13ThingsLA: July 31

Puns, Purrs & Puppets for your art calendar

David Shull at NOON Projects

This issue features Shana’s exhibition reviews of David Shull at Noon Projects and Gronk at Craig Krull Gallery; plus heartfelt curated late-summer art and art-adjacent recommendations at Elysian Theater, La Luz de Jesus, Wonzimer, Charlie James Gallery, LACE/PRS, Superchief, Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, Steve Turner Gallery, the Getty Center, Sprüth Magers, and UC Riverside Film Dept. With love from Heidi & Shana, the childless cat ladies running the world at 13ThingsLA!

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David Shull at NOON Projects

REVIEW: David Shull: FLHAT EARTH FALLING WATER is now open at Noon Projects, with a performance on Saturday, August 3, 8pm. Dave Shull’s large charcoal on sandpaper drawings use the schematic of the classic Stetson hat as the serial armature for a suite of landscapes, still lifes, and refined surrealist fancies arrayed like abandoned stage sets. Their brims perform many compositional roles—as table bearing arrangements of botanical and floral whimsy or Cubist luncheon fish, as inverted reservoir beneath a well, as the limpid pool beneath a waterfall, as coastal island, staggered in a conceptual motif of movement, like Stetson Descending a Staircase. It’s a great idea for a body of work—its familiar central image is instantly recognizable and evokes a world of historical and cinematic references, while at the same time giving Shull all the surfaces he needs to construct whatever scenes, moods, economies of scale, or stylistic and perspectival shifts he chooses, all while keeping a narrative throughline. The narrative? That it might be time to reexamine the mythology of the Old West with all its rugged individualism and social violence, and replace it with something more interesting. A special musical performance on Saturday, August 3 features DANyDANY and the artist himself. On view through August 10 (dates not updated on site, but I promise, the artist told me himself!) in Chinatown; noon-projects.com. —SND

David Shull at NOON Projects

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