13ThingsLA: July 17

Let’s Go To the Movies for your art calendar

Ji Won Cha, He hopes from an eternity from now, 2024, Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 1/8 in (Courtesy Baert Gallery)

In our newest issue please enjoy reviews of the current shows at Baert and Marshall Galleries, and the new Frida Kahlo documentary as well. In fact, for some reason, maybe just because summer, so many terrific art picks this week are movie-based! Our eclectic cinematic recommendations take us to the Getty, the Hammer (twice), ArtCenter, Mt. Wilson Observatory, and LACE/PRS; plus yummy new exhibitions opening at Gagosian, Billis Williams, and Tierra del Sol; and further goings-on at Garry Marshall Theater and Artbook at HWLA.

PS: Like Joe & Jeffrey, I, too, will be at Artbook at HWLA this week, as I engage the gifted painter Deirdre Sullivan Beeman in conversation to celebrate the release of her gorgeous new book, Into the Hazel Woods, on Saturday, January 20, at 3pm. Come say hi! xoSND

Feature 

Ji Won Cha, Tears and needles from the thorns in my cries, 2024, Oil on canvas, 66 7/8 x 51 1/8 in (Baert Gallery)

Review: Ji Won Cha: An Eternity From Now is on view at Baert Gallery. Ji Won Cha is a young (b. 1997) abstractionist painter of extraordinary talent, with a prismatic palette, a kaleidoscopic array of mark-making strategies, a relationship to nature she terms the “anxious sublime,” and a way of keeping the eye in perpetual motion that it feels both corporeal and auditory, like the wind, or a symphony. In fact she often immerses herself in the natural world of beaches and forests, gardens and frozen lakes in a kind of energetic preparation that’s more meditation than sketchbook. She is not a landscape painter, but her compositions of bold, wide strokes, drips, splashes, washes, twists and fractals, oozings, and radiances often arrive at a botanical fantasia space that is incredibly appealing. Jewel-toned and optically alive, the paintings are nevertheless too obsessive to be pretty; these undulating works flirt with the far edge of beauty, packed as they are with volatile emotion and a vague sense of danger. On view in downtown through August 3; baertgallery.com. —SND

Installation view of Ji Won Cha: An Eternity from Now at Baert Gallery

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