13ThingsLA: December 17
As You Wish for your art calendar
The vibe for this week’s art calendar is to slow down, like nature does, at this solstice/holidaze/light in the darkness time. To help with this, a bevy of exhibitions and activations create opportunities for mindfulness, attention, storytelling, empathy, hellos, goodbyes, and laughter—at the Hammer, REDCAT, SPY Projects, Art/Space 114, Feia Studio, CAAM, ArtCenter, Gallery Luisotti, Descanso Gardens, OCHI Gallery, William Turner Gallery, Copro Gallery, and American Cinematheque.
FEATURED PICK
Five Centuries of Works on Paper: The Grunwald Center at 70 opens December 20 at the Hammer. The first of a landmark two-part, winter-spring survey examining the extraordinary depth and reach of UCLA’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, presents nearly 100 prints selected from across six centuries. Its lucid, cumulative argument for the print as a serious, elastic medium—industrial and intimate at the same time—positions printmaking as a primary engine of artistic thought, technological experimentation, and cultural transmission. From Rembrandt and Durer’s stately classicism, to George Cruikshank and José Guadalupe Posada’s more political and satirical broads, to California-anchored works by Ed Ruscha, Sister Corita Kent, Ruth Asawa, and Analia Saban, the exhibition unfolds as a non-linear multiverse of graphic language. Lithography, screenprint, letterpress, serigraph, and marvels of experimentation function as sites of authorship, labor, and collaboration—made all the more visible by didactics and titles foregrounding publishers and master printers alongside the artists. Free; on view in Westwood through May 17; hammer.ucla.edu. —SND
