Marina Abramovic: Walk Through Walls. The celebrated performance artist discusses her new memoir. Tickets available 10/13/16 for the 11/15/16 @ 7:30 event at the Getty Center.

Take note of the wonderful exhibitions of work by women artists in our area during the month of October.

IN THE GALLERIES

“Countenance Divine” is opening this Saturday at Gallery 825 featuring individual solo shows of work by Zeal Harris; Bibi Davidson; Snezana Petrovic & Stephanie Sydney. 10/15-11/18/16.

Davidson

Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills presents “Line into Color, Color into Line: Helen Frankenthaler, Paintings, 1962-87.” The exhibition 17 abstract canvases spanning a 25 year period. Her technique of using thinned paint on to her unprimed canvases resulted in some groundbreaking compositions. She then went on to combine broad areas of color with linear elements.  Best described by Frankenthaler: …A line, color, shapes, spaces, all do one thing for and within themselves, and yet do something else, in relation to everything that is going on within the within the four sides [of the canvas]. A line is a line, but it is a color…

Thru 10/29/16.

Frankenthaler

Betye Saar

Roberts & Tilton presents Betye Saar’s “Black White”, an exhibition of mixed media works from 1966-2016. The exhibition provides examples spanning over 4 decades with work that reflects on how specific ideas are expressed through the descriptive qualities of black and white, affecting the relation of race within linguistic uses. 10/15-12/31/16.

“Box Gallery” is now featuring the work of well-known performance artist Barbara T. Smith. “Words, Sentences, and Signs” includes works dating from the early 1960s to the present. The work reveals Smith’s passions and processes. From the work exhibiting here, one can clearly see the importance that language plays in her work. For example, letters function as a means of expression, alongside images collaged into books, painted, or drawn with pencil, along with objects gathered together from actions and scenes created with the body. Smith explains: “As I worked on the most recent series of photographs, ‘The Westside, A Blessed Time’, I discovered that over many years I had created a lineage of structures that had to do with language itself: words, sentences, and signs. What was I trying to say? I see now an elusive trail of meanings and forms that were not an attempt to communicate with others so much as to find a way to listen to myself, to plumb and record the emergent perceptions of my consciousness…” Thru 10/29/16.

Smith

Amy Bennett’s exhibition at Richard Heller Gallery features dreamlike scenes that depict a miniaturized world playing at reality. Bennett designs and paints from miniature 3D models. From the models and her imagination, she manipulates composition, light, and vantage point, often in an attempt to simulate the inadequacies of memory, dreams, and the imagination. “Bennett’s new paintings invite the viewer to consider shifting relationships to our surroundings over the course of time, and offer an eerie reminder of the persistence of change and the impermanence of everything.” Thru 10/16/16.

“Radio Imagination: Artists in the Archive of Octavia E. Butler” is a group show at the Armory Center for the Arts. It is organized by “Clockshop” a non-profit organization. The exhibition debuts 6 new commissions inspired by the Octavia E. Butler papers at the Huntington Library. The exhibition is part of Clockshop’s year-long program throughout 2016 celebrating the life and work of Pasadena science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006). The artists whose work is features are: Laylah Ali, Lauren Halsey, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Connie Samaras, and Cauleen Smith. The Octavia E. Butler Collection at the Huntington Library consists of 8,000 individually cataloged items and more than 80 boxes of additional ephemera. Materials range from Butler’s very first short stories, written at age 12, to manuscripts, photographs, and Butler’s collection of inspirational quotes. The commissioned artists comprise an intergenerational group of emerging and established artists, each with an affinity for Butler’s work and a long-standing interest in her oeuvre. Thru 1/8/17.

Lydia Emily’s “The Face of Survival” is the current exhibition at Garboushian Gallery. In this new body of work she has captured 10 stories of survivors of tragic circumstance and personal struggle. The artist speaks from the viewpoint of personal sufferings and was inspired by the lack of support for victims of tragedies portrayed in the media. The paintings are personal and political ranging from representations of an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who came to the States for cancer treatment, an orphan from the slums of Haiti, to a sex trafficking survivor, Emily has made lasting connections with these fascinating people and has obtained their permission to not only paint them, but also to share their stories with the world. Thru 10/14/16.

Emily

Hauser, Wirth and Shimmel in the arts district is featuring the work of late Austrian abstract painter “Maria Lassnig: A Painting Survey 1950-2007”. This survey of Lassnig’s oeuvre provides work from the 1950s to the end of her life. The work ranges from her early experiments with abstraction to her integration of the figure. Lassnig is known for her theory of “body awareness” that includes abstracted self-portraits. For example, she represents the human form with distorted or truncated limbs, noses turned into pigs’ snouts or mouths with shocking facial expressions. The “body-awareness paintings” transformed figures into expressions of her physical sensations: “the only true reality is my feelings, played out within the confines of my body”. Thru 12/31/16.

Also at Hauser… is “Isa Genzken. I Love Michael Asher. Genzken was in her late 20s when she visited conceptual artist, Michael Asher (1943-2012) in California on a travel grant from Düsseldorf Academy. They had first met in Europe, but their time together in Los Angeles remains a significant event in Genzken’s life. For her first large-scale solo exhibition in California, she will produce a new sculptural installation specifically for the city of Los Angeles and in homage to her friendship with Asher.  10/31-12/31/16.

IN THE MUSEUMS

Khedoori

Australian born artist Toba Khedoori’s paintings are on view on the 2^nd floor of BCAM at LACMA. Her early works are notable for their precise draftsmanship and for their use of negative space—often at a very large scale. She frequently depicts architectural forms from distanced perspectives, rendering commonplace objects and spaces familiar yet decontextualized. In recent years, she has transitioned from paper to canvas, producing smaller­-scale works that hover between representation and abstraction. Khedoori remains committed to the silent, slow, and exacting process of working by hand. “The exhibition is the first major museum presentation of Khedoori’s new paintings and her first survey in fifteen years. In addition to contributing to the rapidly growing recognition of the work of women artists.” Thru 3/19/17.

The Craft and Folk Art Museum presents “Kay Sekimachi: Simple Complexity.” The exhibition traces her groundbreaking fiber work from the 1960s to present. The collection of collector Forrest L. Merrill is featured which spans the diversity and range of her work. Thru 1/8/17.

Sekimachi

Out of Town: “Carmen Herrera; Lines of Sight: at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. At 101, the Cuban born abstract/minimalist artist Carmen Herrera (b.1915) is finally getting the show the art world should have given her 40 or 50 years ago: a solo exhibition at a major museum in New York, where she has been living and working since 1954. Thru 1/2/17.