L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley At the start of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote’s charming novella about a troubled socialite looking for “what’s hers” and attracted to everything that’s not, the unnamed narrator receives a message from a bartender named Joe Bell. He meets Bell, an old friend, and the two clandestinely talk about Holly, the socialite[…..]

While the act of mapping conveys authority – giving credence to that which it records – mapping cannot remain entirely static and must be revised to represent changes in power structures.  In efforts to better understand or better represent the world, many contemporary artists eschew two-dimensional map-making in favor of addressing the ways in which traditional maps are transgressed by global complexities. Whose Map is[…..]

The work of Slovakian artist Roman Ondák has been referred to as “intervention,” a label which makes reference to the way a piece confronts the viewer with an unexpected experience. Ondák, who is currently participating in the Berlin Biennale through August 8, 2010, creates work that is at once mischievous, hilarious and stone serious. He deals with social issues of both the grand and trivial[…..]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley On Jekyll Island, the beaches are nearly rock-free and, at this time of year, ocean swimming feels like bathing in a warm tub during an understated earthquake; the waves roll gently but unpredictably. I spent the third week of June on Jekyll, a resort destination located on the North Atlantic, halfway between[…..]

In the 1988 action film, Die Hard, John McClane (played by Bruce Willis) hustles around a Los Angeles skyscraper—sweat-soaked and shirtless—in an effort to save his wife and other hostages from a ruthless terrorist group. At various points throughout the film, McClane (an NYPD officer) survives a partial jump from an exploding building and smashes through a plate glass window. Basically, he is injured to[…..]

I’m a sucker for a storyline involving a protagonist’s search for identity across generations and distant lands. More often than not this fascination is satisfied by reading a novel or watching a film, maybe listening to a three-verse country song. It’s not often that such a sprawling narrative emerges from within a work of art, but such is the case with the series of photographs[…..]

Despite the plethora of images and information that inundates contemporary life, we can rarely be certain of the reliability or the persuasive spin defining what we encounter.  Artist Johan Grimonprez questions the reality presented by news media and popular culture and sees that fear has become a global commodity. In an effort to make sense of the chaos and to offer his own critical analysis,[…..]