13ThingsLA: December 11

Blurry Boundaries for your art calendar

Firelei Báez, Ayida Weddo (freed from all that is not marvelous), 2024 (Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth)

A review of one of my favorite exhibitions of the year, Firelei Báez at Hauser & Wirth. Plus two very different art history lessons at Norton Simon Museum and Jeffrey Deitch Gallery; one-day only hits at Torrance Art Museum, A+D Museum, and The Wrinkle Room/Golden Poppy Market; magic lanterns at both Sidecar/Night Gallery and Automata; new exhibitions at Marciano Art Foundation/PST, LAAA/Gallery 825, and LA Center of Photography; Queer Christmas at American Cinematheque; and absolute legends return to LA Dance Project.

Feature

Firelei Báez, Atabey (or change the body that destroys me), 2024 (Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth)

REVIEW: Firelei Báez: The fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it now open, (and artist talk with Essence Harden, Saturday, December 14, 2pm) at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles. Báez is masterfully adept at combining the delectable splendor of blossoms and botanical eruptions obscuring the lithe female forms from which they billow, with the craquelure of empire-era maps imposing rigid order on invaded Caribbean ecosystems and their indigenous inhabitants. Her work demonstrates an array of techniques from the Baroque to the futuristic, the architectural to the ancestral, the experimental and the diasporic imaginary—as well as a thoughtful narrative command of what each element contributes to a post-colonial present. It’s a bit difficult, in a good way, to rouse yourself from the onslaught of beauty in these pictures (the monumental tuft of white feathers alone could smother a person to death) but looking past the honey to find the traps is equally rewarding, as clues small and large to the ultimate meaning(s) behind the works abound. Through the richly textured, sumptuous vortices for example, aspects of the female body (arms, legs, torsos) appear—are they emerging or being subsumed, from/into what? Though her palette is prismatic, it is also blended with shadow, its radiance is as though through a veil, perhaps of history, or of tears. Does the obscuring of evidence of historical trauma with literal flower bombs heal or erase it? Mostly not, and yet that’s exactly what plays out inside these heartfelt, hypnotic paintings. On view in Downtown through January 5; hauserwirth.com. —SND

Firelei Báez at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles

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