed and stitched canvas; 94 1/2 x 94 1/2 in. R: The Little Dog Laughed, 2014; hand-dyed and stitched canvas; 108 1/4 x 330 11/16 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.

The most impressive piece in the exhibition is a 27-and-a-half-foot-long curtain assembled from hand-dyed and stitched canvas pieces like the wall works. Freed from its support, The Little Dog Laughed (2014) is a visual delight that also asserts its physicality. Partially blocking the entrance to the room, it serves to set off the space inside as special. It suggests that things will be different once the threshold is crossed. The work alludes to the functionality of a household object as much as it does to the theatricality of a stage curtain. It invites interaction, begging to be pushed or pulled along the metal rail from which it hangs. Instead of a single, static image, Camil offers the potential of infinite permutations.

More than simply emphasizing handmade craft over the anonymous and mass-produced, Camil creates new meaning and beauty from the failures of these corporate communiqués. The title of her exhibition comes from John Fante’s Depression-era novel set in L.A., Ask the Dust. The protagonist, Arturo Bandini, has published one short story, “The Little Dog Laughed,” giving him an overinflated sense of success. Like the dilapidated billboards that once held grand pronouncements, Bandini’s story is not as compelling as he imagines. Through her artistic labor, Camil is able to create a new narrative from among these worn and faded symbols.

Pia Camil: The Little Dog Laughed is on view at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles through August 23, 2014.

Don Bachardy. Joan Agajanian Quinn, 1977; graphite on paper. Joan and Jack Quinn Collection.

The exhibition Joan Quinn Captured at the Brand Library Art Center aims to challenge this viewpoint by presenting dozens of portraits of one woman, Joan Agajanian Quinn, from “what is perhaps the largest portrait collection by contemporary artists in the world,” according to the organizers. For over forty years Quinn has been a passionate supporter of the arts in Southern California and beyond. A Los Angeles native, she was introduced to the Ferus Gallery group in the 1950s through artist Billy Al Bengston, who would race his motorcycle at a track owned by her father. This began her decades-long role as patron, promoter, and chronicler of contemporary art, fashion, and culture. In 1978 Quinn was chosen by Andy Warhol to be the West Coast editor of his Interview magazine, and she held positions at numerous other publications, including as L.A. editor of Germany-based Manipulator magazine and senior editor of Stuff. Since 1993, she has hosted “The Joan Quinn Profiles,” a show on cable television that features interviews with artists, designers, actors, and musicians—two per episode, for 400 episodes and counting. She has served on numerous arts, film, and architecture organizations, including a stint as the longest-sitting member of the California Arts Council. The exhibition is not only a composite portrait of Quinn; it also offers a personal and subjective lens focused on various artists and movements. Through one face, viewers see many stories.

Kevin Whitney. Joan Quinn, 1984; watercolor on paper. Joan and Jack Quinn Collection.

It would be trite and wrong to say that the work in the exhibition is a “who’s who” of L.A. art of the past four decades. The Ferus artists—Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Ed Moses, Joe Goode, Larry Bell—are well represented to be sure, as are other heavyweights like Allen Ruppersberg and Frank Gehry. But the exhibition zigzags around the globe from swinging London (David Hockney, Duggie Fields, and Kevin Whitney) to downtown New York (Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Mapplethorpe). What makes this collection interesting is that it’s not limited to major, well-known artists in the same way that the Broad or the Fisher collections are. Emerging or forgotten artists are given equal billing with established ones (and for that matter, memorable works are hung alongside a few forgettable ones). High art sits next to fashion photography (Helmut Newton) and design (Zandra Rhodes), blurring these taxonomic distinctions and presenting an expansive vision of culture that includes all of the arts.

The portraits range from traditional to evocative. The representational ones all share certain characteristics: Quinn’s large, bright eyes; her elegant, aquiline nose; her mane of dark (now graying) hair. Her fingers are covered with jewelry, her wrists with multiple watches and bracelets, and around her neck, a large cross. (Basquiat’s portrait depicts only her bejeweled arms, alongside images of monkeys and the written amount “$65,000.”) She is often portrayed as a queen or princess—portraiture is, after all, not for the meek—though one gets the impression that this is less because of her personal hubris than the artists’ reverence for her influential support. Within these parameters, however, great variations are evident. Don Bachardy’s 1977 full-body, graphite-on-paper portrait, Joan Agajanian Quinn, lends her face a sense of tenderness and fragility. Rupert Jasen Smith’s Portrait of Joan Agajanian Quinn from a Warhol Polaroid (1988) renders her face in profile: head tilted slightly back and hair cascading behind, lending her a regal, monumental quality. By contrast, in a 2009 canvas, Joan Agajanian Quinn, young artist Lucie Abdalian paints her as a tortured apparition in thin washes of fleshy peach, jet black, and crimson, with wide, lizard-like eyes.

George Herms. Portrait of Joan Agajanian Quinn, 2003; assemblage, mixed media. Joan and Jack Quinn Collection.

Less literal depictions are just as varied. A 2003 assemblage piece by George Herms, Portrait of Joan Agajanian Quinn, is composed of a rusted ocean buoy atop ballet slippers and Zandra Rhodes’ textiles—perhaps alluding to Quinn’s role in determining cultural currents. Laddie John Dill’s funky glass and plywood sculpture, Joan Quinn (1984–85), looks like a cross between a Cubist figure and a piece of Memphis Milano furniture with no discernible purpose. An old, yellowed copy of Interview resting on the work reveals its function as a magazine rack, portraying Quinn as cultural arbiter in her role as editor and writer.

Laddie John Dill. Joan Quinn, 1984-85; sculpture/tempered glass, ground minerals, wood marine plywood. Joan and Jack Quinn Collection.

The portraits in the exhibition have been exhibited previously, but this is the first time they have been shown next to representative works by many of the artists. They are also augmented here by various ephemera, from copies of the magazines Quinn worked on, to episodes of The Joan Quinn Profiles playing on TVs, to a slideshow of her society snapshots (which were unfortunately washed out by the harsh Southern California sun). There is also an ambitious series of talks and film screenings focusing on themes related to the exhibition. This context is a welcome addition to the artworks on view, which are given additional layers of meaning through inclusion in this larger narrative. The show, after all, is not a greatest-hits survey of the last half-century, but is instead a subjective tour of a series of movements, moments, and artists through the eyes—and images—of one woman.

Joan Quinn Captured is on view at The Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale through August 1, 2014.

Paul McCarthy & Benjamin Weissman. Quilting Sessions, 1997-2008; installation view at The Box Gallery, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the Artists and The Box, Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.

Fittingly, the oldest artist in the show is Paul McCarthy, who has been creating all manner of abject and provocative art since the early 1970s. Beginning with simple early performances, McCarthy’s oeuvre has come to include sculpture, video, and installation, culminating in recent big-budget cinema spectacles. McCarthy’s “signature ingredients: violence, humor, sex, impotence, appetite, degradation, art history, politics, and pop culture”[1] are all present here, most notably in his collaborations with Benjamin Weissman in Quilting Sessions (1997–2008). Although they are still quite graphic, these mostly black-and-white drawings have a different impact than McCarthy’s more substantial works. Instead of being confronted by the over-the-top viscera and obnoxious characters of his films, here the intimacy of the crude ink-on-paper drawings pulls viewers in, even while their transgressive imagery repels. The repetition of so many images, hung in tight rows four high, only strengthens this dynamic. These works recall an adolescent’s notebook doodles, page after page of feverish attempts to conjure as many naughty scenarios as possible. Bits of text hint at disturbing or absurd narratives. (“Mommy Daddy on all 4’s in the Kitchen,” reads one.) Elsewhere, placed on tables, are preliminary sketches for McCarthy’s upcoming Stagecoach piece, as well as Placemat Drawings (2009–2014). This latter series proves interesting for its diversity of subject matter and the casual manner in which various ideas have been developed while the artist dined.

Benjamin Weissman. Untitled (Charles Darwin), undated; 30 x 77 in. Image courtesy of the Artists and The Box. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen.

The solo drawings of Benjamin Weissman, who is perhaps best known as a writer, certainly give McCarthy a run for his money in terms of puerile depravity. A series of 144 small, colorful drawings on the gallery’s back wall seem to feature at least that number of erect penises, if not more. The artist was presumably so pleased with an image of Charles Darwin fellating an anatomically exaggerated member that he has drawn it twice in a work by the front desk. Weissman’s seemingly deviant obsession with sex is not surprising, given that he spent a year reviewing 300 adult films for AVN, under the pen name Leopold Loeb, a reference to the notorious 1920s child-murderers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. There are moments of delight in Weissman’s delicate but warped works, but as with his collaborations, the overwhelming repetition of so many charged images can prove exhausting.

Naotaka Hiro. Untitled, 2012-14; installation view; acrylic, charcoal pencil on paper; 42 x 31 ½ in. Image courtesy of the Artists and The Box, Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

The exhibition’s most welcome surprise is the work of Naotaka Hiro, the youngest of the three. Hiro’s previous work has mostly been in video and sculpture, and generally addresses issues of corporeality. His time spent as a studio assistant to McCarthy has no doubt informed his practice, and his watercolor and acrylic works on paper are the most fully realized and least sketch-like pieces in the show. Hiro has managed to take the bodily preoccupations of the other artists and imbue them with a sense of whimsy. In some drawings the physical references are explicit, while in others, he has abstracted them to sinuous curves and brightly colored forms that recall works by Henri Matisse and William Blake. There are still orifices and phalli and bodily excretions in his works, but he depicts them with a fanciful innocence that proves a welcome foil for the damaged trauma of the other artists.

The Men in the exhibition title refers not only to the artists, but to their subject matter. In different ways, they each use drawing to explore ideas about masculinity. McCarthy and Weissman offer up ambivalent takes on what it means to be a man, full of insecurity, loathing, and phallic infatuation. They skewer heroic male tropes, while at the same time compulsively presenting a darkly comic, immature hedonism. Hiro shares the other artists’ corporeal fascination, but his drawings are quieter, more focused than their frenetic output. McCarthy’s and Weissman’s drawings give us a glimpse of them working through familiar ideas, whereas Hiro’s work shows an artist branching out into unknown terrain.

Men in L.A.: Three Generations of Drawings — Naotaka Hiro, Benjamin Weissman, Paul McCarthy is on view at The Box in Los Angeles through July 5, 2014.

[1] Holland Cotter, “The American Fairy Tale, Fun House Style,” New York Times, June 28, 2013: C21.

Allen Ruppersberg. Self-Portrait Making a Face Like Barney Bear, 1975; pencil on paper; 23 x 29 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

In these works, Ruppersberg depicts both images and words to produce what he describes as a “‘comparison’ of reading and looking and the ‘confusion of the two.’”[1] As Leslie Jones, Curator of Prints and Drawings at LACMA, notes in her insightful catalogue essay: “Choosing to draw it [the book] points to the graphic affinity between writing and drawing as well as the experiential distinctions between reading a book and drawing it, between interpreting its linguistic contents and rendering visually it as an object.”[2] Drawing and writing are constantly at play as drawings of books, drawings of words, and drawings of illustrations all compete to be recognized for their veracity. Reading Time (The Elements of Style), a drawing from 1973–74, captures this playful questioning of truth as Ruppersberg depicts a simple line drawing of the Strunk and White classic above a reading time of two hours and fifty-eight minutes written (drawn?) in expressive cursive. Following from Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965), Ruppersberg questions which is the more accurate representation: a basic drawing of a book or his subjective temporal experience of reading it.

Allen Ruppersberg. Reading Time (The Elements of Style), 1973-74; pencil on paper; 23 x 29 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Photo: Jake Wotherspoon.

Books are a major inspiration for Ruppersberg, both as literature and as object. A series from 1989, The Gift and the Inheritance, depicts individual titles from his collection, high and low, from Shakespeare to a basic drawing manual. Rendered with detailed specificity, each drawing is a portrait of the object, showing Ruppersberg’s relationship to that particular copy. This relationship is then extended to the purchaser of the artwork: After Ruppersberg’s death, the owner of the drawing will receive the actual book depicted. A relatively straightforward picture of a book is expanded to include a story well beyond the boundaries of the frame.

Allen Ruppersberg. Self-Portrait as Bugs Bunny, 1975; pencil on paper; 23 x 29 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Before turning to fine art, Ruppersberg studied illustration at Chouinard Institute (now CalArts), and this “practical” art features prominently in many of his drawings. Images of typical Americana appropriated from picture postcards (taken from his massive collection) are blown up to five or six times their original size with the aid of a projector. A five-panel piece, On Possession and Sexual Loss (1979), begins with a drawing of a generic book cover, followed by drawings of a woman with flowers, a woodcarver, a cowboy, and an old-fashioned inn, all rendered with faithful adherence to their mass-market origins. The titular phrase is written out, starting on the first sheet (On Possession), and continuing onto the second (and Sexual Loss), reinforcing the notion that the work is to be read like a book. By appropriating these everyday images and combining them with evocative text, Ruppersberg is suggesting a new narrative, in keeping with his statement that “Art should be familiar and enigmatic.”[3]

Allen Ruppersberg. On Possession and Sexual Loss, 1979; pencil on paper; Five Parts: 23 x 29 in. each. Courtesy of the Artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.

Ruppersberg also looks to popular imagery to comment on identity construction. In Self-Portrait Making a Face like Barney Bear (1975), the cartoon character smiles sheepishly out at us in front of a bright orange, crosshatched background. Ruppersberg’s version of the bear recalls the original, but the hand of the artist is clearly present. A similar Self-Portrait as Bugs Bunny (1975) does a better job of capturing this duality, perhaps because of the character’s popularity. These are not the airbrushed and silkscreened cartoon characters of Pop Art. Instead, they express something of the connection between artist and cultural artifact.

Allen Ruppersberg. The Gift and the Inheritance (Why Not Draw?), 1989; pencil on paper; 19 ½ x 26 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Photo: Jake Wotherspoon.

Another self-portrait, Autobiography 1. Autobiography 2. (1980), uses various sources and methods of depiction to tell the artist’s story. This work in two parts includes bucolic images of a mother hen sitting atop a litter of kittens and a country cottage, paired with musical notation for Neil Young’s “My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue)” and a recipe for egg salad. Mass media, music, food—drawing, musical symbols, and writing—are all valid means to convey something of Ruppersberg’s identity. Although he is not literally pictured, these borrowed signifiers tell us a great deal more about the artist than would be possible through photographic representation.

Perhaps because of the contemporary ubiquity of art that traffics in language and appropriation, it’s difficult to get a true sense of Ruppersberg’s influence. Echoes of this work can be seen across the spectrum, from Raymond Pettibon to Richard Prince to Fiona Banner. By focusing on an underrepresented aspect of Ruppersberg’s output, Drawing and Writing provides a much-needed reappraisal of his legacy.

Allen Ruppersberg: Drawing and Writing 1972–1989 is on view at Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Beverly Hills through May 17, 2014.

David Armstrong Six. Imposter, 2013; plaster, steel, wood, ceramic, paint; 87 x 21 x 37 in. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson.

The artist whose work shares the closest aesthetic affinities with the early modern sculpture of Claudel is David Armstrong Six. His multimedia sculptures are composed of rough-hewn pieces of plaster, wood, metal, and paint. They are abstract stand-ins for lone figures, junkyard Giacomettis whose heavily textured surfaces keep us moving around them to apprehend all the elements and discern how they relate to the whole. The insertion of recognizable objects—a maraca and plaster eggplant into one piece (Radio, 2014), or a polished wooden phallus in another (Imposter, 2013)—provides a counterweight to the formalism of the works, proclaiming them as objects in the real world.

Lizzie Fitch. Reach, 2012; wood, ink on paper, ink on canvas, stain, screws, staples; 71.5 x 48 x 3.25 in. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson.

On the surface, Lizzie Fitch’s inkjet-printed two-dimensional constructions would seem to be about as far from Six’s slapdash works as possible, but they both combine disparate elements in ways that reward extended viewing. Her layered canvases feature hybrid objects made from images of power tools, car keys, body parts, and banal nature backdrops. Similar to her work with longtime collaborator Ryan Trecartin, Fitch focuses on how technology shapes our vision. Instead of ADD-fueled video narcissism, however, these works reference our Photoshop-enabled ability to produce smooth, seamless composites from an unending stream of visual material. Although enigmatic, these works are less compelling than To-Be-Titled (2008–2014), a sculpture by Fitch that could have been assembled from scraps off of Paul McCarthy’s studio floor. All rubber breasts, hands, and hair, the figure has a disarming presence, at once vulnerable and unsettling.

Sam Anderson. Food to Go With Drinks, 2012; wood, nail lacquer, brick fragments, animal bones, sunflower seeds, apple seeds, cherry seeds, cardboard, laminated strawberry tops, glow-in-the-dark ping-pong balls, eraser fragments, clay, coal, wire, concrete, rocks, plastic, seashells, paper, resin, saw; 72 x 72 x 6.5 in. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson.

Sam Anderson. Food to Go With Drinks, 2012 (detail); wood, nail lacquer, brick fragments, animal bones, sunflower seeds, apple seeds, cherry seeds, cardboard, laminated strawberry tops, glow-in-the-dark ping-pong balls, eraser fragments, clay, coal, wire, concrete, rocks, plastic, seashells, paper, resin, saw; 72 x 72 x 6.5 in. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson.

Sam Anderson’s miniature sculptures are perhaps the most narrative in the exhibition, although it is up to the viewer to assemble her own story from among the pieces. Arranged in rows on the ground, the sculptures that make up Food to Go With Drinks (2014) each tell one line of a story, like an exquisite corpse: a door with two skulls in front, glow-in-the-dark ping-pong balls, tiny skis on wooden wedges. A series of wooden blocks of different sizes reads like a humorous attempt to cut Carl Andre down to size. Scale is a key component of these works, as they vacillate between larger objects made small (skis), and small objects presented at 1:1 scale (ping-pong balls). They pull us down into their space but demand caution, lest we disturb the sawdust or eraser fragments scattered about. They are precious in the best sense of the word.

Marina Pinsky. installation view. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson.

Marina Pinsky’s architectural constructions explore the gap between three-dimensional forms and two-dimensional representations, combining printed images with structural forms. In Arch (2014), sketched and photographic depictions of a staircase are topped with an arch made of sculpted blocks. In the titled-with-a-pun Arch Support (2014), an arched form serves as the literal support for a 2D rendering of illusionistic space beyond, complete with perspective lines. Although conceptually strong, there is something in the flat, deadpan execution that keeps these works from being fully engrossing.

Ian Cheng. Entropy Wrangler Atik, 2014; live simulation, infinite duration, sound. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson.

Ian Cheng’s live computer simulation Entropy Wrangler Atik (2014) is an infinite loop of objects, people, and animals crashing into each other, spinning off, and exploding. Like an inverse version of the popular video game Katamari Damacy, we watch as figures, dinosaurs, birds, sharks, plants, tools, and office furniture collide with one another, flail about, and burst into flames, with accompanying sound effects. The result is mesmerizing, not only for an adolescent fascination with destruction, but for the infinite amount of permutations possible. It is like watching a performance, witnessing something happening in real time, never to be repeated.

The focus on narrative as a way to connect these artists’ work back to Claudel’s is a novel but problematic strategy. It is surely important to recognize the reasons behind the literal, historical erasure of Claudel’s work. However, we should be careful not to let biographical narrative hold disproportionate influence over our experience of an artwork. In a sense, then, the dramatic story of Claudel’s life has obscured our appreciation of the objects themselves. By proclaiming that the work in International Women’s Day celebrates a “more true to life emotionality,” as the press release states, we run the risk of essentializing what it means to be a female artist. Perhaps it is best in this case not to adhere too closely to the curatorial statement, but to take each artist’s work on its own terms.

International Women’s Day  is on view at Night Gallery in Los Angeles through April 5, 2014.

Annie Lapin. Various Peep Shows (Through), 2013; oil and acrylic enamel spray-paint on canvas; 82 x 72 in. Courtesy of Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Brian Forrest.

Most of the works in the show are based very loosely on a grid, with rough horizontals and verticals defining the composition. But within that basic structure, organized chaos reigns. Between the poles of impressionistic depiction and spray-painted letters, Lapin has smeared, dabbed, brushed, stained, and poured her way across the surface. The results often resemble the décollage of urban facades—torn posters, peeling paint, crumbling walls—hovering between creation and destruction, accretion and dissolution.

Despite the initial appearance of randomness, these works are carefully composed. Lapin has not simply attacked the canvas with all manner of mark-making, but has clearly preconceived her execution, as areas of thin wash abut patches of thick impasto. These different techniques lie side by side on the surface, only giving the impression of overlapping planes in the mind of the viewer.

Annie Lapin. That Looks In and Out, 2013; oil and acrylic enamel spray-paint on canvas; 82 x 78 in. Courtesy of Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Brian Forrest.

The strength of the work lies in Lapin’s deft fluctuation between the real space of the paint and the canvas, and the illusionary space of the painting. As the title suggests, it is all about looking, about the different forms of perception that painting can engender. The best paintings in the show are the roughly seven-foot-square canvases like That Looks In and Out (2013). Dingy, thin vertical strokes sit on the surface, framing a brightly hued but obscured impressionistic scene, perhaps a landscape. In the lower third of the canvas are crudely spray-painted red and orange letters. A thick, angry patch of black and gray is smeared just right of center, almost from top to bottom. ­It appears on top of the other layers, almost like an act of vandalism.

Annie Lapin. Various Peep Shows (Through) (detail), 2013; oil and acrylic enamel spray-paint on canvas; 82 x 72 in. Courtesy of Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Brian Forrest.

The work’s fragmented nature prevents us from ever really feeling comfortable with what we are viewing. Lapin keeps us off guard, always unsure of our footing. We are pulled through the rectilinear window into the shallow, artificial space of the landscape, only to be thrust back to the surface by the literal physicality of the gray patch and the spray-painted letters. Our vision vacillates between the flat plane of the surface, the implied layers of paint, and the fabricated space of the landscape. It is not surprising, then, that Lapin studied archaeology before turning to art; by carefully sifting through layers, we arrive at revelation. Foreground and background often flip, as what appears to be in the distance jumps to the surface. In another work, Various Peep Shows (Through) (2013), many of the same elements are repeated, but the landscape this time seems closer to a wall painting or mural—a painting of a painting—further complicating the exploration of perception that Lapin is undertaking.

Lapin’s paintings aren’t distinguished by their massive size, hyperrealism, or salacious content. They aren’t hard-edged geometric works or monochromes, composed of diamond dust or bodily fluids. She doesn’t look to the extremes of the medium or succumb to gimmicky tropes. But by thoughtfully looking at the history of painting, its many permutations, functions, and possibilities, she has created works that make the case for the medium’s continued relevance. We’re not sure what we’re looking at with these paintings, but she keeps us looking.

Annie Lapin: Various Peep Shows is on view at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles through February 22, 2014.