13ThingsLA: May 1

The inaugural edition of your new go-to LA Art Calendar

Featured:

Gregory Siff at Praz-Delavallade

Review: Gregory Siff: To Understand Time closes this weekend at Praz Delavallade with a reception on Saturday, May 4, 6-8pm. The current exhibition of paintings and assemblage wall sculptures by Gregory Siff represents something of a breakthrough for the LA-based artist, writer, and designer. Known for his accumulative lexicon of icons, images, and concrete poetry executed with fluid gestures and expressive emotion, this new series sees Siff deepen and expand his hieroglyphic shorthand in both scope and scale as well as technique and narrative dimension. Borrowed and reimagined from the boundless seas of pop culture, art history, autobiography, and philosophy—but infused with the power of personal watershed moments and memories of family, fortitude, and keeping the faith—Siff’s newest work also demonstrates a new level of painterly technique, prismatic color stories, monumental scale, irresistible inspiration, and infectious energy. “Being an artist means,” the poet Rilke once wrote, “not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come.” 6150 Wilshire, Miracle Mile; instagram.com/prazdelavallade. —SND

Full calendar:

Galia Linn at Track 16

Review: Galia Linn: Resurgence is on view at Track 16 through May 25; artist walkthrough Wednesday, May 1, 7pm. Known primarily for her evocative ceramic vessels—which relate to the body in visceral terms of earth and biomorphism, as well as metaphorical terms of the broken and filled body; the masculine, feminine, and transcendent; the guardian and golem—Linn’s current exhibition also highlights her compelling mixed media painting practice. Beyond the earth and fire of her sculptures, find the fluidity and aridity of watercolor and acrylic paintings that capture their surface texture variability and ground this esoteric energy in a terrestrial place of collective and individual compassion. Curated by Emma Gray, the selections and juxtapositions establish Linn’s practice and deeply material as well as unexpectedly narrational. Bendix Building, Downtown; track16.com. —SND

Fiker Solomon at Rele

Woven Sanctuaries opens Thursday, May 2, 6-8pm at Rele Los Angeles. Lagos- and London-based Rele Gallery recently relocated and expanded its Los Angeles location, allowing more space for its stylistically wide-ranging, continental and diasporic African-focused program. Their latest exhibition brings together the work of seven women artists from Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia, each of whom takes a unique approach to working with traditional fiber crafts and upcycled textiles. By revisiting and re-envisioning their personal, communal, and cultural relationship to fabrics across generations and genres, these artists offer not only vibrant, optically charged and tactile works, but compelling entry points into a broader consideration of personal story and meaningful materiality. On view through June 15 in Melrose Hill; rele.co. —SND

Ray Johnson (Photo by Norman Solomon)

BLUM’s current Ray Johnson exhibition closes May 4; the gallery hosts a screening of the seminal film How to Draw a Bunny in Chinatown on Thursday, May 2 at 7pm. The late Ray Johnson is something of a cult figure in certain art world circles, a popular but eccentric quasi-recluse who is known as the inventor of mail art—the perfect public private, intimate-at-a-distance, appropriated paper systems-based vehicle for his unconventional ideas—but whose practice ran to collage, performance, sculpture, happenings, and all manner of Pop and post-Pop experimentation. After his mysterious and theatrical probable suicide in 1995, filmmakers John Walter and Andrew Moore, like everyone else, had questions. This remarkable documentary takes that event as its starting point, working through decades of Johnson’s career, his startlingly thorough personal archive, and interviews with those, including many NYC art world luminaries, who knew him as well as they possibly could. Exhibition: Culver City through May 4; Screening: Now Instant Image Hall, Chinatown, $15; blum-gallery.com. —SND

Jackie Amézquita (Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber)

Jackie Amézquita: Nuestro Norte siempre a sido el Sur (Our North Has Always Been The South) opens Friday, May 3, 6-9pm at Charlie James Gallery. Following her star turn in the recent Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living biennial, Amézquita expands and evolves her signature process—a compelling mix of public performance, traditional craft, collaborative action, and localized storytelling that literally embodies the immigrant narrative. In a technique that is both painting and sculpture and also neither entirely, Amézquita samples soil from diasporic regions, combines it with masa, salt, rainwater, limestone, and copper, and etches it with genre and cartographic scenes. It’s an inventive process of conceptual clarity and evocative materiality, speaking to centuries of indigeneity and migration in this region. The collaborative performance como el agua que fluye unfolds opening night, as she undertakes a symbolic walk from Downtown to the gallery, which all are invited to join. It’s also Chinatown First Fridays in the Chung King Road neighborhood, 5-9pm. On view through June 8; cjamesgallery.com. —SND

CLAY LA 2024 is this weekend at Craft Contemporary. With almost 40 vendors reflecting both individual and collective studios, arrayed inside the museum and in its courtyard, plus on-site workshops and a robust marketplace, this annual weekend event is the perfect place to feed your insatiable contemporary ceramics appetite. From the functional to the fucked up, picturesque and subversive, from wearable treasures to statement-making conversation pieces, explore state of modern clay through the hands of the region’s most intriguing working practitioners. Saturday-Sunday, May 4-5, Miracle Mile, free w/ $9 general admission; vip preview tickets available; craftcontemporary.org. —SND

Trevor Albert at Arcane Space

Trevor Albert: Calm Down opens Saturday, May 4, 5-8pm at Arcane Space. Mixed media collage-infused paintings by Trevor Albert make use of found and artisanal papers as well as unconventional materials and objects like dried fruit, bits and bobs of wires and whatnot, that both encapsulate and rehabilitate—ultimately seeking to transcend—the precarious randomness of the refuse of today’s tumultuous social and environmental situation. In some ways they are exactly what they appear to be—the direct evidence and artifacts of his personal search for tranquility amid the madness. “I was anxious all the time,” writes Albert. “So I took action. I stopped watching the news. I avoided unnecessary darkness. I smiled at strangers. I didn't talk politics in my studio. I painted like my happiness depended on it.” On view through May 19 in Venice; arcanespacela.com. —SND

Alice Wang at VPAM

Alice Wang: We Are Extraterrestrial opens Saturday, May 4, 6-8pm at Vincent Price Art Museum. I’m not that familiar with Wang’s work, but the press release promises “an interrogation of medium specificity as both a conceptual framework and in the exploration of forms, integrating scientific, technological, and mythical perspectives…revealing the inherent meaning within natural materials,” and that sounds fascinating. Working across glass and ceramic sculpture, travel diary, and filmmaking, Wang crisscrosses the globe in search of the most impossible-seeming landscapes, from the deserts of the American West to the oceans of the Arctic Circle—specifically those that evoke and echo extraterrestrial topography and thereby suggest a trans-planetary existential continuum that touches on mathematics and mythologies. Wang realized new sculptural works based on molecular and mineral geography with the participation of East LA College art students; and her ambitious film both documenting and contextualizing her research adventures and impactful conclusions was commissioned by the museum for this exhibition. On view through August 3 in East LA; vincentpriceartmuseum.org. —SND

May exhibitions at Thinkspace

New exhibitions open Saturday, May 4, 6-10pm at Thinkspace Projects. The final shows of Spring open this weekend, with one of Thinkspace’s legendary community celebrations featuring music, lightshows, live art, vendors, and delicious food in the courtyard, centering around five new solo presentations. Esao Andrews explores his more esoteric, pure color side in Beetle Shell. Marie-Claude Marquis gets cheeky with porcelain in Something Light. Amy Sol offers heartfelt empathy for Nature under threat in Dear Creatures. Brad Woodfin does a modern Renaissance style dance with unsettling allegories in Hold On. And last but not least, Portate Bien...Y si no, me invitas features vibrant, stylized new works by Jimmy Bonks, in the Dog House. On view through May 25 in West Adams; thinkspaceprojects.com. —SND

Catalina Ortega at Tierra del Sol

Catalina opens Saturday, May 4, 6-8pm at Tierra del Sol Gallery. Multiplatform artist Catalina Ortega pursues illustration, painting, ceramics, textiles, costume design, video, and performance with the unbridled joy of only the most truly dedicated cosplayer. Like many young artists, she took early inspiration from the exploits of costumed heroines; unlike most, she’s held onto her immersive fantasy life throughout her evolving art practice, and continues to create scenarios in which she not only observes, but is an active protagonist in her rainbow-hued adventures. Darren Romanelli curates an exhibition of Ortega’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures, centered around the debut of a short documentary on the artist’s unique vision and voice. On view through June 29 in West Hollywood; tierradelsolgallery.org. —SND

Ann Weber leads a cardboard sculpting workshop at Catalina Museum

Review: Ann Weber: 26 Miles is now open at Catalina Museum for Art & History. Twenty-six miles, so near, yet far—that’s the distance Ann Weber and her totemic cardboard sculptures sailed across the bay from her home in San Pedro to a bright glass-walled gallery on Catalina Island—thereby assuring that the same salty-air journey would be part of nearly everyone’s experience of the installation. Known for her beguiling alchemical manipulation of industrial cardboard into increasingly monumental-scaled, supple, biomorphic, finely patterned sculptural forms, Weber speaks eloquently and frankly about her intentions for this material. Initially an intuitive material experiment that evolved in response to limitation in a ceramics practice, this humble material has become something of a muse for her, allowing her to engage scale, as well as the environmental discourse. On view through August 4 in Avalon; $18; catalinamuseum.org. —SND

EMEK at Gabba Gallery

Review: EMEK: 30 Years of Aaaarght! is now open at Gabba Gallery. Inaugurating their new and freakishly gigantic gallery space in Downtown’s Historic Core neighborhood, Gabba Gallery has assembled an operatic 30-year survey across the career of legendary artist and illustrator, EMEK. The artist is best known for psychedelic, super-charged, high-energy, ornately detailed concert posters and album art—for such musical titans as The Grateful Dead, Queens of the Stone Age, Erykah Badu, Elton John, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as years of mind-blowing Coachella festival key art. But in this collection of over 300 works curated by Jason Ostro and Elena Jacobson, these high-profile cultural touchstone visuals are shown alongside EMEK’s personal archives, magnificent skate decks, rare ephemera, new and vintage prints, and accessible merch. In something of a Gabba family tradition, and offering a more profound engagement with the artist’s influences beyond the world of music and counterculture, EMEK’s installation shares space with solo presentations by his own parents—the talented visionary-style painter Yuval Golan and gestural abstractionist Lynda “Jikai” Golan—plus collaborations with his brother Gan Golan, a best-selling author, artist, and activist. On view through June 8 in Downtown; gabbagallery.com. —SND

The 13th Thing:

LADP

Spring Dances begin Thursday, May 2 at LA Dance Project. Unruly and tender is the season of Spring, and for LADP Founder and Artistic Director Benjamin Millepied that makes it the perfect time to premiere a new dance. Me.You.We.They is choreographed to original music from long-time collaborator, the neo-classical composer Nico Muhly. New work from either of these beacons of avant-garde musicality is exciting; new co-created work from the pair, arriving amid a time of burden and raw emotion, could be landmark. The company will alternate performances of previous Millepied and Muhly collaborations Moving Parts and Triade between the two programs. Choreographer and former New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Janie Taylor will premiere her new dance, Sleepwalker’s Encyclopedia—with schematic, gently psychedelic set design by painter Ben Styer—at each performance. May 2-12 in Downtown; $45; ladanceproject.org. —SND

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