Women Around Town, 2024, a blog by Karen Schifman. 
IN THE GALLERIES
Harmony is Fraught is the current exhibit of Catherine Opie’s work at Regen Projects. The gallery has installed over sixty photographs never shown publicly before, drawn from over thirty years of making pictures in and of Los Angeles. These include photographs of freeways and bridges connect and encircle images of more private destinations, portraits of intimates, and telling interiors. Thru March 3, 2024.
Catherine Opie
Hauser & Wirth downtown presents Catherine Goodman, New Works. In a career spanning over four decades, Goodman’s artistic process is rooted in a daily practice of observational drawing sourced from life, film and old master paintings. In these striking new compositions, Goodman continues her longstanding exploration of memory, place and the mystery of the unconscious, this time with predominantly abstract works. February 27 -May 5, 2024.
Opening reception : 2/27, 6-10.
Catherine Goodman
Karyn Lyons: The End of the Night is the current exhibit at Anat Ebgi gallery on Wilshire Blvd. This selection of small-scale works mostly oil on linen is emotionally packed. The End of the Night acts as a remembrance, or even a goodbye to those unbridled moments of girlhood. Thru March 2, 2024.
Karyn Lyons
Also at Anat Ebgi is VAMPIRE::MOTHER, an exhibition realized by Vortic and curated by Jasmine Wahi. The exhibition presents work by 15 contemporary artists responding to and pulling apart the imposed and oversimplified stereotypes affiliated with women/femmes. They are: Daphne Arthur, María Berrío, Tammi Campbell, Bhasha Chakrabarti, Saskia Colwell, Chantal Joffe, Jane Margarette, Marilyn Minter, Katherina Olschbaur, Paula Rego, Laurie Simmons, Jessica Taylor Bellamy, Mickalene Thomas, Nadia Waheed, Shoshanna Weinberger. As explained by the curator, Jasmine Wahi: “VAMPIRE::MOTHER attempts to disrupt linear and binary structures and impositions by presenting the idea that multiple realities (and selves) can exist simultaneously … and asks artists to consider the reductive nature of these roles and subvert them. It invites them to consider how we use our ‘wiles’ as a means of subterfuge. The seductress can be a kitten, soft and cuddly; or she may be a vampire. It is a show that embraces the mainstream tendency to navigate the world through a rigid binary framework. But truly, it subverts this lens, and dismantles binary structures, mushing them into a gloop of indefinable and intersectional identities.”
In the curator’s words, the outcome is “an ooey-gooey smorgasbord that reflects the gushy messiness of our multiple selves”, which captures the complexity inherent in our existence, recognizing the coexistence of our capacity to nurture and destroy. Thru March 2, 2024.
Chantal Joffe
Celia Paul
Celia Paul: Life Painting is the current exhibit at Vielmetter Projects. Best known for her portraits, there will also be floral still-lifes and landscapes on view. “Her paintings resonate with distinctive application of color, texture, and brushstrokes that explore the complexities and nuances of human connections. Her restrained color palette focuses on the subtle variations and tonalities of light, color, and shadows to convey mood and emotion. Nature is often the backdrop, but in the newer work is foregrounded to add symbolic layers to her emotional narratives.” (SV) These paintings have a wonderfully eerie quality to them, and the surface textures are magnificent. Thru March 9, 2024.
Craig Krull Gallery presents luscious paintings by Chrissy Angliker in her exhibit titled See Through. “Chrissy Angliker is a Brooklyn-based Swiss American artist. Her art is focused on visually translating how she perceives life itself, as seeking balance between control and chaos. At the center of Chrissy’s practice lies her unique exploration of her ever-evolving partnership with paint, which is explored in her 2016 book, PAINT/ING/S. For every intentional mark, the nature of the medium challenges that intention. The artist is searching for a sense of grace in the oscillation between these two opposing elements. The theme of her work arose from her feeling of life itself being a balance between control and chaos, which has been heightened in these extraordinary times.” (CK) February 10-March 23, 2024. Reception: February 10, 4 – 6pm.
Chrissy Angliker
IN THE MUSEUMS
Jeni Spota C
The Frederick Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine in Malibu is exhibiting Jeni Spota C: Encore!” In her thickly impastoed paintings, Jeni Spota C. explores her own Italian heritage and the power of religious imagery by obsessively reworking scenes from Giotto’s 14th-century monumental fresco The Last Judgment. Spota C. abstracts her figures and collapses the neat order of Giotto’s fresco, merging the zones of heaven and hell into chaos. Jeni Spota C: Encore! unites three bodies of work, putting the artist’s earliest and most recent works into conversation, alongside a series that references Spota C.’s great-uncle, a magician, to consider the relationship between painting and magic, myth, and illusion.” (FW) Thru March 31, 2024.
Lancaster MOAH is an impressive venue, and their current exhibition, Formation, highlights several artists working in the medium of clay. Each artist explores clay’s inherent malleability with concern for the body, its politics, and experience. The nine artists who are represented here are: Kiel Johnson, Kevin Kowalski, Galia Linn, Elana Mann, Elyse Pignolet, Aili Schmeltz, Diane Silver, Camilla Taylor, and Sean Yang. It is truly worth the drive to see these wonderful works of art. Thru April 14, 2024.
Elyse Pignolet
I love reading your blog!!always so informative.