13ThingsLA: May 15

Art, dance & representation for your art calendar

Featured:

John Divola, Blue with Exceptions 16576 (12_16_2020) from the series George Air Force Base, 2020, pigment print (Courtesy of the artist)

Out of Site: Survey Science and the Hidden West, and Nancy Baker Cahill: Mushroom Cloud open Saturday, May 18, 4-6pm at the Autry Museum. The anticipated citywide PST: Art & Science Collide citywide initiative officially happens in the Fall, but the Autry is getting out ahead of the pack with a sweeping, historically-minded exhibition taking a look at the evolving relationships between technology, landscape, governance, invention, and interpretation—esepcially when it comes to chronicling and surveying/surveilling our geological region. From the earliest days of giant, cumbersome wet-plate cameras, to the dawn of aerial photography as a tool of investigation and the radical perspective-shifting existential charm it imparted, to more contemporary practices involving drones and alternative methods generating both documentation and wonder—the show explores the PST premise in unexpected ways. On view concurrently is transmedia artist Nancy Baker Cahill’s startling and powerful Augmented Reality work Mushroom Cloud combines her interest in geolocation and metaphor, reimagining the ultimate symbol of science in the service of violence as instead, a symbol of the potential for rhizomatic progress. Both exhibitions are on view in Griffith Park through January 5; $18 general admission; theautry.org. —SND

Nancy Baker Cahill, Mushroom Cloud, 2021

Quick note from the 13ThingsLA team: We hope you’ve been enjoying our calendar so far, and we want to thank everyone who has signed up—it means a lot to Heidi and me. Quick reminder, that the next issue after this (the March 22nd edition) will be the last one that’s all free to read. As of May 29th, we’ll be moving to paid subscriptions (it’s only $5 a month though) and from then on, just the Featured pick will be free. We’re glad you’re here no matter how you choose to support (but you know, please help sustain independent art criticism if you can). Thank you! Back to the art now!

Full Calendar:

Jake Clark, installation view at albertz benda (Photo by Julian Calero)

Jake Clark: Carolwood opens Thursday, May 16 , 6-8pm at albertz benda. Los Angeles plays itself in a new exhibition of eccentric narrative ceramics, designed in a uniquely site-responsive manner that takes into account not only the gallery’s domestic architecture and hilltop views, but also the iconic cascade of luxurious backyard amenities across the Hollywood landscape. The advent of crosstown festival Design Miami LA this week is the perfect occasion for albertz benda’s top-tier design-forward art program to show off—and this exhibition irresistibly mixes ambition, nostalgia, humor, irony, Hollywood history, urban myth, functionality (at least the birdbaths), and a salient insistence on enjoying the works in the outdoor built and natural spaces of the property. On view through June 29 in West Hollywood; albertzbenda.com. —SND

Melanie Pullen at William Turner Gallery

Melanie Pullen: Voyeur opens Saturday, May 18, 5-8pm at William Turner Gallery. In her legendary “High Fashion Crime Scenes” series, photographer Melanie Pullen uses the visual lexicon of editorial and couture photography, critiquing our society of sex, death, and spectacle from the perspective of violent crime. The contrast between beauty and ugliness animates the work and captures the guilty conscience of the viewer’s own imagination—a dynamic she pushes even farther in her more recent “Voyeur” series, in which the watchers (us), watch the watchers (in the portraits) as they watch their own unseen prey. Everyone is implicated, everyone is dressed to the nines, and no one is safe. Much of this work is made at monumental scale, almost lifesize, with all the ensuing in-camera artifacts and colorful atmospheric maelstroms not only tolerated, but encouraged—the combined effect of all of which is to deepen the aesthetic conversation she’s having with painting along with the visceral impact of her messaging on the gilded age of dysfunction. On view at Bergamot Station through July 6; williamturnergallery.com. —SND

Alina González, Ella Est Sola, 2010, oil on canvas 48 x 36" (Courtesy of Craig Krull Gallery)

Review: Seguimos: Contemporary Art in Costa Rica closes this weekend at Craig Krull Gallery. Curated by Hannah Sloan, who spends a lot of time in Costa Rica and has brought back much more than souvenirs, the lively, fierce, and fearless group exhibition Seguimos features installation, video, photography, painting, prints, and sculpture by 13 artists, many of whom are showing in the U.S. for the first time. Among an eclectic range of styles, engrossing narratives, innovative materials, and performed approaches to identity and history, the remarkable paintings of Alina Gonzalez have stayed with me. A transgender woman whose journey from curious selfie-taking to mature self-knowledge has played out across decades of richly painted, earthy-hued, gestural, emotional, pensive canvases, González shows three nudes—a melancholy early self-portrait as male, a fleshy portrait of beguiling and troubled muse Brigitte Bardot, and a frank, confident, hypnotic portrait of a young intersex woman. On view at Bergamot Station through May 18; craigkrullgallery.com. —SND

Vanessa Beecroft at Wilding Cran

Vanessa Beecroft: Broken Arm opens Saturday, May 18, 4-6pm at Wilding Cran Gallery. In no way what you would expect from a show by this superlatively influential performance artist, a new exhibition of sculpture and drawings is about as far from a glitzy army of young, gorgeous, naked women standing around ignoring you at a museum as can be. And yet, in her almost unbelievably vulnerable studio works, Beecroft shocks in a different way—with her largely unheralded penchant for nuance, abstraction, whispering mystery, creative risk-taking, psychological poetics, subtlety, accessibility, and even delicacy. Of course, the women are still naked but that’s art history for you! On view through June 22 in Downtown; wildingcran.com. —SND

Bari Ziperstein

The COLA 2024 Awards Exhibition opens Saturday, May 18, 2-4pm at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. COLA 2024 is an exhibition of new work by five Los Angeles-based artists, featuring dynamic installations of ceramic, sculpture, photography, video, painting, and drawing. They tend to keep the new work created for the purpose under wraps until the opening, but this year’s recipients of the Independent Master Artist Project (COLA/IMAP) grants in design and visual arts are an eclectic and seriously impressive group. Look for thoughtful installation and performance artist Jane Brucker, provocative filmmaker and installation artist Mariah Garnett, socially engaged photographer Janna Ireland, transdisciplinary environmentalist storyteller Debra Scacco, and boundary-pushing ceramicist Bari Ziperstein. On view at Barnsdall through July 20; lamag.org. —SND

Jordan Nassar, The Ruins, 2024 (Courtesy of Anat Ebgi Gallery)

Jordan Nassar: Surge opens Saturday, May 18, 3-6pm at Anat Ebgi Gallery. Jordan Nassar is known for exquisitely embroidered compositions with the hefty material presence of elevated craft and the delicate patterning and texture of fine painting. Perennially inspired by the rich, culturally engaged history of decorative arts integral to the legacy of his Palestinian-American heritage, Nassar takes this language of ornament and transforms it through the careful actions of his studied hand into a vessel for contemporary experience. The exhibition also includes the artist’s experiments with glass-tile mosaic, in a further nod to the architectural foundations and references across his work and a germane, materially expansive corollary to the almost pointillist way he stitches. On view at the Fountain Avenue location through July 20; anatebgi.com. —SND

Wayne White

Wayne White: Jumping from Ice Floe to Ice Floe opens Saturday, May 18, 6-8pm at Hashimoto Contemporary. It’s been too long since LA had a proper Wayne White show, but thankfully that all changes this week, and there will be something for every kind of WW fan. Love his post-Peewee puppetry? There’s a giant puppet. Obsessed with this trademark word paintings juxtaposing pastoral landscapes with biting concrete poetry? He’s been making new ones in which instead of interventions on thrift-store paintings and meme-style wordplay, he’s meticulously rendered original blue skies and bucolic landscapes before adding much more personal, vernacular language. Tired of all that even though you love it and want something totally new? He’s got you covered too, with a recent series of paintings in which nested vignettes act as windows across the time-streams of memory in visually beguiling and emotionally engaged nesting vignettes. On view in Culver City through June 8; hashimotocontemporary.com. —SND

Adam Silverman with installation of Common Ground ceremonial pots at Grace Farms, New Canaan, CT. (Photo by Jacek Dolata, courtesy of the artist)

The Sounds of Common Ground: An Afternoon of Rhythm & Art, Sunday, May 19, 2pm at the Skirball. Holding a vision of America as a unified, holistic place in which differences are seen as strengths and community well-being is valued above all might seem like an elusive dream. But for sculptor Adam Silverman, it’s a real place—or at least, it’s an embodiment of that dream that seeks to create such a place. For Common Ground Silverman collected clay, water, and wood ash from all 50 states plus D.C., and the U.S. Territories Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Recombing all these samples into a new ceramic material, he then made a set of 224 functional and ceremonial dishes and vessels (numbered at 56 each of plates, bowls, cups, and pots), intended to be used in food- and music-based community activations in order to, “erase the borders of statehood and reimagining the country as a single, unified place.” One such public gathering happens this weekend, as poets and performers gather to breathe life into the installation, and literally make music from it. NB: This is a free event, as is the sculptural installation, which is on view through January 25, 2025 in Brentwood; the rest of the museum is ticketed; skirball.org. —SND

Zanele Muholi, Bambatha I, 2023, Bronze, 74¾ x 33⅛ x 26⅜ in. (Courtesy of Southern Guild)

Zanele Muholi in conversation with Catherine Opie and Britt Salvesen on Tuesday, May 21, 11am at Southern Guild Gallery. Opening on Saturday, May 18, a new exhibition of photographs and sculptures by South African artist Zanele Muholi explores the psychical inner life and physical trauma and health of Black and transgender communities. In an ongoing self-portrait photography series they regularly photograph themselves in solitude, especially in hotel rooms and other liminal spaces, adorned with garments and makeup improvised from materials on hand. This act of neverending self-invention is a powerful metaphor and a living document of their own evolution. Muholi’s recent bronze sculptures isolate and enlarge elements of gynecological medicine, transforming reproductive organs into monumental, surreal, nearly abstract symbols of their powers and problems. A panel discussion with artist Catherine Opie and curator Britt Salvesen is titled, “The Unflinching Gaze: The Image, the Archive, and the Aesthetics of Resistance,” and is inclusive of the perspectives of activism and artistry. The event also celebrates the launch of both Southern Guild’s monograph and Aperture’s recent release: Zanele Muholi, Somnyama Ngonyama, Volume II. The exhibition is on view through August 31 in Melrose Hill; southernguild.com. —SND

Texas Isaiah, Love Me In Whatever Way (Reprise), 2024, Color Inkjet Print on Fuji Matte Archival Paper, 28.5 x 35 in (Courtesy of the artist and Residency Art Gallery)

Texas Isaiah: Flowers at Your Feet: A Cherished Horizon is open at Residency Art Gallery through June 1. In a way what photographer Texas Isaiah does is quite traditional—creating evocative, sensual, romantic scenes of radiant love with the erotic but also spiritual aura of cinematic lighting and classical portraiture. But in their insistence on queer, transgender, and Black representation within this art historical and contemporary visual culture continuum, what they do is anything but traditional. Proceeding with a personal curiosity as to their own place in the world, the underrecognized universality of shared universal experiences within these overlapping communities, and a desire to always push their own technique forward, Isaiah’s offering is one of peace, beauty, and life-transforming love amid a time when the world needs those things the most. Now open in Inglewood; residencyart.com. —SND

John Luebtow at Lois Lambert Gallery

John Luebtow Three Ways. The beloved Los Angeles master glass sculptor is wrapping up a survey exhibition at Craft in America Center, has just opened a solo exhibition at Lois Lambert Gallery, and recently published a substantial “my life in art” style book combining studio manual, career retrospective, and personal memoir. The Craft in America exhibition, which pairs Luebtow’s work with fellow glass artist Stephen Edwards, looks back across nearly six decades of boundary-pushing, materiality-expanding experimentation and innovation—helping to lead the charge for the elevation of glass within the fine art hierarchy. At Lois Lambert Gallery, a related survey looks at the same decades—but through the lens of his most complex and frequently political series, including new and recent work lamenting the frayed state of the nation’s cultural fabric. The book is an illuminating manifesto for the ways in which ignoring the rules makes for a richer life in the studio and in the world. The Craft in America exhibition is on view in West Hollywood through May 25; the Lois Lambert Gallery exhibition is on view at Bergamot Station through July 6; the book is available on Amazon now; craftinamerica.org; loislambertgallery.com; amazon.com. —SND

The 13th Thing:

HDD

Heidi Duckler Dance: Herald In, Examine Throughout at the Herald Examiner Building and environs on Saturday, May 18, 6-9pm. Heidi Duckler Dance loves nothing more than an epic location to create site-specific interdisciplinary performances. Their newest program takes place against the backdrop of the gorgeously renovated and restored landmark 1913 Beaux Art Herald Examiner Building (which looks like a palace when it’s all lit up at night, and is now home to humanities-focused programs of Arizona State University), as well as inside the adjacent Proper Hotel and along the cordoned-off Broadway between 11th & 12th Streets. A cohort of 20 artists, dancers, musicians, performers, and one grand piano take over the block and engage the architecture and the audience with everything from rollerskating to visual installations, Indigenous instrumentation, boomboxes, and dance, dance, dance—all inspired equally by the fascinating history of the building and the artistry of neighborhood as by the current conversation on the obvious inequalities in our society which are so magnified in DTLA right now. Downtown Historic Core, $80; heididuckler.org. —SND