13ThingsLA: November 20

Currently Moody for your art calendar

Monroe Isenberg, Harbinger, 2024, Installation with video and performance. Music by Elori Saxl. (MOAH Lancaster; Courtesy of the artists)

In the name of art-based humanism and having a place to put it all, may we offer a review of the current PST:Art exhibition at MOAH Lancaster; plus recommended exhibitions, talks, and screenings at LACMA (a new PST show there as well), as well as Southern Guild, UNREPD, Michael Werner Gallery, BTS Gallery, Philosophical Research Society, Nonaka-Hill Gallery, M+B Gallery, Good Mother Gallery, The Box LA, Architecture & Design Film Festival, and Gagosian/the Aero Theater.

Also, if you’ve missed all the Shana talking while she’s been having her Roman holiday, you have two chances this week to catch up: On Wednesday, November 20 in conversation with artist Rocky Morton at Shatto Gallery in Koreatown; and in conversation with artist Mobina Nouri on Thursday, November 21 at Advocartsy in West Hollywood. Also it’s her birthday this weekend, and all she wants is for you and your friends to become subscribers to our little experiment in advancing independent art criticism, centering the best and most beautiful, impactful art that Los Angeles has to offer. Thank you in advance for your support!

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Feature

Jessie Homer French, Mojave Burning, 2021, Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in (MOAH Lancaster; Courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires)

REVIEW: Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees is now open at MOAH Lancaster (PST). Full disclosure, I contributed an essay to the physically hefty, Getty-supported scholarly and interpretive publication which predated the exhibition, but honestly that made it even more surprising and delightful when visiting the show to discover that it is so much more than a re-presentation of the book’s contents. Instead, curators Sant Khalsa and Juniper Harrower (the artists who spearheaded the book, and who each have significant works presented in the show) have reimagined the relevant arboreal universe of topics for emotional, experimental, often performative and interactive, multimedia expositions that come up when discussing the mythology and ecological reality of the Joshua tree. Conceived both separately and then very much under the aegis of PST:Art, the project encompasses everything from Pop culture to cinema, land stewardship to the politics of development, environmental and ecosystem-wide research, the multiplicity of creative expressions of poetry, metaphor, activism, faith, and symbolism—from indigenous history to the impact of climate chaos and human interference, through aspects of beauty, violence, ritual, and responsibility. On view through December 29 in Lancaster; free; lancastermoah.org. —SND 

Juniper Harrower, Ecologies of Care, 2020 / 2024, Joshua tree, yucca, creosote, cat claw, blackbrush, jojoba, light, Joshua tree seeds, pollinator larvae, soil, mycorrhizal fungi, artist grown fungal pots from plant waste, reclaimed wood from Jackrabbit homestead, fabric, ink, thread. All Joshua tree materials collected prior to species protections. (MOAH Lancaster; Courtesy of the artist)

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