13ThingsLA: January 15

Mutuality for your art calendar

Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapalli at Artbug Gallery

Wow, you guys. Are you okay? We’ve been through more in the past week as a city than anyone could expect in a lifetime, and as we type, things are still in flux. If it helps you at all, you can check out some resources we’ve highlighted on our Instagram, and we’ll be updating there when we hear of further help being offered or needed across our beloved community.

And still somehow, for now at least, art moves thoughtfully forward. Some folks who postponed their openings and events from last week are moving ahead this weekend instead, so have a look back at those. And a funny thing happened assembling this week’s picks—all on its own, there emerged a remarkable amount of magic, nature, cosmic seeking, and unexpected dialogues across diverse mediums. It’s almost like these artists and curators knew just what we were going to need, now more than ever. Here they are:

New exhibitions are opening this week at Artbug Gallery, Wonzimer, Fernberger Gallery, Tierra del Sol Gallery, Lowell Ryan Projects, Nicodim Gallery, Japan Foundation Los Angeles, Charlie James Gallery, and Torrance Art Museum. Amazing art films to stream from Ursula Magazine, Alteronce Gumby, William Kentridge, and more. And of course, Monday is MLK Day, and CAAM is a great place to celebrate a life and legacy of justice and service.

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Feature

Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapalli at Artbug Gallery

Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapalli: My Heart, My Body opens Saturday, January 18, 3-8pm at Artbug Gallery. Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapalli achieves a visual and vibrational fusion of Mexican and Mesoamerican indigenous artistry and canonical European technique in his striking, prismatic paintings. In both evocative portraiture that is flush with beautifully rendered life and augmented with ancestral emblems of life forces, as well as precise and opulent pattern-based works that explicate and illustrate pre-Hispanic worldviews, Amatlapalli posits a path forward within a both decolonized and intractable hybrid. In the artist’s sense of balance between what was and what could have been, no one is erased, but rather envisioned as fully present and simultaneous. Through a twin lens of Western history painting and Indigenous world-weaving, this work represents a kind of counterfactual past—one that unfolded without violence, and which these richly made, metaphysically infused paintings seek to speak into being for the future. On view in downtown through March, by appointment; instagram.com/artbugallery. —SND

Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapalli at Artbug Gallery

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