13ThingsLA: June 25

But a Dream for your art calendar

Li Ran, They Swear, Dance, Alongside Miracle, 2024. Oil on canvas, 55 1/8 x 66 7/8 x 1 3/4 in (© Li Ran, Courtesy Lisson Gallery)

This week’s roster of curated Los Angeles art recommendations features fresh exhibitions and programs (talking, dancing, screenings) at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Lisson Gallery, Richard Heller Gallery, Hauser & Wirth WeHo, David Zwirner Gallery, KP Projects, Loft at Liz’s, MOCA, Hammer, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Regen Projects, and The Academy Museum.

Further Programming Notes: LA Center of Photography’s unrest-delayed opening of Expand and Contract: AI and Alternative Processesis rescheduled for June 28; and The Broad’s promised summer of free Thursday night programs around the Jeffrey Gibson show kicks off June 26.

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Feature

Li Ran, The Wind-blown Soul Stealer, 2024. Oil on canvas, 66 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches (© Li Ran, Courtesy Lisson Gallery)

Li Ran: The Signs Are Present opens Friday, June 27, 6-8pm at Lisson Gallery. Large scale oil on canvas paintings proceed with a glitchy cinematic intimacy gleaned from the video part of Li’s practice, with an esoteric sense of hinted-at symbolism in ambiguous narrative tableaux, and a self-referential “about painting itself” gestural language that is rather more about how pigment moves than how the eye sees. At the same time, there’s a reverence aflame kind of energy signature to this enigmatic, evocative work, like an intense stage whisper. Stylized, angular wraith-like figures enact deeds and chores from the ritualistic to the ordinary, and because depending on your state of mind it can be hard to tell the difference, Li also writes as part of his practice—crisp, poetic, existential prose that originates from the same place as these elusive, theatrical paintings. On view in Hollywood through August 23; lissongallery.com. —SND

Li Ran, There Is Always A Thirsty Person At Noon, 2024. Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 63 x in (© Li Ran, Courtesy Lisson Gallery )

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