L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley I have a checkered brown and white shirt with sleeves and a collar that looks like something Ashton Kutcher would have worn in That ’70s Show. I still wear it, though I bought it at a thrift store when I was in high school. I had written a play about U.S. college[…..]

Norwegian visual artist and writer Matias Faldbakken is currently exhibiting a new series of works titled Shocked into Abstraction at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK. This presentation marks the artist’s first major UK exhibition, and continues his interest into subcultures, vandalism, destruction and abstraction. Working through a variety of media including film, sculpture, installation, photography and wall painting, Faldbakken deliberately transforms acts of destruction into[…..]

With a recent investigation into the dark side of life, contemporary art and culture magazine Beautiful/Decay has appropriately chosen artist Banks Violette for an article in its current issue. Violette uses such dark material as death metal, ritual murder and teenage suicide as points of departure for his slick and ghostly sculptures and installations. His aesthetics probe into American culture and are used as a[…..]