Women Around Town, December 2019

As the year comes to a close, I want to thank my audience for being there and hope that your holidays are artful and joyful. December offerings include several group shows and of course there are many noteworthy museum exhibitions to check out. Happy Holidays!!!

IN THE GALLERIES

New Paintings by Astrid Preston will be featured at Craig Krull Gallery. Landscapes are the continuing subject of these newer works by Preston.  December 7, 2019-January 18, 2020.

Roberts Projects presents The Vertigo Project by artist Jean Curran. This body of work is an extraordinary example of  color printing in dye transfer, and re-presentation that appropriates key scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s master opus, Vertigo to reveal the cinematographic artistry of the film in a fresh and novel way. Thru December 14, 2019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Veilmetter Los Angeles has 4 current exhibitions of women artist’s works. These include Liz Glynn: Emotional Capital,  April Street: The Lady of Shallot, paintings by Margot Bergman and works by Linda Besemer. Liz Glynns’s work includes a number of fragmentary bodies rendered in materials including cast bronze and ceramic. The Lady of Shallot is comprised of 16 fabric-relief paintings.  These works meld landscapes with corporeal elements to create portrait-like vignettes where waterfalls cascade into braids and hair extensions, surreal forms and voluminous lines define space and hyper-sexualized otherworldly elements rise inside and throughout her multi-dimensional surfaces. Berman and Besemer thru December 21, 2019; Glynn and Street thru January 11, 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walter Maciel Gallery is featuring Carolyn Castaño: The Valley of the Sun/After América. Thru December 21, 2019.

ROSE GALLERY is delighted to present Proceed to the Route, an exhibition of photographs by Tania Franco Klein. “My main character is emotion” she says.
In her recent photographs, Klein appears to take up the mantle of the masters: the archetypes of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills and the Hollywood lighting of Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Hustlers, the shocking colors of William Eggleston and the mysterious, glossy poses of Jimmy DeSana. “Like a film-noir alchemist, she combines the erotic and the enigmatic, setting her retro scenes of anxious road trips and glamorous hangovers against the psychological grain of the present: the stress of our digital age; the stress of performing.” Thru January 18, 2020.

Paint into Pattern: Constance Mallinson 1979-82 continues at Edward Cella gallery Mallinson’s paintings of floating grids of rectangles in pale atmospheric fields are found in her early work from the 1970s. Influenced by both feminist politics and the Pattern & Decoration artists, she turned to the intricate, often dizzying designs of textiles and embroideries from many cultures for inspiration as can be seen in this exhibit.  Thru January 4, 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IN THE MUSEUMS

I am very excited about the current exhibition at the Getty Center Research Institute, Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics. Kollwitz, one of the foremost graphic artists of the 20th century, is celebrated for her printmaking skills used to depict the hardships of war, poverty, and injustice as well as for her technical virtuosity. A selection of works on paper including rare preparatory drawings, working proofs, and trial prints—shed light on Kollwitz’s creative process and reveals the depth of her social and political engagement. Thru March 29, 2020.

Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again is the main exhibition at The Broad. The exhibition includes over 200 photographs and eight immersive video installations.  Thru February 12, 2020.

A mid-career survey of work of Julie Mehretu continues at LACMA.  This is a very extensive survey as  It includes nearly 40 works on paper with 35 paintings dating from 1996 to the present by the Ethiopian-born artist.  Here is a link to Art 21 to learn more about this artist. Floor 1 Thru March 22, 2019; Floor 3 thru May 17, 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also at LACMA  Betye Saar: Call and Response continues. This wonderful yet rather small exhibition focuses on her sketchbooks and their transition to finished works in physical form. I found each of the works quite moving; they are personal, poetic and important.  Continuing thru April 5, 2020.

With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 at MOCA is the first full-scale scholarly survey of this groundbreaking American art movement, encompassing works in painting, sculpture, collage, ceramics, installation art, and performance documentation. Thru May 11, 2020.

The current exhibitions at Craft Contemporary include Finding the Center: Works by Echiko Ohira, Cynthia Minet: Jacket, and Raw: Craft, Commodity and Capitalism. I was particularly mesmerized by works in the RAW exhibit which features nine contemporary artists who work with a range of commodities as artistic material to explore the historical and contemporary effects of global capitalism. Through their work, these artists reveal the biographical and historical narratives encapsulated in each commodity, allowing audiences to question their own relationship to these materials. Works in the exhibition include sculptural pieces and installations created from cotton, sugar, copper, salt, porcelain, water, and other materials. Exhibition artists include Charmaine Bee, Atul Bhalla, Sonya Clark, and more. Thru January 5, 2020.