At last many local museums are starting to open and many galleries are back to business. There is lots to see out there. Just in case you are not ready to venture out, you may want to check out this wonderful podcast featuring Betye Saar, “Working My Mojo”
IN THE GALLERIES
My first outing will be to see the current exhibition of paintings by Amy Sherald at Hauser & Wirth. Sherald notes her subjects are positioned as “symbolic tools that shift perceptions of who we are as Americans, while transforming the walls of museum galleries and the canon of art history–American art history, to be more specific.” Thru June 6, 2021.
Amy Sherald
I will then dash over to Culver City to check out the current exhibit at Roberts Projects where Brenna Youngblood: The Light and the Dark is on view. This body of work is the result of the artist’s experiences last year. “From a deadly pandemic to a global movement for equitable racial justice, 2020 was defined by its world-shifting events. The works on view hold space for light and dark, and the material representation of both by taking into account their own considerations and possibly different ideas surrounding each, but as a whole the show is committed to Youngblood’s highly personal response to her particular memories and experiences addressing the events and issues we have seen unfold so far. the LIGHT and the DARK brings together sixteen energy-filled mixed-media collages on canvas and board.” Thru May 15, 2021.
Brenna Youngblood
As a collage artist, I am particularly anxious to see Paper Cuts, a group exhibition at nearby Walter Maciel Gallery. Works by: Barry Anderson, Carolyn Castaño, Walt Cessna, Colin Doherty, Doug Hall, Cynthia Ona Innis, John Jurayj, Andy Kolar, Hung Liu, Brendan Lott, Greg Mocilnikar, Dean Monogenis, Maria E. Piñeres, Pepa Prieto, Robb Putnam, Lezley Saar, Lisa Solomon and Dana Weiser. Thru May 15, 2021.
Dana Weiser
Koplin del Rio Gallery presents MIchelle Muldrow: The Language of Place. a survey of paintings spanning from 2006 – 2021. The paintings in The Language of Place present a chronology of the artists’ continued examination of the landscape and its physical and symbolic implications. The artist explains, “Landscape writes, erases, rewrites and erases. Each altered layer reveals new context, fresh narratives. Landscape has meaning; its meaning is complex, it is not static. Because landscape outlives human history, to understand history, I must interrogate the landscape.” Thru May 1, 2021.
Michelle Muldrow
Regen Projects will debut one of the new large-scale floor sculptures and a number of ceramic works by Liz Larner in the exhibit entitled As Stars and Seas Entwine. Thru May 22, 2021.
Liz Larner
IN THE MUSEUMS (alas!)
The Getty Museum will reopen later this month and I am delighted that they finally acquired a major painting by an important woman artist. Lucretia (1627) by the Italian Baroque artist, Artemisia Gentileschi will join its collection with a few paintings by her father, the Caravaggisti, Orazio Gentileschi found in their Baroque galleries. Paintings of female heroines abound her oeuvre. She tackled the subject of Lucretia several times over the course of her career. The Roman heroine who took her own life after having been raped was one that likely had significance for Artemisia, as she experienced sexual violence as a young woman.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Made in LA 2020: A Version will finally be on view and divided between the Hammer Museum and the Huntington, with both museum galleries opening April 17th. Made in L.A. 2020 is organized by independent curators Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler, with the Hammer’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, assistant curator of performance. As usual this exhibit brings cutting edge local artists to the forefront with an emphasis on performance and installation. For example an installation by Sabrina Tarasoff at the Huntington with the title Beyond Baroque is like a haunted house of rooms “based on a legendary, storied group of pioneering west side poets and engineered into a quarter-mile, claustrophobic cabinet of curiosity, charm, deviance, discomfort, dildos, humor and abject horror. Everything you think you know about LA, it seems to suggest, is a psychotic fiction and at the same time, deeply true and lovely.” (Shana Nys Dambrot, Artillery Magazine). The list of artists includes Christina Forrer, Harmony Holiday, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Ann Green Kelley, Kandis Williams, Ligia Lewis, Jill Mulheady, Diane Severin Nguyen, Monica Majoli, and many others. Thru August 1, 2021.
Sabrina Tarasoff
Los Angeles County Museum of Art is now open and there are two exhibits of work by women artists right now. The first is Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera. Lutter had a 2-year residency at the museum (Feb. 2017-Jan. 2020) in which she photographed the architecture, galleries, and collection holdings of LACMA. What makes this body of work particularly unique is that the artist used a camera obscura as her tool. It will be interesting to see the results. The second artist is Cauleen Smith. Give it or Leave It combines film, video, and installations to create a series of “experimental portraits of different sites related to spirituality, creativity and utopianism.”
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Vera Lutter
The Oceanside Museum of Art is truly a So.California jewel with an active exhibition program often highlighting the work of women artists and definitely worth the drive. Currently their exhibition is Twenty Women Artists Now. Representing a diverse cross-section of So. California, the exhibition brings together examples of work by this collective group demonstrating their varied practices. Featured artists include: Maite Benito Agahnia, Manuelita Brown, Diana Carey, Rin Colabucci, Bronie Crosby, Susan Darnall, Ellen Dieter, Theresa Vandenburg Donche, Kaori Fukuyama, Julia C.R. Gray, Diane Hall, Kathleen Kane-Murrell, Kathy McChesney, Lori Mitchell, Gillian Moss, Alison Haley-Paul, Julia San Roman-Naughton, Christine Schwimmer, Gail Titus, and Brenda York. Thru August 1, 2021.
Julia C R Gray
