Est. 1992
There was an Anselm Keifer solo show entitled EXODUS at Gagosian Gallery on Wilshire in Los Angeles. The expansive space was once a private museum owned by two sleezy union-busting pieces of trash but is now this commercial gallery. As overwhelmed by the spectacle of fabrication as one might get, my attempts to write about … Read more
We went by Randi’s studio in downtown LA. Right in the heart of it. Seventh and Main, where U2 played on the roof in 1987. She had been working in her garage across town for a few years and the work she made there, painting and drawing, was on small and medium surfaces – but … Read more
Transgressive at Roswell Space presents two different visions of the natural world, creating wonderful dynamics between Susan Joseph’s sensuous, immersive paintings, and the almost clinical ink and watercolor studies by Andrea Bersaglieri. The evocative tension of the two bodies of work call to mind Northern European botanical studies of the last several hundred years, particularly … Read more
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey Inevitably, an artist is described in a few words. Male artists who are unconventional or controversial are enfant terribles. They can be handsome, like Marlon Brando. Or conventionally unattractive – think Serge Gainsbourg, Jean Paul … Read more
Perhaps we all come to this… On one side we have a difficult truth: ART’s inadequacy of manifesting what was without stoking the sentimental and nostalgic. On the other is a longing, or perhaps expectation, that ART can unleash a profundity beyond language from its storehouse of images, something so great, so vast and often … Read more
When asked, I tell people, mostly visitors to LA, that the Norton Simon Museum has by far the best collection in Southern California if not the West Coast. But I now must qualify this. If you just want to see twentieth century art, there is nothing that rivals the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation. Located in … Read more
Normally, August is a slow month in the art world. But last week’s late-summer tedium was disrupted by a certain Jason M. Allen of Pueblo West, CO, winning in the Digital Arts/Digitally Manipulated Photography division of the Colorado State Fair. Allen’s piece, one of three he entered, was not your typical third-rate painting or photograph … Read more
Blinds were drawn behind the glass door, darkening the background. On the surface, white lettering: Parkers Sydney Fine Art Supplies, Custom Picture Framing Since 1918. Ten feet to the left, a roller door opening to the workshop. Inside, power leads were strung across ceiling beams. To the left, a wall of tools and a long timber workbench. In the centre a large, sturdy worktable … Read more
Truth be told, Charlie Finch was an obscenely cruel man, psychopathic with his verbal abuse and gratified most when humiliating people. But nobody that I know of benefitted from their relationship with Charlie more than I. Charlie was introduced to me by a mutual friend in the summer of 1992 and he wrote for the … Read more
There is something beyond language in the feeling one gets when a childhood encounter with art is repeated later in life. It is a combination of familiarity and time travel, the reincarnation of what was loosening the grip of the continuum that brought us to our present; loosened if only for a moment. It isn’t … Read more