Artillery March-April 2023; Volume 17, Issue 4

Portraiture

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ARTISTS

Carlo Van de Roer

Matthew Arnold

Jennifer Gunlock

Kristen Van Denburgh

Rory Lewis

Mercedes Dorame

Timothy Kitz

Natalja Kent

Naomi White

Evan Whale

Ryan Gobuty

Jane Szabo

Sally Metcalf

Cathy Breslaw

Don Crocker

Nita Harper

Ray Harris

Beverly Lazor

Junn Roca

Joan Horsfall Young

Craig Attebery

Gigi Scully

Erin Hanson

Shauneen Bell

Gillian Gough

Sean Cheetham

Juan Bastos

Wayne Swanson

William Pinney

IMAGE | Carlo Van de Roer, Yoko Okutsu, 2008, chromogenic print, 19 x 24, edition of 7

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MARCH 11 – APRIL 22

Los Angeles

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CO/LAB 2 023

An international collaborative project between artist-run spaces

March 25 - May 6

515, LA Supermarket, Stockholm

Joey Holdren (USA/Norway), Robert Kingston (USA), Alice Máselníková (Sweden/Czech Republic), Pontus Raud (Sweden), Andreas Ribbung (Sweden), HK Zamani (USA)

Durden and Ray, LA Fosforita, Madrid

Carlos Beltrán (USA/Mexico), Gul Cagin (USA), Lan Duong (USA), Le Frére (Spain), Ben Jackel (USA), Javier Jimeno (Spain), Ty Pownall (USA), Eva Zaragozá (Spain), Irene Zóttola (Spain)

Tiger Strikes Asteroid, LA Space One, Seoul

Rene C Hayashi (Mexico), Inyoung Yeo (S. Korea), Sala de Espera: Talia Pérez Gilbert and Luis Alonso Sánchez (Mexico), Jihyung Song (S. Korea), Kyoco Taniyama (Japan/Germany)

Wonzimer, LA Kalashnikovv, Johannesburg

Faith XLVII (South Africa), Louis Devilliersiv (South Africa), Ibuki Kuramochi (Japan), Natalie Paneng (South Africa), Joshua AM Ross (USA), Cheyann Washington (USA), Ann Weber (USA)

Gallery Two: An Unburnt Witch - Zak Smith drawings

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Table of Contents

Portraiture

FEATURES

FEATURED REVIEW

COLUMNS

ON THE COVER: Helen Chung, Senon Willams, 2020,

ABOVE : Luis Sahagun, Limpia no.4 (Tatiana “La Taty” Gonzalez Nuño) , 2022, courtesy of Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles Photo - @ofphotostudio.

RIGHT: Amir H. Fallah, Blessing and Curse , 2022, courtesy of the artist and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.

NEXT PAGE, Top: Jamie Vasta, Ben McCoy , 2013, courtesy of the artist.

Bottom: Jim Shaw, Down By the Old Maelstrom (where I split in two) , 2022, (detail) photo by Jeff McLane, © Jim Shaw, courtesy of Gagosian.

Table of Contents continued

DEPARTMENTS

REVIEWS

Dear Reader,

As long as there are people, there will be portraits. Face it—no pun intended—people are attracted to people. We like to look at ourselves; we like to people-watch; we gaze into our lover’s eyes. Our faces are unique and fascinating: they are who we are.

As an artist, I was drawn to portraiture with my painting and photography. Once I embarked on a project to capture all of my friends’ faces (I can’t begin to tell you how many paintings that produced!). I photographed them, then painted only their faces onto an actual-size piece of found wood. Afterwards, I gave my friends their portraits—most of them tell me they still have theirs. I did this project for many reasons, but mainly to explore the mysteries of physiognomy—to discover how every face is so individual and reveals (or possibly disguises) that person’s personality.

An artist can get lost in the process of painting a face. Sometimes all it takes is the way the subject’s hair curls, a slight upturn of the smile, or the type of spectacles they wear that defines their being. Often a quick flick of the brush on a shadow or highlight is all that’s needed. Something so minute might be the ticket, then it’s done.

Each artist we feature here has their own unique approach to portraiture. Amir H. Fallah’s paintings involve complex narratives that address cultural boundaries. In his current body of work most of the faces are covered. Fallah’s elaborate figurative paintings are not drawn from actual people he knows, but from imagery found on the internet.

On our cover is Helen Chung’s painting of LA artist Senon Willams. Writer/critic Ezrha Jean Black sits down with Chung to discuss anatomy and the intimacy involved with the act of painting the sitter—which is Chung’s preferred method.

Luis Sahagun’s portraits employ traditional Meso-American healing rituals. His role as the artist is that of a spiritual consultant who examines the person he may doing a portrait of and what their ailments might be, often the result of social stresses. Sahagun will then apply the necessary materials that reflect the broken parts of that person’s being. In one instance, he does a self-portrait of when he experienced racism at college. David S. Rubin interviews the Mexican-American Chicago-based artist.

Henry Taylor is a storyteller with his portraits, written by Donnell Alexander. But don’t call him a portraitist. That was stressed in the opening press preview. That could also be said of many artists who are known for their portraits. Though don’t all portraits tell a story? Once you put a face on it, you’ve got a story—a person, a life.

If one visits the art galleries these days one does find that there’s an uptick in portraiture. Maybe that’s a sign that we are still human, and in these days of AI, that’s something to hold onto dearly.

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

Ezrha Jean Black is a writer and journalist based in Los Angeles.  She also writes scripts and plays very bad piano. She’s currently writing a historical novel and developing a psychological thriller coming to a small screen near you any day now. She’s also a critic—a condition which appears to be chronic.

Bianca Collins amplifies the work of female, nonbinary, trans and BIPOC artists. Previously, editor of KCRW’s “Art Talk” with Edward Goldman. A queer woman of color, she produces public art experiences in, with, and for historically marginalized communities as director of public programs for Zócalo Public Square.

William Moreno is currently principle of William Moreno Contemporary, an art advisory and consulting firm that provides advice that meets each collector’s particular aspirations. He also is a curator, writer, executive coach and consultant for the arts focused on issues of sustainability and management practices.

George Melrod has written widely about contemporary art and culture for magazines such as Art & Antiques, Art in America, Sculpture, Details , VOGUE and Los Angeles , and websites such as artcritical. From 2006–17, he was the editor of art ltd., that other LA contemporary art magazine. He’s known to be very fond of cats.

David S. Rubin  is an LA-based curator, writer and artist. He has held curatorial posts at MOCA Cleveland, Phoenix Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans and San Antonio Museum of Art. Along with numerous published articles, his curatorial papers are in the Smithsonian Inst.’s Archives of American Art.

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COLUMNISTS

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Emily Babette, Lane Barden, Natasha Boyd, Betty Ann Brown, Susan Butcher & Carol Wood, Kate Caruso, Max King Cap, Bianca Collins, Shana Nys Dambrot, Genie Davis, David DiMichele, Alexia Lewis, Richard Allen May III, Christopher Michno, Barbara Morris, John David O’Brien, Carrie Paterson, Leanna Robinson, Julie Schulte, Eli Ståhl, Allison Strauss, Cole Sweetwood, Donasia Tillery, Colin Westerbeck, Eve Wood, Catherine Yang, Jody Zellen

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Curated By Snezana Saraswati Petrovic

ARTISTS:

Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja, Nigeria

Alaia Parhizi, Switzerland

Amanda Maciel Antunes, Brazil

Arezoo Bharthania, Iran

Carsten Bund, Germany

Chenhung Chen, Taiwan

Kalpana Vadnagara, India

Katya Usvitsky, Belarus

Marisa Caichiolo, Argentina

Max Presneill, United Kingdom

Nadir G Gergis, Egypt

Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, Yugoslavia

Tom Dunn, Australia

Arrival: Santa Monica Airport, FRIEZE LA

Is there such a thing as too much art? My eyeballs think so, as they began to glaze over Saturday afternoon while browsing the art fare at the Felix art fair at the Roosevelt Hotel. It was Day Four of my marathon.

In February we had quite a week of art, including the opening of at least four art fairs, and many many art exhibitions and art events. First, I’ll address the Big One. Frieze LA (Feb. 16–19) has migrated to the Santa Monica Airport, after starting at the Paramount lot for two years, then moving to Beverly Hills last year. A section with younger galleries and galleries showing “historic work” was in the Barker Hangar; the larger, more glam, part was in a white tent on a hill running along Centinela. It was something of a walk—I did it on my first visit—but fortunately by Thursday they had frequent shuttles running between, which gave you a chance to see some of the special art projects. Still, it was nothing like what the Paramount backlot offered in terms of unusual spaces—there were some wonderful installations and performances then. Now there’s less of that while everyone hurries to see the galleries. After all, there were over 120 of them, more than ever before—some major New York and European dealers like Paula Cooper, Lisson, Thaddaeus Ropac and David Zwirner among them; 35,000 visitors passed through Frieze’s gates.

Major sales were reported, I’ll just mention a few here but the sums are rather staggering. Hauser & Wirth did especially well, selling Mark Bradford’s painting Shall Rest in Honor There (2023) for $3.5 million, Henry Taylor’s painting Untitled (2022) for $450,000, and a Luchita Hurtado painting for $225,000. Several galleries with booths featuring single artists sold out completely—David Kordansky Gallery sold out of paintings by Chase Hall, Gagosian sold out of paintings and works on paper by Rick Lowe, Victoria Miro sold all 18 paintings by Doron Langberg. Prices still tend to be secretive, though, as in the announcement that Pace sold “a significant Agnes Martin painting for an undisclosed sum.”

The Santa Monica Airport has been the site of many a previous art fair, so it was surprising how jammed up parking was into and out of the fair, partly because a huge former parking lot was carved out for ride share. We do need ride share, but the space could have been allocated better. And yes, they charged $35 for parking, which quickly sold out. Frieze hasn’t committed to another year at the airport, so let’s see where it lands next year.

Felix, Number Two

On Saturday afternoon our homegrown art fair Felix (Feb. 15–19) was thronged with visitors. I made my way through those located around poolside, and the sound of people laughing and splashing in the pool was soundtrack. The first things striking my tired eyes—a pile of aliens with long snaky bodies by Sylvie Fleury and Esben Weile Kjær, blown-up floaties lying in the patio assigned to Andersen’s of Copenhagen. “They were meant for the swimming pool,” explained gallery Director Lene Renner. “Here, let me show you the photos.” They were delightful shots of these creatures swimming around in her cell phone. Hotel management insisted they be removed, alas.

Another standout was the hallway gallery of Adam Cohen, “A Hug from the Art World,” which featured miniature sculpted figures by Jeffrey Dalessandro. The artist repurposed them from toy action figures. These weren’t just anybody, of course, they were of art-world luminaries—gallerists, collectors and even a few artists. Included were Tim Blum and Jeff Poe, Jeffrey Deitch, Beth Rudin DeWoody and Yayoi Kusama. The work was priced at $3000 per, $5500 for paired figures, and a bit extra for those with props—the Damien Hirst stood beside a shark in a tank. A number had already been sold by the time I arrived—many to the subjects themselves. Sadly, I did not find myself among them. (Not that I would have purchased it, mind you.)

There were other fairs around town, including the long-running L.A. Art Show at the Convention Center and Spring Break at Skylight in Culver City. Bergamot Station joined in with a day-long celebration on Saturday, Feb.18, and art friends said it was so jammed that they couldn’t get into the lot. There were openings, drinks and a special emphasis on photography at several galleries.

Art Action Toys by Jeffrey Dalessandro, photo by Scarlet Cheng.

Roberts Projects Revisited

Between fairs I visited the impressive new location of Roberts Projects on La Brea—just a few blocks above Wilshire. Completely renovated, this building has lofty ceilings and roomy gallery spaces, the largest currently filled with an inaugural show by Kehinde Wiley, “Colorful Realm” (through April 8). Each large oval painting in this show features a Black man or woman in a classical pose from European painting, except they are wearing contemporary street clothing and sneakers. The subjects are set against backgrounds of meticulously painted flowers, leaves and vines that echo Edo-period paintings—Edo being the period in Japan when the mercantile class and its tastes flourished. The painting is exquisite, and the cultural interweaving inspired, making this one of LA’s best current shows. While going through Frieze, I couldn’t help but notice the number of works which, similarly, feature quite consciously posed Black men, held in like dignity and grace.

Grave Gallery

Nao Bustamante is one our art treasures. Her work in video and performance is often exaggerated and campy, but comments on serious issues of violence, gender and even life and death. When I read about the opening of her Grave Gallery, on the site of her own cemetery plot, I knew I had to go, despite being bleary-eyed. It’s located at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery off Melrose, where many other great and good (and not so good) celebrities have found their way, including director Cecil B. DeMille, actress Judy Garland, singer Yma Sumac.

Bustamante has long been fascinated—even obsessed— with death since she was eight, when her godmother and two daughters died in a car accident. In January she bought a plot at Hollywood Forever. “I finally decided that the only way I was going to handle it was to make it an art project,” she explained. For the performance she donned a huge black cloak topped with a metal pail, and spoke through a vintage metal megaphone that mediums of the past would have used. She called out, banged the pail with a stick, spoke to the dead, and eventually made her way to her own plot—followed by about 60 attendees. Bustamante got quite emotional thinking about those who have passed on. “There’s been so much death, there’s been so much life,” she said, before shouting, “Where’s the damn champagne?!” And then toasted us all.

Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Prince Anthony Hall, 2020, oil on linen, 96 x 72 in., courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA, photo by Robert Wedemeyer. Nao Bustamante @Grave Gallery, photo by Scarlet Cheng.

Great Britain is in serious decline. The City has lost its position as Europe’s indispensable financial center, the UK economy is in recession and its vaunted National Health Service is in shambles. The Tories have ruled Britannia for 12 straight years, much of it in dealing with a self-imposed catastrophe known as Brexit under the inept leadership of Cameron, May and Johnson. Then there was Liz Truss who served as Prime Minister for about 60 days—the only thing she will be remembered for is formally presenting herself to QE2 who promptly died. Queen Elizabeth served more than 70 years as one of most vapid monarchs in the kingdom’s long history, only to be succeeded by the insipid King Charles III.

Symbolic of the long decline and fall of the British Empire is the possible loss of the most important artistic treasure in England—the Parthenon Marbles, which have been on display in the British Museum for two centuries. An impending deal for the Parthenon Marbles to be returned to Greece at long last is being negotiated. After decades of false starts, a return or loan of at least some of the marbles seems likely.

In the early 19th century, most of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon pediments and at least half of the spectacular frieze spanning the interior walls of the ancient Greek temple— considered to be the most beautiful building of antiquity—were commandeered by Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, the British ambassador to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Turks at the time).

Elgin’s prime mission was to save the treasures of the Parthenon from theft or destruction. He concluded that to save them he had to ship them to England. To do so, he spent much of this own fortune to bribe the Sultan’s retinue and received a firman, a type of edict from the Sultan, which gave him putative authority to ship the marbles and other items from Acropolis temples to England, where he intended to display them at a private museum. However, a divorce cost him the rest of his fortune and he sold the marbles at a loss to the government, which installed them in the British Museum in 1817. They have been on display there ever since.

Is England Losing its Marbles?

BY STEPHEN J. GOLDBERG, ESQ.

ART BRIEF

When Greece won its freedom from the Ottomans, shortly after Elgin spirited away the marbles, the Greeks demanded their return. The British refused. The romantic poet Lord Byron, who fought for Greece’s independence, was a vocal critic of British no-return policy and expressed his views in verse. Over the last two centuries, the British steadfastly refused to budge, claiming that Elgin paid for the marbles and that their government has clear legal title.

The British Museum (commonly referred to as the BM) is a must for anyone visiting London. Where else can you view the original Rosetta Stone and dozens of other spectacular ancient Egyptian monuments. The last time I was in London, I spent a couple of hours viewing the Parthenon marbles. It’s the third time I have seen them and each time I came away with awe at their beauty, and a disquieting sense that these items belong in Greece, at home with what is left of the Parthenon.

A Greek newspaper reported last December that there were serious negotiations between the Greek prime minister and George Osborne, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer who is now chairman of the BM. The newspaper said that the deal was centering on an arrangement where the British would “loan” the marbles for a period of at least 20 years in exchange for Greece lending the UK a rotating selection of antiquities. Of course, the Greeks hope that after 20 years the loan would become permanent. The New York Times reported that the Brits offered to loan the Greeks no more than a third of the Parthenon artifacts and for a much shorter time period.

The return of antiquities to native art institutions is a growing concern for museums world-wide as the countries of origin make more frequent demands. Last year the Smithsonian returned 30 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. Germany also repatriated 20 of the bronzes. But some art institutions are digging in, fearing that their prime treasures will be taken away.

The BM needs a renovation, estimated to cost one billion pounds, and as it attempts to raise funds, patrons may hesitate to donate, turned off not only by the possible loss of the Parthenon marbles, but by the pressure to return its collection of Benin Bronzes and Egyptian antiquities, including the Rosetta Stone, to their native countries. Will the empire strike back?

PRINTS BY CINDY REHM COURTESY OF TIGER STRIKES ASTEROID SCULPTURES BY CAMILLA TAYLOR COURTESY OF TRACK 16 OVERBODY COURTESY OF MONTE VISTA PROJECTS

That Thing-centric Love

BY ZAK SMITH DECODER

I hope you’ve had this problem: You like some art somewhere but you hate the social machinery around it.

You know something is good, but the discourse, the nepotism, the snobs, the takes, the informative six-page features, the art history teachers, the leachers, the exiguous creatures in the bleachers, and the limited-edition sneakers: they make you despair.

You love a thing—a thing, an object, not even a person. And to find that love or articulate it, or to acknowledge how much your love of actual people comes down to being able to share that thing-centric love with them, requires intercourse with harsh processes where the sausage of that love is extruded from the great and squealing hog of life in a society.

Loving art in a way that brings it close to your life sounds like something that happens to a maiden aunt in a novel about finding romance on a trip to rural Italy, but it also just sucks—like loving a cat with three legs but no bladder control.

If we can stop being ironic about our relationship to the apparatus of art, so much of what we worry about is the line where the art ends and the bullshit begins.

Thirty-one minutes and 59 seconds into Tár—a film about the downfall of a celebrated fictional contemporary conductor—the titular Lydia sits at a piano and plays a Bach prelude to a skeptical student, monologuing as she plays: “…you hear what it really is, it’s a question,” (as she plays an up-talking musical phrase) “and an answer,” (and a subtly different phrase) “which begs another question,” (a phrase again). “There’s a humility in Bach, he’s not pretending he’s certain about anything because he knows that its always the question that involves the listener—it’s never the answer”.

I like this prelude. I think it is Good Art. I like how Lydia/Cate Blanchett plays. Good Art, too. The skeptical music student agrees (and when rivals agree it is the closest thing we have to truth in the arts) that Lydia plays well. I would even venture so far as to say that despite me knowing fuck-all about classical music that Lydia’s analysis of Bach is persuasive, and maybe I even learned something. Which is good because I know so fuck-all about classical music I had to Google to find out it was a prelude.

And despite there being two hours left to go in the movie that’s all I know for sure about the art-to-bullshit quotient inhabiting Lydia Tár. This is a pivotal moment in Tár because it is the only time we are assured that Lydia is actually good at anything. Every other second of the film has the same humility its protagonist ascribes to Bach: it just asks questions.

Lydia Tár (born Linda Tarr) at the piano is a pinprick of authenticity in a bloodbath of pose and unproved assertion. She is fawningly interviewed (her answers are rehearsed), she models for album covers (she art-directs them), she dresses carefully (even when not modelling), she offers advice to inferiors (and she is sure they’re that), adoring fans approach her, assistants handle her logistics, she writes something called Tár on Tár, she controls a fellowship and a major orchestra, her relationships with colleagues are lurid and questionable. She is above all high-handed and for an audience that wants to see her with hands held high. In other words: the art and life of Lydia Tár are attended by a tremendous amount of bullshit. And her downfall via social media is due to not doing the bullshit well enough. Because the artist’s enmeshment with bullshit is inextricable.

And at no point are we sure (or unsure) she’s worth all this attention. I’m still not 100% sure what a conductor even does. Don’t all these musicians have sheet music?

To see the film’s achievement here we have to remember what films about artists are usually like. Either the moment of making is undergirded by an advancing swell of inspirational music—and then we know the art’s supposed to be good, like in Basquiat, Pollock or Oliver Stone’s The Doors—or the art is introduced in a deadpan shot with someone in a failed experiment of an outfit ultra syllabically swooning over it—in which case we know the art’s supposed to be silly, like in Velvet Buzzsaw or Ruben Östlund’s The Square.

Portraits of artists are usually either heroic legend or satire, but the problem with real artists is they come unlabeled. Tár lets us sit with that problem. I’m going to say that makes it good.

Illustration by Zak Smith

Consumer vs. Appreciator

BY SETH HAWKINS

With the current exponential rise in digital, AI-generated art and blockchain verifiable provenance, has the need for showing an original piece of art lost allure? Akin to a natural history museum showing a dinosaur skeleton that is 99% reproduction and 1% actual specimen or to a Vegas magician cutting the beautiful assistant in half six times a week, does it matter whether what we see is simply a beautiful illusion? Are we as art viewers more interested in the spectacle now? As handmade art goes the way of the dodo and is replaced with animatronics and videos of art, for the sake of all future generations I implore we ask: What is art and what is smoke and mirrors made for mass consumption?

Projecting Old Masters work on warehouse walls is all the rage, but as an appreciator of the of the artist’s hand—I struggle to see the allure. This generation of youth (my daughter included) will grow up thinking that van Gogh was actually a video artist and that Starry Night (her favorite painting) is 20 feet tall. What is lost here? Some would argue nothing—that rather mass exposure to the end consumer is gained. Aha, there in lies the issue—consumer vs. appreciator.

How could one argue that seeing a projection of art in any way parallels the experience of being in the presence of the most celebrated paintings the world has seen. I have taken the Harvard Google-earthesque 3D tour of the Great Pyramid on my laptop, but it is a far cry from traveling across the globe and experiencing the claustrophobic descent to the Queen’s chamber that a real exploration would provide.

Within the context of art—understanding the scale, the color, the frozen in time brush stroke/texture imbued by the artist’s hand—the je ne sais quoi quality that makes epic art epic can never be replaced by moving pixels or altered-reality. I will debate this point with anyone—that has never stood in front of a Rothko—and wants to take the side of the AI (trust me, they will become sentient). But at that point they may actually make good art!

Few institutions can take out a loan to exhibit a noted work of van Gogh, but droves of entrepreneurs/opportunists are now renting projectors, leasing abandoned big-box retail stores and shining images of appropriated non-copyrighted art on the walls for a mere $50 entry fee. As we think about intellectual property and public domain free usage for historic art, the commerce aspect begins to change how I read this story. All you need to do is pay a licensing fee to a photographer for their high-res images of those beautiful sunflowers and you are the new hot-ticket immersive experience.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the digital exhibiting of Old Master works is the most contemporary of trends—the exhibiting of multi-million-dollar NFTs (which really boil down to a JPEG image whose provenance is verified on one of a multitude of blockchains.) What many don’t understand is that when an NFT is shown, the actual NFT is not really shown. There is no formal loan, no actual transfer of the art to the museum. Typically it is a simple JPEG that is shown, not the “actual piece of art.” Copy/paste. Does this matter? Does anyone care in the way I care about Vincent, that we are only seeing a reproduction.

Back to van Gogh for a thought-exercise relating to the NFT copy/paste. If rather than seeing a digital reproduction of a self-portrait—ear bandaged, staring eerily off canvas—we were actually viewing a painting that looked identical but we knew was a forgery of the iconic original. How would you feel knowing that the canvas was not painted by Vincent’s hand while in a cold damp room in Arles. Any difference there? I would still care, but I am a cynical viewer of art. To me the unseen affirmations that come with actual art matter. Why judge on simple aesthetics alone, be romantic, be critical, be poetic— the back story does fucking matter, the painting that was painted over by the masterpiece is still under there. We all came from somewhere, embrace your provenance. If we do not force this issue to the forefront, if we do not address that reproductions of art are not art, it will be lost on our children.

All we will be left with are van Gogh Museums in every major city, not one with an actual painting hung on the wall. But hey, plenty of projector technicians will have job security.

An NFT from the newly released NFT collection produced by the van Gogh Sites Foundation and the web3 platform Appreciator.

ALL THAT GLITTERS

The Transformative Portraiture of Jamie Vasta

BY WILLIAM MORENO

One of my favorite paintings is a portrait of myself at the age of five or so, composed by my father. Along with my siblings’ pictures and beyond the sentimentality, these portraits have become distinctive family emblems and historical markers, wrought at a time of optimism and possibility. That singular ability to capture transitory moments and ephemeral character is the essence of portraiture, the subject perpetually reanimated. Portraiture raises notions of conditional identity and, even when not flattering or mimetically precise, is curiously alluring. It has been a fixture in non-Western art for millennia, along with the belief that a person’s physiognomy provides insights into their persona— imagined or factual. Our fascination with countenances permeates culture, and our acquiescent relationship to them via painting, photography or selfies, is ubiquitous. Contemporary artists have taken on the technique anew—although engaging with “portraiture” does not necessarily align them as “portraitists.”

Jamie Vasta, an Oakland-based artist with a BA from Tufts Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and an MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, operates on such a continuum— her work straddles notions of representation and more recently, landscape or “environmental portraiture.” She has a particular interest in reframing LGBTQIA+ narratives, posing her circle of friends and collaborators in often foreboding historical tableaux. The clincher is that all of her works are created utilizing glitter and glue—pedestrian materials that utterly transform both context and allusion. Composed on flat panels with painstaking subtlety, it’s a physically onerous creative process.

Glitter has a particularly American history, invented in the 1930s by Henry Ruschmann, but the artistic use of shimmering substances can be found in antiquity. The stuff is often associated with queer culture, drag queens and rockers alike—“glitter bombing” is frequently employed as a political tactic. Use of lustrous materials by contemporary artists isn’t particularly new, Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes (1980) is embellished with a shimmering glass-based powder and emerged at a cultural moment of extreme disco and concomitant bacchanalia. Notorious bad boy Damien Hirst went a step further with his fully diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God (2007) and ancillary diamond-dusted prints. Artist Ebony G. Patterson takes a more considered approach—her lush works employ glitter, but it’s a bit of a subterfuge: “Beneath all of the layers, beneath the shine, beneath the patterns beneath the embellishment sits an uneasy question. The question is whether or not you choose to look for this,” she states.

Vasta works in a similar vein; she adroitly compels the viewer to consider the nature of the human condition: desire, joy, sexuality and death all play roles in her multiple mise en scènes.

“The Hunt,” an early suite of paintings, depicts female hunters celebrating in what is often controversial territory, but the series doesn’t purport to be a visual treatise, quite the contrary. The amiable portrait, Virginia (2007) depicts a young, proud girl hunter, hoisting a formidable rifle while imbibing on a juice carton. The materialism of glitter and the familiarity of the imagery both honor and assuage a provocative, sociological juxtaposition: This is America.

The “After Caravaggio” series is a contemporary reframing of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s historic paintings. The original Narcissus, depicted in the Mannerist style, illustrates a young boy in 16th-century garb, languorously gazing onto his reflected image, the outcome ultimately tragic. With Narcissus, 1603 (2010), Vasta envisions an alternative narrative and inserts a tattooed T-shirt–clad male gazing into a cocaine-laden baroque

Left: Bacchus, 1596 , 2010. Private collection. Above: Narcissus, 1603, 2010. Provate Collection. Both images courtesy of the artist.

mirror, rendered entirely with glitter. The resulting picture is beguiling and decadently glamorous, its calculation pushed into the 21st century with the consequences in question.

Don’t haul on the rope don’t (2009) from the “Sea Shanties” series presents an altogether darker narrative, the forces of nature subsuming a young man drowning in a pall of darkness, glitter confounding his plight. “This series was decidedly vague and foreboding,” says Vasta. Even so, it’s impossible not to be mesmerized by the pictures; light plays an outsized role in their hypnotic appearance. With Elyse Elaine (2012), a work in the “Burlesque” series, a formidable Black woman proudly sashays as a radiant performer, her confidence, desire and focus beyond reproach, glitter propelling her portrait into superstar status. As the artist says, “I was interested in the ways that both burlesque and drag play with camp femininity, and in what’s similar and

different about how each do so, and how that might relate to the connotations of glitter as a material. I wanted to give the portraits some art-historical gravitas, so the models and I utilized a lot of poses drawn from John Singer Sargent’s society portraits.”

The artist’s most recent work has taken a bit of a turn from her staged portraits; the 2020 series “Fire” posits destruction as metaphor for cultural implosions—glimmering conflagrations of a collapsed world. “The fires seem more personally relevant now that I’ve been living in California for almost 20 years, and then when COVID happened the fire paintings suddenly became very much about the pandemic to me.”

Vasta deftly resurrects splendor from moments often bleak or inconclusive; her considerable forte is imparting an astute sense of erudite and seductive spectacle. In her hands, the medium is only part of the message.

Elyse Elaine, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

Angels Gate Cultural Center

April 15th, noon - 4pm

Explore 50+ artist studios

Join the Family Art Workshop

Discover the Artist-In-Classroom program

See contemporary art on view in our galleries

Notions of Place

April 15 - June 17

Opens with Public Reception

April 15th, 3 - 5pm

Hilary Baker

Flora Kao

Natalie M. Godinez

Kio Griffith

Lauren Kasmer

LaRissa Rogers

Jenny Yurshansky

HK Zamani

Also featuring Homesĭtē by Joyce Dallal & Lauren Kasmer

Angels Gate Cultural Center 3601 S. Gaffey Street

San Pedro, CA 90731

310 519 0936

angelsgateart.org

Learn more at angelsgateart.org

April 15 - June 17: Galleries open Thursday - Saturday, 10am to 4pm or by appointment.

Hilary Baker, Coyote, Shell Station, 2022

Rene LaRue’s studio, photo by Jose Cordon.

UNCUT AND FROM THE HEART

Henry Taylor Ditches One Tool for Another

BY DONNELL ALEXANDER

Untitled , 2021, Acrylic on typewriter case, ©Henry Taylor, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Jeff McLane. Opposite

Screaming Head , 1999. Image and work ©Henry Taylor, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Jeff McLane.

Amid an ocean of color-mad paintings in Henry Taylor’s threedecade retrospective at MOCA is a colorless painted object: a black typewriter case overlaid with text of thick white coarse brushstrokes:

I TRY To be

Write aint

TRY’n to be WHITE

Simple rhythmic text that’s plain white on black—but not so simple as one might think at first; this untitled piece registers in my brain as essential. Taylor’s work hinges on the idea needing to tell stories and doing so with a singularly curated empathy.

“Taylor has an interest in people, he wants to know them, to help them, to be around them,” writes LA artist and CalArts art prof. Charles Gaines in the accompanying catalog of the exhibition, “Henry Taylor: B Side.” “Painting portraits allows him to be with people, to spend time with them.”

Spilling over the bottom of the typewriter case and onto its handle are crudely painted front teeth in white paint, baring discontent that’s as present in his paintings as the influence of Picasso. The identity message gets delivered with a smile, but deep down it’s no joke.

I TRY To be

Write aint TRY’n to be WHITE

Taylor, 65, studied journalism and anthropology at Oxnard Community College. He only wanted to tell stories about people—his folks in particular. But journalism is full of complications and potential misconceptions; people think you’re doing one thing when you’re trying to pull off another. Art is unmediated, uncut and from the heart.

Taylor always had the raw tools of expression. His empathy, honed by watching the inherent struggles of six elder siblings— one died along the way—would rise toward an uncanny level on the strength of working for years as a mental health technician. His Camarillo State Hospital tech gig falls under the umbrella of nursing. This facility (rumored the subject of the Eagles’ song, “Hotel California”) provided Taylor constant interaction with disturbed persons who could not check out and—it almost goes without saying—would almost never leave.

For 10 years this in-the-making artist was friends with the officially insane. He developed lasting relationships with patients who might go mental on a dime. You get your doctorate in empathy this way.

Many of Taylor’s subjects in his portraits are homeless and street people. Like Taylor’s studio in DTLA, my own place of work sits not far from Skid Row. Walk Skid Row sometime, if only its perimeter. If you haven’t had the downtown Los Angeles pedestrian experience, stroll over to learn that—as horrendous and overwhelming a Black place as you imagine Skid Row to be—it’s worse. By a lot. While maneuvering through and around Skid Row’s tents and humanity I avert my eyes and tick the reminder

box: our most tangible example of America not honoring its responsibilities for slavery. Right here.

It’s not only poverty-stricken subjects who benefit from Taylor’s deep sensitivity. His characterizations of family and historical figures seem driven by his ability to also elicit by suggestion. When Taylor takes on Black Americans who have died at the hands of police (Philando Castile, Sean Bell) the sense of this artist having lived with them can be overwhelming. These paintings come across less as portraiture than magical communion based on the artist’s interaction with the idea of his dead subjects. We may never know them so well.

About a quarter of the exhibition was made specifically for the show. Among the 152 pieces in “B Side,” my favorites are paintings (mostly portraits) that come across like funk-filled story-songs. But nothing in these MOCA rooms has more arch autobiography baked in than the untitled typewriter case, except maybe the neighboring art objects (displayed together in a vitrine) comprising painted objects such as cigarette packages and cereal boxes—the default products of the artist’s inability to afford proper canvases early in his career. He smoked Newports and ate Lucky Charms, and—at least one time, presumably— used the similar budget typewriter to the one that I struggled to get my stories across with.

Mistaking a Black person’s effort to be correct for aspirational whiteness is an especially American phenomenon. One need not have read The 1619 Project to be in on the artist’s joke—the distinction that Taylor’s creation makes is in broad conversation with Black America.

Though his works rely heavily on a reporter’s eye, gut and experience say that Henry Taylor would not have meshed well over on First Street, in the Times building. The painted type writer case, created not so very long ago (2021), at my center of this vivid exhibition, tells all the stories that a commercial painter’s child from Ventura would in time get more than right.

BRILLIANT

Amir H. Fallah Creates Vibrant Artworks that Question Cultural Boundaries

BY GEORGE MELROD

Break Down the Walls , 2022; acrylic on canvas; Courtesy of the artist and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.

BRILLIANT VEILS

Entering a room of portraits by Amir H. Fallah, the first thing you’ll notice is that you can’t see their faces: the figures are cloaked. In one, the subject sits draped in a richly patterned blue-and-purple shawl, cradling what looks like a gilded African head in its lap. In another, a figure with purple arms strikes a pose seemingly drawn from ancient Near Eastern art, swathed in a lustrous cloak with a dragon design, the creature’s snarling face overlapping the subject’s.

“I think of all of my work as kind of psychological portraits, and not literal portraits,” Fallah says. “Is a portrait someone’s physical likeness, which really doesn’t tell you anything about who they are? Or is a portrait like someone’s experiences, their personality, their beliefs? So with the veiled figures, you have to focus on everything else to try to figure out who this person is, from the fabric that they’re covered in, the objects they surround themselves with.”

Yet these veiled portraits constitute just one facet of Fallah’s oeuvre. A new solo survey show at UCLA’s Fowler Museum— known for its ethnographic holdings—demonstrates just how far the artist’s omnivorous vision has expanded over the past decade. Titled “The Fallacy of Borders,” the exhibition includes painting, sculpture and even a set of stained-glass windows. No less significantly, it also reveals the breadth of Fallah’s interests, which span from skateboard culture and textile design to scientific illustration; from Persian miniatures and modernist abstraction to obscure ephemera. Melding elements of high and low, East and West, ancient and modern, his works doggedly question boundaries that separate people, cultures and genres. At times it almost looks as if he took elements from various wings of an encyclopedic museum and threw them into a blender, then laid out the results into a dreamlike rebus.

That sense of drawing from a medley of sources is embedded in Fallah’s biography. Born in 1979 in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution, Fallah and his family first moved to Turkey and Italy before coming to the US as refugees. He got his graduate degree at UCLA before settling in Los Angeles, where he was steeped in a rich Latino culture. “Yeah, I’m all over the place,” he

“I want to visually seduce the viewer with ornamentation, decoration, bright colors, patterning, and make them spend time with the work,” he elucidates. “And the more they spend time with the work, they realize that it’s not just like a candy-coated sugary snack. It’s very much about reality. It’s a way to make the dark realities of the world more swallowable.”

In recent years, he has expanded the range of sources that inspire him to include evocative lines of text, and themes from children’s stories that he reads to his young son. But although his dazzling colors and designs may look psychedelic, Fallah himself has no interest in drug culture. “The irony is I don’t even drink,” he laughs. “I’ve never smoked a cigarette, never smoked pot.” Instead, they draw from his fascination with graffiti and skateboarding, and with digital imagery. “These are also the colors of advertising, or of illustration,” he reflects. “I feel like I’m just using the palette of our time. Which is loud, bold and in-your-face.”

The effect tilts into the realm of the sublime in his stainedglass windows, which employ modernist geometries and primary colors as a scaffold for cryptic tableaux of veiled figures, posed amid natural history elements like lizards and mollusks and eerie anatomical illustrations; illuminated from behind, they lend the

says. “I’m a cultural mutt. My wife is Puerto Rican, and my son is half Iranian, half Puerto Rican and American, you know? And he looks white. Also, I’m very dark-skinned for an Iranian, so nobody ever thinks I’m Iranian. My wife happens to look Irish. So none of us looks like who we quote-unquote ‘are.’”

In 1996, Fallah started Beautiful Decay, a DIY zine, which grew into a full-color publication and attracted a wide cult following (and is featured prominently in the show). In the decades since, his practice of sampling snippets of disparate imagery and design has expanded through the use of online digital archives, from which Fallah liberally gleans to discover elements for his works. “A lot of times I don’t even know the origins of a lot of them,” he explains. “So I don’t care about its initial context. I’m seeing it as the raw ingredients, that I’m giving new life to.”

In combining images from far-flung sources, Fallah is only building on the sort of fluid cultural exchanges that are rooted in history. As an example, he notes how dragons, often regarded as a Chinese motif, can also be found in Persian artwork. Sitting before the largest painting in the show, he points to a pair of angels on the left half of the canvas. “They look Asian, but they’re actually Persian, they’re from a Persian miniature,” he says. “So am I appropriating something that’s Asian? Or am I appropriating something that’s my own?”

The wall-sized work also includes the image of an Alpine maiden from an old-time matchbox cover, a pair of mirrored flamingos, and a hand holding out a pigeon like a peace offering, laid out across a grid-like armature. The mirror patterns suggest a Rorschach print, with dualities of good and evil, or opposing perspectives, while a Rubik’s Cube hints at the need for addressing puzzle-like challenges. But the title, Break Down the Walls (2022) reveals a darker reality, alluding to the policy of separating migrant children at the border during Trump’s presidency. The issue holds special relevance to Fallah, himself an immigrant, with a son the same age as many of those detained.

gallery the mystical aura of a chapel.

Beyond the Fowler exhibition, Fallah will also be having two other visible projects around LA to coincide with Frieze week, making the winter something of a Fallah-palooza. In February he’s opening an exhibit of new paintings at Shulamit Nazarian, called “A War on Wars,” which he sees as a “meditation on all the horrible things of war, not just in Iran.”

On the building’s façade, he’s installing a large neon artwork, created with the neon artist matt dilling, inspired by the current protests in Iran. Titled Chant, the piece depicts a female-faced sun encircled by the words “Woman Life Freedom” in English, Farsi and phoneticized Farsi. The sun had long been a Persian national symbol; when the Pahlavi dynasty took over the country, they removed the female face from its depictions. In restoring it in his radiant public artwork, Fallah honors the Iranian women who are currently protesting with such bravery and resolve. When it’s sold, 100% of the funds will be donated to human rights charities.

This attests to one final aspect of his practice: that beneath Fallah’s curiosity lies compassion. Not merely an act of eager cultural mixology, for all its crafty flair, his work feels like a private assertion of hope. It’s all about the possibility, and durability, of cross-cultural dialogue. Rooted in Los Angeles, with its irresistible amalgam of cultures and visual stimuli, but impelled by a fascination with the visual expression of diverse peoples and geographies, he’s both an LA artist and a global one. Which makes him perhaps uniquely qualified to address some of the issues of nationality and identity that confront us today.

“I want to make work that’s about this period in time that we’re living in—the good, the bad, the ugly,” he says. “I want people to like look back and be like, oh, this work marks this period in human history. It’s not nostalgic for a period in time that he wasn’t in. It was exactly about the time that he was in, right now.”

Opposite page: Protector 1 , 2022; acrylic on canvas; Courtesy of the artist and Ginsberg Family Collection.

NOT MERELY AN ACT OF EAGER CULTURAL MIXOLOGY, FOR ALL ITS CRAFTY FLAIR, HIS WORK FEELS LIKE A PRIVATE ASSERTION OF HOPE. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY, AND DURABILITY, OF CROSS-CULTURAL DIALOGUE.

ON THE NOSE Helen Chung Talks Anatomy

BY EZRHA JEAN BLACK

The afternoon we agree to meet for a quick Q&A over drinks, Helen Chung arrives at the restaurant slightly late (though not much later than me)—fittingly enough, from a commissioned portrait sitting. Engaged by the process, conversation and the resulting portrait itself, the subject has kept her somewhat longer than originally anticipated—commissioning a second portrait on the spot.

Portrait painting can be a complicated business—complicated by the artist’s knowledge, acquaintance or relationship with the subject (and vice-versa), the subtle push and pull of the process itself, the subject’s own self-knowledge or awareness, or sheer vanity. A bit of choreography may be involved (a shift of positioning or placement); art direction may be tweaked (something of a specialty for this artist). Conversation enlivens the process, but may also prolong and complicate it: mouth, lips, cheeks, jaw, eyes move—and the face changes. It is a social process and Helen rolls with it, but she is adroit at giving direction or asserting control when necessary.

Full disclosure: I have known Helen for a number of years and we are friendly. And yes— she has painted my portrait (two in one sitting—both excellent likenesses, each revealing a distinctive mood and aspect). Most people in the LA arts community are aware that the core of her practice is conceptual and frequently quite abstract. But she is known for her portraiture: she has painted more than 100 portraits over the last six or seven years, and between 60 and 70 of them are people well known in the LA art world.

Helen orders a chamomile-mint tea and we don’t quite get down to business—since (as if I were sitting for a portrait) we chat about everything. We start with the portrait she just finished:

CHUNG: At first I thought this one was coming out more abstract; but then it turns out that he thinks it looks more like himself. And that’s always what happens. What I think is less like them, they often think, “No—you really captured me here even more!”

As I was telling [her subject], I’ve been reading a lot of Elizabeth Bishop lately, and what I realized appealed to me so much is that she repeats herself from one line or stanza to the next, changing something a little, then changing it again; and then changing something else. She’s constantly restating or readjusting the idea with something just slightly different.

And this way of restating the idea is very appealing to me—because when I do these portraits, I’m very aware that I’m going to correct the mark I just made, but I’ll make it anyway. And then I’ll go in there and deliberately make another mark that I think—ha!—that’s also going to be altered. But I like that alteration constantly happening until it just feels right— when all the different alterations feel right just staying there. It’s as if I were subconsciously applying her method of observing and reimagining things, and then setting down what she imagined in the lines of her poem.

I think there’s imagining in Bishop’s process that connects with the intuitive way I approach my subject. And when I do my abstract work, it’s exactly the same. There are certainly differences, but it’s a similar process to build something up, knowing it might be something I have to correct or follow-up on; but I have to keep going through it.

I’m not interested in just re-narrating everything people see and already know about, the typical portraiture—people sitting a certain way in front of us, stuff in the studio background or a photo reference, just capturing life like that. It’s just not enough for me.

ARTILLERY: As you’re making a mark, you’re conscious of what immediately preceded where you’re at, while thinking ahead to the next mark—and sort of merging the two or three positions or marks. There’s a constant oscillation—which turns out to be one way to an excellent likeness. I think a lot of us relate to that simply as a matter of being. You’re doing one thing, but thinking a little bit about something else, the next thing. I’m always thinking of something else—three other things!”

And if you’re writing, sometimes you’re drilling down into the word or sentence, but at the same time thinking a bit ahead and conscious of how the other part of the sentence or paragraph fits. I think I make myself slightly mad doing that. But you’re not slow about it; you execute these things pretty rapidly. You keep your brushes moving, and you get it done. I think you need to do that. It’s what people are used to, and then they start talking to me—and it makes it easier for me if they don’t move too much. While they’re talking with me, they’ll sometimes drift off par hasard, looking slightly away, and I’ll get a nice three-quarter view. People can be very insecure about their noses. But I like them better when they’re slightly three-quarters and show the nose. But I like their eyes to turn to me.

Funny that we call that sort of look “abstracted”—which has something to do with the dynamic of the process, having to do with being self-conscious about having someone focusing on one’s likeness, but also distracted by one’s thoughts—and then you’re conversing on top of it

It can get complicated. Some people, I probably shouldn’t encourage to talk. Something gets into their head and they just can’t stop talking. I had one subject I found slightly odd-looking—almost like a Martian, but kind of beautiful. But it was like ten parts of her body were in motion as she talked. And she could not stop talking

But then you always engage people—you have to I do! I was going to say that I don’t necessarily have to pay that much attention, because I’m really focused on my drawing first

and foremost. And when I engage them, they reveal stuff about themselves that goes into the painting.

And some of that comes across in portraits of subjects like “G”—who’s a talker, a writer, a thinker. All of that. I think it’s something unique to my practice because I want to capture something of their essence; it would be hard for me to do that if they were just sitting there …I’ve tried.

“G” started to ask me, “Do you want me to do something different?” And I said, “No—stay where you are. If I want to change your hands, I’ll change them myself.” And he says “How?” “In my drawing, not with you.” I already know what his hand looks like in every position. So if it’s not the right shape I’m looking at, I can change it to another—just in my drawing.

I feel like I’m still allowing myself to make mistakes—which I actually embrace. Outside the contemporary art world, you can see some extremely tight rendering made for the sake of a kind of realism that takes no chances; and that’s why their work looks dead. You’ve got to take the chance to let the errors happen because that’s when it comes alive.

We’re all human and I’m trying to capture it in real time. And in real time there’s going to be some weird gestures or hand movements or conditions that you want to acknowledge—instead of changing the person.

I’ve told you about how I love Brice Marden—and I was just thinking about how he always erases about 70 percent of his markings—making a mark and then really thinking about that, and then seeing how much can be removed and that erasure is part of the painting. I guess I paint over rather than erase, but I like to be able to see what I covered over. So that the little struggle is visible, and also adds texture to an otherwise fairly effortless piece of work.

But for the most part, a gesture, positioning, placement are to one extent or another a function of your subject’s personality, manner and demeanor, and that enters into the portrait chemistry. That’s a real art. I won’t change the character of the portrait.

We’ve talked before about how your portrait-painting, as a routine part of your art practice, began as “lunch portraits”— made in the spirit of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. How have the portraits evolved since those first portraits of your “lunch visitors”—your pals, other artists and random sitters?

In the beginning I was simply portraying what I saw in front of me. I wanted to be pretty accurate. But as I began doing more and more of them, I realized I could take more liberties—changing the positions of their hands, manipulating stuff in the background. Hands are always important. They speak for a person. Two years into this process, my imagination was much more integral to making these portraits. People are usually chatting on [during a sitting] and what they tell me can spin off another image for me. It’s not always directly related to the subject, but if I have an idea of something that will transport them to another place, I’ll ask them.

I put Thomas Linder in a kind of wooden cottage that seemed like it might belong to his grandmother—but then he doesn’t have that kind of a grandmother. I did a painting of a subject who was tired—he had his sunglasses on and was constantly looking at his phone—I couldn’t make eye contact with him. So I put him in Julian Schnabel’s apartment—with a big Schnabel painting behind him.

But I thought eye contact was critical for you.

I made an exception—I work with whatever I’ve got. He looked adorable and he wanted to sit for me. So I said, “Let’s do it.”

, 2017. Courtesy of the artist. [Portrait of the author of this story]

That’ll Do, Pig

BY SKOT ARMSTRONG BUNKER VISION

Between 1971 and 1983 Los Angeles hosted an annual film festival called Filmex. The people behind it went on to found the American Cinematheque. In 1975 they received a submission from Belgium that caused the judges to cringe so hard that they planned to reject it. Thanks to an eloquent plea from Buck Henry, the film was screened. By the end of that screening the audience had mostly fled, but the film took on mythic status. It was rarely screened at underground film festivals, and never got any sort of VHS or DVD release during the 20th century. When it showed up on the gray market, it was often simply labeled “the pig-fucking movie.” In 2009 a DVD of a restored version of Vase de Noces (1974) was released in Germany, featuring an interview with director Thierry Zeno nearly as long as the film itself. An all-region version of the director’s collected works is currently in print in Belgium, and can be ordered on the Walmart website in the United States. Because there are digital versions, you can usually find a copy posted on YouTube.

The power of the film to disturb people owes a lot to the matter-of-fact way that everything is portrayed. It feels almost like a documentary. There is no point where the director signals any intention to be shocking. The action all takes place in a rural setting. The film is shot in black and white, which gives it a dreamlike quality. It starts off looking like an innocent meditation on country life. Nothing about the setting feels modern. The world in which the film takes place might have existed 200 years ago. None of the farm chores require any modern equipment. The lone human cast member cavorts with his pig in the way that one might interact with a smart dog. It all feels so natural that by the time he is having sex with the pig, it is likely to catch an unwarned viewer by surprise. It’s also the point where the audience started to flee the Filmex screening.

The pig eventually gives birth to a litter of human piglet-hybrids. Her human lover becomes enraged with jealousy at the attention she is showing them, and hangs the piglets where she can see their corpses. She dies of shock at the sight. He buries her body in the farmyard, and digs a grave for himself. At this point he goes crazy. After saving his excrement and urine in jars (at least a wall full of them), he starts to consume these. At this point the action starts to look like a Paul McCarthy performance. The film concludes with the protagonist hanging himself.

It’s probably telling that this film is now considered a classic in the horror genre. That’s the easiest way to explain a film that is so disturbing to so many people. In a world where a major TV sci-fi anthology devotes an episode to tricking a politician into sodomizing a pig for shock value, it’s even more shocking to see the same activity portrayed as if it were just another documentary on rural life.

FRAMES WITHIN FRAMES The Photography of Grant Mudford

BY JODY ZELLEN

Grant Mudford is a photographer with an extensive publication and exhibition history. Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1944, he studied architecture at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) and moved to Los Angeles in 1977. Since the 1980s he has functioned as a commercial photographer and became well known for his architectural and editorial work, along with his portrait photography. Last summer a show at PRJCTLA titled “Grant Mudford: Rosamund Felsen, A Photographic Essay” presented 80 of his portraits of artists associated with her gallery. Filling the walls were large-scale black-and-white photographs of noted LA artists from the 1980s such as Chris Burden, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, as well as smaller color images (that originated as gallery announcements) installed in large grids spanning two opposite walls. Many of these photographs were shot on location at the artist’s studio and here Mudford’s insight shines through as he deftly juxtaposes the artists, their work and the specificity of the location. Included is Jacci Den Hartog standing in a corner, surrounded by sculptures that cut across the composition with her shirt matching the color in the artwork. There are multiple pictures of Patrick Nickell, who appears to be lost in the creation of his work. Numerous images of artists depicted from behind, including Karen Liebowitz seated on a scaffolding that fuses with the imagery in her painting.

I asked Grant to speak a bit about his portraits.

ARTILLERY: Do you see your portraits of artists as collaborations?

MUDFORD: Some portrait sessions are more collaborations than others. A lot depends on how much the subject is aware of both the possibilities and the limitations of photography. Surprisingly few, including photographers, really understand this. Reality and photography are two totally different worlds. Hopefully the subject will trust me to make an image of them that they are comfortable with. Mutual trust is important. Since I am always confident in putting a composition together, I listen but I rarely need input from the subject.

How do you differentiate between the work you do for yourself and the work that is for hire or commissioned. Do you approach the session differently knowing what the outcome will be, whether it’s a book, magazine, announcement card or fine art?

I am always aware why am I making a photograph.

If I’m making a photo for myself, it’s the most interesting way of working. I start from scratch and the possibilities are endless. If someone is paying me to make a photo, there are certain client expectations that I will consider. However, I can always manage to make a photo that, to me, qualifies as a work of art.

Many of your photographs are shot through windows or even the computer screen, creating frames within frames. I know we have spoken about composition and how important framing is. Can you talk a little about that?

The frame is critical to my work. Before making a photo, I carefully scrutinize all the edges and corners of the boundaries of the composition. I consider the position of everything contained within the frame and pay attention to what is cut by the frame and is suggested beyond the boundaries of the frame.

To me, what exists within the frame of the photo is more important than the subject itself. It’s always interesting to discover a frame such as a window, often a doorway, mirror or even computer screens that I can incorporate into the final composition, offering a glimpse outside the primary composition.

Can you talk about the images you created as exhibition announcements for Rosamund Felsen Gallery as well as why the artists are sometimes depicted from the back?

One of the things that I tried to do with the Rosamund Felsen Gallery exhibition announcements was to offer an image that shows an integration and a relationship between the artist and the art itself, often achieved by positioning the artist within a dense collection of work in progress in their studio. I often position the artist with their back toward the camera so that the art receives at least as much attention as the artist.

Have you ever had a situation with an artist who was unresponsive, and you just could not “get” the picture. Do you re-shoot or visit an artist you just met more than once?

During a portrait photo session, an artist may seem unresponsive to participating in the process. I found that much of this resistance is based on fear. To minimize the artist’s exposure to the ordeal, I will bring in the artist only after I have totally prepped the composition for the camera. I have never found it necessary to re-shoot any of my portraits.

Chris Burden , 1980. Courtesy of the artist.

Just Want to See His Face

BY ANTHONY AUSGANG

In early 1972, the Rolling Stones headed out on tour after the No. 1 worldwide release of their 12th album, Exile on Main Street. Also known as the “Stones Touring Party,” the raucous, star-studded and drug-fueled tour featured 48 shows in the US and Canada. The California shows specifically were photographed by Jim Marshall for LIFE magazine. The GRAMMY Museum here in LA showcases his intimate backstage photographs and dynamic performance stills in the exhibition “The Rolling Stones 1972: Photographs by Jim Marshall.”

The photographer knew what to expect, having shot Jimi Hendrix onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival and Thelonius Monk at home with his family. Marshall also knew what was expected of him: at their request he had photographed Keith Richards and Mick Jagger working at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. According to Richards, his presence on tour was no problem: “Once Jim was in, he was another Stone.” Even so, there would be competition, as other photographers on the tour included Annie Leibovitz, Ethan Russell and Ken Regan. But he had an advantage:

“Jim had a reputation,” says Amelia Davis, Marshall’s longtime assistant and owner of the Jim Marshall Estate. “He did a shitload of cocaine, but he was able to walk that line with the Stones.” His unorthodox method was ultimately vindicated when the editors at LIFE chose his photo of Jagger for the cover.

Marshall shot four shows at Winterland in San Francisco, then performances in Los Angeles and San Diego. Having full access with The Stones on their private jet, “He caught us with our trousers down,” says Richards. From photographing the concerts, Marshall understood that The Stones together onstage were a single entity, but offstage and beyond the bohemian decadence, they were five individual people. When Marshall managed to shoot each one of The Stones alone, the results were as revealing as portraiture. In his monograph Trust, Marshall explains, “Whenever anyone asks me how I got the photographs I did, why I was often the only photographer present or got such unique access I simply reply, ‘Trust.’ Without trust between the subject and myself I couldn’t work the way I did.”

“Jim’s masterful eye and unlimited access captured the Stones in the iconic rock-star way we now visualize the band,” says the GRAMMY Museum’s associate curator Kelsey Goelz, who wisely included the contact sheets from which Marshall chose his best captures. Though every photograph at the GRAMMY show excels, it is these contact sheets that evidence Marshall’s skill: all the framing is done in-camera and even the images not chosen are classic. In the book Show me the Picture , Marshall says, “I’m like a reporter; I react to my subject in their environment, and, if it’s going well, I get so immersed in it that I become one with the camera.” Sounds like he got his “Rocks Off.”

GRAMMY Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90015, exhibition runs until June 2023.

Photo Courtesy The Estate of Jim Marshall and the GRAMMY Museum.

AFRICA AROUND TOWN

“Adornment | Artifact,” Curated by jill moniz

BY BIANCA COLLINS

at Transformative Arts. Photo by Bianca Collins.

The Getty Villa’s exhibition, “Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan,” offers a stunning display of jewelry and items of personal adornment excavated from burials of royalty and aristocratic individuals from a region that spans what is today southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Almost 3000 years of ancient history are presented in exquisite examples of metalwork in silver, bronze and mostly gold, reflecting the abundant and coveted gold mines of Nubia.

At one point, I found myself in front of a gypsum relief of what appeared to be hieroglyphics carved into a stone temple wall. Closer inspection revealed it was LA artist lauren halsey’s image of an urban building façade, plastered with ads in English and Spanish for cash loans and “pupusas y hot-dogs,” and graffiti declaring the space occupied by the viewer as “our hood.”

This subversive contemporary artwork’s inclusion in an antiquities museum is thanks to “Adornment | Artifact,” a related curatorial project by Transformative Arts’ co-founder jill moniz. Moniz invited more than 60 artists representing the diverse lineages of the Nubian diaspora in LA to respond to the Villa’s exhibition in five sister exhibitions across the city that celebrate their unique cultural legacies. “These ideas live in us,” said moniz, “and hap-

pen to also be part of what makes LA such a vital and vibrant place.”

Inspired, to experience this ambitious project, I decided to visit the other four sites, .

Born in Turkey, moniz told me in an interview that she sees art as a “pathway, and a doorway at the same time, to building place for oneself in one’s community.” A foundational understanding that visual literacy helps people build agency and mobility has guided Transformative Arts’ program with vulnerable populations around the world since 2006. “It drives everything I do,” admited moniz. “Art becomes something more when it’s combined with a viewer—or a wearer in the case of adornment—something greater, and more spiritual; a pathway to divinity.”

The “Adornment | Artifact” journey took me from The Getty Villa in Malibu to a pop-up gallery in a retail space at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, an important trade route in a primarily Black neighborhood. This installation is “about discovery,” said moniz. Nubian symbols and materials abound, each with its own unique interpretation. I particularly loved Jackson Moniz’ (moniz’ son) gorgeous drawing with pen-and-coffee on paper of “LA Hieroglyphics” in his signature single-line style; Brenna Youngblood’s cosmic Blue Star made with painted mixed media on metal and Dale Davis’ Midnight Basketball Corner Shot, an assemblage commenting on possibility and transformation.

Moniz’ other son, Jules, was the gallery attendant. A softspoken young man, he deftly explained that the trade routes from ancient Nubia set up a cultural ownership of materials used in the works on display. “That ownership was something taken during colonialism, stolen and co-opted by museums,” he said. “We have a more democratic, communal vision for these pieces, these items that have been used and repurposed.”

Located in the historically Black neighborhood of West Adams is Terrell Tilford’s Band of Vices gallery, an anchor cultural space that provides a platform for those who have been historically overlooked and marginalized. An Alison Saar sculpture of a life-sized relief of a woman made from metal, material revered sculpturally in ancient Nubia, stole the show in this white-cube space. Viewers were invited to step into this strong female form, which bears scars filled with cowrie shells, a sign of wealth. The piece reclaims and re-articulates a narrative about “what our perceived weaknesses are and aren’t,” said moniz.

Transformative Arts, moniz’ project space smack dab in the heart of downtown LA’s gallery row, is all about community. An ongoing weekly art project during the run of “Adornment | Artifact” invites community members to create an image of an Eye of Horus and proudly display it on the walls surrounding the exhibition, an evolving art installation that will cover the walls by the time the show closes.

Finally, I visited Eastern Projects in Chinatown and met with Rigo Jimenez, a Chicano with old-school sensibilities and a history of nurturing emerging artists. Eastern Projects’ reputation as a space for revolution and change made it the sensible host for work by artists like Timothy Washington, an assemblage artist whose works feature thousands of fragments of found artifacts, and RETNA, the street artist whose calligraphy adorning walls all over the world has created a sensation.

“When you go into white institutions and museums, you’re told you don’t know anything: ‘Don’t touch. Don’t engage. Look in reverence. We are the only ones who know the truth,’” said moniz. “But at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw, they’re in a mall. It’s theirs. To watch people realize it is for them is empowering both to us and to them.”

“Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan” at The Getty Villa runs through April 3, 2023.

Crystal Clear || Western Waters

By Sant Khalsa

Foreward by Ed Ruscha

72 pages

Minor Matters Books

Two Artists’ Books on Dystopia

REVIEWED BY GLENN HARCOURT

BOOKS

drawing By Laurie Lipton

112 pages

Last Gasp

The Earth is parched, its water impure. The air is poisonous, awash with industrial effluvia and alive with toxic organisms. Our culture has been radically and relentlessly artificialized, while we are regimented, consumerized, alienated and terrorized. Fortunately, we still have art to heal our wounds, to drive our actions and to provide hope for the future. Today, that work is being done by two books, presenting two bodies of work that are superficially quite different, but deeply and importantly connected.

Sant Khalsa’s Crystal Clear || Western Waters makes available the entirety of a project executed during the period from 2000–02, comprising a record of (mostly) strip mall storefronts, unassuming shops dispensing “clear,” not to say “crystal clear,” “pure” and “cool” water, indeed providing a “perfect oasis” of “living water” in the deserts of the southwest: in fact, mostly just tap water purified by reverse osmosis. These are small meticulous prints meant to be seen as a series, each one evoking a particular instance of what at the time was a relatively new phenomenon (now an $11 billion-a-year industry) providing “good” water to folks who are not able to afford pricey branded attempts to market one of life’s most basic necessities.

The photos were gathered throughout southern California and across a number of southwestern states. Their signage often speaks to an immigrant population (Hispanic, Korean, Filipino); and although the artist’s “debts” to Walker Evans and Ed Ruscha (who provided a succinct foreword) are clear in the formalism of the images, the focus on the iconography of water, on its precarious presence in the desert southwest, and on the intricacy of our involvement with its complex ecology as played out in image after image, is entirely the artist’s own—a hallmark of a loving concern evinced throughout an entire career.

Laurie Lipton’s new book is titled simply drawing. The work covers the period 2014–22, but its major concern is surely the cultural effects of COVID lockdown. Since Lipton already posits an embattled humankind enmeshed in a culture maximally mechanized, commodified, digitized and virtualized, her evocation of our struggles to retain both an image of authentic self and a sense of genuine community even in her most naturalistically grounded images, can be truly horrifying (compare Alone In My Home, Socializing and You’re On Mute [both 2021]).

Much of the work consists of a series of meticulous fever dreams whose general parameters have long been present in her work, but which seem here to have gained an intensity, aggressiveness and transgressive violence: they defy description in a confined rhetorical space. When not fragmented, constrained and electro-mechanically transmogrified, her actors inhabit a psychic world ranging from selfie narcissism to apocalyptic and agoraphobic paranoia (compare Binge Watching [2018] and Stepping Out [2021]). Yet, in the final instance, it is the endlessly reiterated masses of Lipton’s lock-stepping skeletal bots—smiling consumers all—that have produced the toxic and arid world to which Sant Khalsa’s photographs speak, of “agua pura,” a cool and shady Eden where one can always stock up on “water and ice to go.”

Center: Sant Khalsa, Water ‘n Ice . Apache Junction, Arizona. All photographs in the “Western Waters” series were made between 2000 and 2002. © Sant Khalsa/Minor Matters.

SPIRITUAL HEALING Luis Sahagun’s Cathartic Family Portraits

BY DAVID S. RUBIN

As a practitioner of curanderismo, an ancient Meso-American system of folk medicine, Mexican-born, Chicago-based Luis Sahagun regularly performs limpias, traditional cleansing or “soul-retrieving” rituals. As an artist, he has applied this practice to the creation of portraits of people, living or dead, who are the chosen beneficiaries of his healing efforts. For a recent exhibition at Charlie James Gallery, he turned the LA gallery into a chapel of sorts, with its shrines consisting of healing portraits of family members, including himself.

In his role as a curandero, Sahagun seeks advice from the Mexican Medicine Wheel, which is divided into four sections (north, south, east and west) that list various “medicines” such as the natural elements, certain animals, the four seasons and certain stages of human life. According to the artist, “We call it walking with our medicine. This system holds a deep connection to the invisible and intangible higher source, which can be defined as a belief system with faith and energy connection.” By

“med-

Limpia no.3 (Jose Luis “Don Chepe” Sahagun Sotelo) , 2022. Courtesy of Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles Photo - @ofphotostudio. Opposite page: Maria Bonita, Maria del Alma , 2022. Courtesy of Latchkey Gallery.

icine,” of course, Sahagun is not referring to a pill. He explains, “In my limpias I go into the spirit realm to seek knowledge or help on what is best needed for the sitter to use as medicine for their journey. Medicine is not just a chemical makeup that takes away a headache, but rather medicine as in what your spirit and soul need to be nourished.”

To begin a portrait of a living person, Sahagun functions as a spiritual consultant. In preparation for Limpia no. 1 (Maria “Mariquita” Rodriquez Sahagun), a portrait of one of his sisters, he asked his subject for permission to perform a cleansing rite and, once she agreed, the two exchanged phone calls and text messages to assess her emotional situation, how she needed to be healed, and what burdens she wanted to release. He then advised her to incorporate some specific rituals into her daily routine and informed her as to when he would be working on the portrait, so that they could share spiritually in the ritual’s energy. Next, he embarked on what he considers to be a shamanic journey, using the medicine wheel “to procure the cleansings, healings and/or purifications” that are needed as he taps into the spirit world by connecting with his Nagual, or spirit guide. Sahagun then worked on the portrait over a number of sessions while performing limpias, drawing facial features in charcoal and fashioning clothing and other features from miniature sculptures he makes to “communicate” a recommended medicine. He also adds to the mix custom-made resin beads that are “charged” with plant medicine, crystals, chants and photographic images deemed important to the subject.

From a therapeutic perspective, Sahagun considers a finished portrait to be “an individualized treatment aimed [at

facilitating] healing of the heart and soul via herbs, energy work, counseling, rituals and spiritual cleanings.” Yet, in examples such as Limpia no. 3 (Jose Luis “Don Chepe” Sahagun Sotelo) , it is also a symbolic representation of the historical and cultural survival of the immigrant laborer. The subject—the artist’s father—left Guadalajara for Chicago in the 1970s due to the gang violence he encountered while working as a bus driver. Undocumented for many years, he labored in fields and steel factories before landing employment as a truck driver. In this and other portraits, Sahagun refers to the laborer by building supports for the paintings from construction materials such as drywall, concrete, silicone and lumber. In the rendering of his father, he portrays his subject as a strong, dignified survivor by appropriating the style of 17th-century royal Spanish portraiture, and crowning him in a kingly manner with a fragment of an ornate vintage frame positioned directly above his head.

When communing with the spirits of deceased figures, Sahagun relies on carefully selected old photographs, such as one of his grandmother in her 20s as the basis for her portrait. Similarly, he turns to photos of himself at several ages for his self-portraits. For one example, he sought to heal the wounds of racism he experienced while a college student at a predominately white institution, and thus focused on a photo of himself from that period while consulting with his spirit guide.

Whether or not one believes in the efficacy or validity of the healing powers intended by Sahagun’s portraits, we can all certainly appreciate their symbolic and aesthetic reverence for the enduring heritages of indigenous peoples.

Soul Retrieval no.3 (Luis Alvaro “Alvarito” Sahagún Nuño) , 2022. Courtesy of Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles Photo - @ofphotostudio.

Jim Shaw

Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

By Ezrha Jean Black

Jim Shaw’s work has always moved, both performatively and analytically, between the quotidian space of individual consciousness, and collective and cultural spaces both conscious and unconscious. Since he began using film studio and theater backdrops as readymade support surfaces, his work has ventured more aggressively into both cultural politics and the mythographic foundations of Western culture—and by extension, the unconscious. The title for the show, “Thinking the Unthinkable” (an abbreviation of Herman Kahn’s 1962 Thinking About the Unthinkable, about hypothetical nuclear war and its aftermath) hints at this even as it underscores the artist’s ambition. Yet Shaw continues to draw heavily from the imagery of Western commercial entertainment—both comic book heroes and mid-20th century Hollywood film studios.

The most fully realized of the works here—where dream fragments seem to cohere into a unified field conjoining the undercurrents of human consciousness with the mechanisms of commercial culture—are Shaw’s acid dream studies and fullblown oil/acrylic portraits of mid-20th century Hollywood film stars (Esther Williams, Jeff Chandler and Cary Grant), and a couple of the larger works where the Hollywood promotional dynamic meets a disruptive political culture now evolved into its current pathological state. His 2019 pencil study for the larger oil/acrylic The Bay of Pigs Thing (2022)—with its naval amphibious landing gear disgorging frolicking starlets amid a wave of movie-cheerful military characters just ahead of disparate 1960s television icons (onetime NBC Tonight Show host Jack Paar and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald)—may be one of his finest drawings. The more panoramic (48 x 77 in.) oil/acrylic rendering sets this “landing” over the crest of a tsunami-like wave cracking Washington’s Watergate Hotel in half. It could be read as a vision of the political Establishment cracking beneath the open floodgates of global cynicism, mistrust and distraction, yet Hollywood itself continues to traffic promotionally in these kind of tongue-in-cheek images.

Shaw deconstructs a classic Hollywood portrait of Grant (drawn from his North by Northwest incarnation) into a Dali-esque landscape of infant legs suspended over pooling blood through which an inset figure of Grant runs more or less as he did from the cropduster in the film, while a capsule-scale Grant-bot is launched in full armor into the stratosphere of his LSD-fired imagination. Chandler’s and Williams’ more photorealistic portraits are in turn inset with images of dreamed androgynous or hermaphroditic concepts of one another.

Shaw comes closer to giving some foundation (or at least the 20th-Century Fox pedestal) for his theoretical speculations regarding a fatally flawed or abandoned matriarchal civilization with Going for the One (2022), merging Raquel Welch as she appeared in advertising for the 1970 film of Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge, with some aspects of the sometimes ambi-sexually represented Hindu god, Shiva. The four-armed Welch/Myra/Shiva/Bhikshatana is conspicuously under-armed here, yet her doomsday capabilities are apparently enough to bring down the Century City twin towers—whether for sexual betrayal or budget overruns (an iconic image for Fox’s 1960 Cleopatra advertising campaign appears on the north tower) is unclear.

Shaw buries the real “unthinkable” here in his 2022 The Egg and I —paying tribute, not just to the book (and film), but the characters (based on real people), Ma and Pa Kettle—and their 15 terrifying children. Hollywood writers, directors and producers were “thinking the unthinkable” long before Kahn and The RAND Corporation. Alas the world’s many “Kettle children” are willing to play out such scenarios all the way to Doomsday.

Hugo Crosthwaite Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

By Shana Nys Dambrot

A procession of wooden plinths hold aloft groups of idol-sized sculptures, stout bodies with the hallmarks of Mayan figurines, whose torsos sport schematic rib cages, hearts and organs, and are topped with faces rendered in a contemporary style—portraits of migrants and asylum-seekers at the US-Mexico border whom the artist regularly sketches while they wait to make the crossing. This is “Caravan,” a series of sculptures and a short stop-motion animation in which they star—the anchor of a new exhibition by Hugo Crosthwaite in which he continues his decades-long process of documenting the personal experiences and individual stories of the human beings who undertake this perilous journey.

The sculptures are strange, haunting, surreal little things, and while one wishes there were more of them—like hundreds or even thousands, embodying even more directly the vast scale and overwhelming scope of the border’s circumstance—the family-size clusters arrayed in a pattern tracing the contour of the border region are nevertheless haunting in their evocations. Each group of four people centers around a fifth skull-headed figure, as though death were always with them, their constant companion on the voyage. In the animation, these figures are jostled and corralled and treated roughly, smuggled and shipped, and eventually released—it’s uncomfortable, and having viewed it, turning back to the ceramics again, they are further infused with the trauma of surviving the ordeal, their expressions of desperate determination given context.

Jim Shaw, Cary Grant , 2022. Photo: Jeff McLane. © Jim Shaw. Courtesy of Gagosian.

Two suites of new paintings expand the central theme in diverse, self-contained series that get deeper into other aspects of the immigration story. In the black-and-white artworks of “Borderlands,” charcoal, pencil and acrylic paintings on board, create a kind of chalkboard effect: meticulously rendered figures, faces and schemes of decaying urban density emerge from the low-light background. Gestural white-line drawings in a range of styles from block text to cartoonishness and vintage Pop-era advertisements hover above these noirish boulevards, creating moments of dissonance, romance, campy threat and broken promises.

Most surprising are the large-scale acrylic-and-oil stick works on canvas from the “Manifest Destiny” series in which—for the first time in 20 years—color plays a major role in Crosthwaite’s work, however with elements of the same lexicon of black-and-white drawings that lightly decorate the ceramics and densely populate the “Borderlands” paintings, as well as imagery more specific to both the desert landscape and icons of hope like the Statue of Liberty and the Virgin of Guadalupe. These are arranged in totemic stacks and layers against a chunky patchwork cartography of teal and orange—a grabby but queasy palette of hot and cold, earth and sky, that speaks to a state of mind and body in transit, in flight, in disorientation, in violence, in hope and in striving.

to grasp at the side of the bed for balance, her fingers pinching the slippery sheets in a state of vertigo or disorientation. A shadow lurks in the pleats of drapery behind her, hovering just above her body like a ghostly tether from which she cannot escape. Periods of crisis and instability often act as catalysts for metamorphic transformations, which, as the painting suggests, require the self to splinter or double (the shadow self) in order to change and evolve. Mother’s Mirror (2022) depicts another woman who appears to be reclining in bed with her limbs splayed limply by her side in a state of total enervation. Her eyes gaze outward in such a way that could signify death. Here Malaska considers the significance of stasis, rest and decay in metamorphic stories, rendering the body as a vessel, a shell, a mortal coil the soul will inevitably shed as it travels on to other paths where it will assume other forms. In an anthropomorphic rebirth, Delivered (Among the Meadow Grass) (2022) shows a cow moments

Elizabeth Malaska

Wilding Cran Gallery

by Lauren Guilford

Transformation is at the heart of Elizabeth Malaska’s paintings which operate like a story or a fairytale—a mythology of metamorphic processes that disrupt, shape-shift, alter and expand concepts of the self—employing a kind of magical thinking oriented around empathy, care and interconnection (fundamental values in ecofeminist theory). Malaska tells a metamorphic story that raises questions about the soul, agency and kinship as they relate to the ever-shifting dynamics of identity.

Malaska imagines the concept of “the shadow self” in the painting Captive (2022), which depicts a naked woman in a bedroom, her head sharply downturned and her spine hunched, concealing her face with her hair as it cascades towards the ground. She appears

after giving birth to a woman. The adult-sized newborn’s sticky body lays curled in the fetal position, still tethered to her cow mother’s umbilical cord in an unconscious state. In contrast, the cow mother confronts the viewer with a conscious gaze akin to the Mona Lisa Malaska’s fantastic stories remind us that metamorphosis will always be vitally relevant because being on the most fundamental level means existing in a constant state of flux that is relational and situational. Imagining metamorphic processes allows us to experience cycles of mutation, fragmentation, growth and decay in a more productive and regenerative way. As we wade through life’s metamorphic currents, magical thinking acts as an agent of change that helps us become more adaptable and compassionate, allowing each transformative tidal wave to alter the self: drifting, colliding and hatching in endless permutations.

Friedrich Kunath

Blum & Poe

by Jody Zellen

It is not unusual for an exhibition of Friedrich Kunath’s paintings to be accompanied by something outrageous and unexpected. In both 2012 and 2017 he carpeted gallery floors, transforming them into soft, colorful fields dotted with sculptures, couches, socks, giant shoes and other incongruous objects. His latest exhibition “I Don’t Know The Place, But I Know How To Get There,” fills both floors of Blum & Poe. In the upper gallery, nested against the back window, is a glassed-in faux storefront where Kunath has installed pieces from previous exhibitions, including older paintings and sculptures, musical instruments, books, tennis rackets and balls, written notes

Hugo Crosthwaite, Borderlands No.7, 2022. Photo: Paul Salveson. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Malaska, Mothers Mirror, 2022. Courtesy of Wilding Cran Gallery.

and furniture. This quasi-studio/living space is presented as a sealed off display. It begs for close-up scrutiny, as it serves as the key to the exhibition by providing context to many of the other works, yet no access is permitted.

Kunath’s large-scale oils often take their point of departure from 18th and 19th century Romantic landscape paintings, but rather than explore man’s blissful relationship with nature and the sublime, the works are sardonic investigations filled with irony and wit. Many of Kunath’s titles are reminiscent of melancholic song lyrics, and in the upstairs installation there are numerous albums, as well as references, to the pop singer/songwriter Morrissey. In paintings with titles such as Looking Back, I Should’ve Been Home More; I Should’ve Left A Long Time Ago; In Memory Of My Memories; I Think I’m Going To Stay For A While; Return To Forever and Coming Home Was As Beautiful As Going Away (2022-23), he juxtaposes realistic depictions of mountains, seascapes, rivers, sunsets, rainbows and billowing clouds (some in the shape of guitars) with cartoon characters, snippets of text from song lyrics scratched into the wet paint and other references to popular culture, to create a visual and emotional disconnect that unleashes a sense of unease and dislocation.

This is most evident in Coming Home Was As Beautiful As Going Away (2022) which, at first glance, appears to be a large mountain peak surrounded by pink and orange hues as it juts up into the sky above the clouds. Upon closer examination, the triangular shaped foreground is transformed into the wing of a large airplane flying through the sky. Handwritten black words spelling out the paintings title follow the contour of the side of the wing and float off the edge, disappearing into the sky. Return To Forever (2022-2023) is a huge horizontal painting spanning 12 feet. In it, a rainbow arches across the top portion of the painting above a lush green field bisected by a narrow receding road. A line of crops parallels the horizon, and when it crosses the road it becomes a tennis net, somehow evoking awe, confusion and humor.

Hastily scrawled words and phrases are often embedded into Kunaths’s paint surfaces, either suspended in the sky or etched into less impastoed areas. It is not unusual for him to combine carefully rendered sections or swaths of thick color that bulge from the surface with flatly painted cartoon characters who appear both at home and out of place in his landscapes. Cars, as well as bits of imagery culled from advertisements and popular culture, often disrupt beautiful and majestic settings, prompting viewers to puzzle out why. Kunath’s juxtapositions are as interesting as they are surprising, and inject a new narrative direction into traditional landscape painting that otherwise might be construed as banal or obvious.

Lorraine Heitzman, Monica Wyatt, Raghubir Kintisch

Launch Gallery

by Genie Davis

Using a swirl of varied mediums, “Re•Iterate” is a fiery, highly textural exhibition curated by Lorraine Heitzman and featuring works by Heitzman, Raghubir Kintisch and Monica Wyatt. The viewer’s eye darts between textures, colors and patterns, finding a focus both in the meaning of individual works and their cumulative presence.

Like the notes in a symphony that build to a crescendo, the reiterated patterns on display create a rising dynamic of visual excitement and exploration between and among the three artists.

Wyatt’s work often repurposes metal and plastic manufacturing materials into something lustrous and magical. Here she uses zip-ties to shape her works, which are primarily monochromatic with moments of ruby red. Replication of a Relic (2023) includes circular red shapes placed among a massive, grape-like cluster of inky black balls. Some feature protruding spidery nails; others are conjoined with red and silver wire. Whether we are seeing a nest of just-opening creatures emerging from eggs or a mysterious alien fruit, her repetition of form creates meaning. Suspended in the gallery’s center, Gosssamer Flight (2023) is the stuff of dandelion seeds and caterpillars from space. The graceful ballet of Cactus on Mars #2 (2023) is created with silver wire forming dendrite branches which bloom spiky, white zip-tie blossoms tipped with liquid red.

Heitzman uses found materials as an integral part of her mixedmedia paintings and assemblages on wood panels. Geometric but abstract patterns spring from materials such as roofing tile.

“Re•iterate” group show installation view. Courtesy of Launch Gallery.

Whatever the media, she transforms discarded bits of the modern world into art with an exciting grasp of motion. Using a quilt-type pattern, Steeples and Peoples (2023) presents shapes that recall lighthouses, lifeguard towers and cityscapes. Enigmatic Roof (2023) uses her glinting roofing material to create thick, leaning brown lines that recall both tire treads and obscurely typeset Greek letters. Stagecraft (2022) is a witty tour de force in three separate sections. A face peers forward, toward a grid of lines that could be scrim or screen in the top two sections; the lower third presents blue facades

Friedrich Kunath, All Your Fears Trapped Inside , 2019-2023. Courtesy of Blum & Poe. Image: Evan Walsh.

that recall chess pieces, positioned before a backdrop door, beyond which stand a fragment of stairs and a yellow wall.

Kintisch has the most number of works in the exhibition—bright paintings on paper that resemble both hieroglyphics and tomb paintings, all strongly referencing the mystical. While each small, vivid work could stand alone, hung side by side in salon style, they form a spiritual and transcendent language. A blue, white, pink and brown bird cocks its head toward the viewer, arising from a series

ient child that may defy conventional description. The Quarantine Body has the haunting gaze and the bodily contortions of a Francis Bacon bathhouse vision so disconcerting that a peeping tom would turn away. The last and by far the best of the billboard series—The Black Male Body—is fragmented and suggestive of a figure already transitioned as constellation and waterway, figure and ground, past and present; a transformation wishfully reminiscent of Juliet: “and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, That all the will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.” This work is much more inviting, far less direct than the previous images and allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the possibility of magic and transformation, no matter how far-fetched, in such wonderment.

Inside the new museum is an equally new artwork that has a lengthy title but a succinct message—My knees getting weak, and my anger might explode, but if God got us then we gonna be alright (2021). The message is old and unforgettable while being simultaneously brand new, speaking another language that is equally understandable and tragically memorable. The figures here constitute a mortal pile suggestive at first of the horror and desperation in Delacroix’s Raft of the Medusa, but more readily and evocatively reveals itself as a recognizably 20th-century horror. It draws to mind a writhing cone of naked humans, old and young, mouths screaming wildly and flesh scrumming hopelessly, climbing upon one another toward an empty, frightening, breathless salvation in a death chamber.

Luis C. Garza Riverside Art Museum

By Liz Goldner

of patterned squares in Wild Bird in Hand (2022). Multi-colored fish bob on a grey sea as red and green flowers float by in the lush Lily Ponderosa (2022). In Protector of Children (2022), a woman balances on one leg on the back of a surprised russet cat, the outline of a tiny baby pressed into her body.

Exuding a sense of wonder, each artist’s work reveals within that wonder a glowing, playfulness and power.

Wardell Milan

Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College

by Max King Cap

A meandering sun-bleached trek forms the exterior presence of Wardell Milan’s exhibition adjacent to the recently completed art museum at the oldest of the seven Claremont Colleges—an academic plantation that sprawls over 500 acres and eagerly sends clever children abroad, hoping that they should one day become captains of industry and richly reward their alma mater. Scattered across campus this collection of pictorial billboards—drawn, collaged and photographed imagery of figures in hiding, torment, labor or desire—demonstrate an intentional contrast to their location; the meticulously manicured lawns and well-kept streets of the pristine village bear the names of posh and aspirational institutions of higher learning: Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard. One is directed through the campus by map or compass toward Milan’s large billboard imagery. However, Milan’s work is anything but posh.

The Migrant Body (all works 2022) illustrates fieldworkers toiling among the rows of produce that will soon garnish our tables, The Trans Body is a human/bird transformation that suggests escape and rebirth as a swan, and The Female Body is a pile of indeterminate refuse beside a transformed split-gender figure cradling an incip-

Luis Garza was a dedicated artist and visionary who helped advance Chicano culture and activism in the 1960s and 70s through his compassionate photos. Born in 1943 in the South Bronx, he moved to Los Angeles in 1965, searching for a lifestyle more amenable to his Mexican-American heritage.

Two years later, the Chicano populace on LA’s east side were discovering their Chicanismo, their newfound sense of ethnic and cultural pride, while organizing for civil and political rights. Garza identified with the movement, calling it his razon de ser. He began photographing the civil rights movement for the socially conscious Mexican-American newspaper (later magazine) La Raza . As he documented the activists his artistic eye empowered him to also capture the faces and gestures of the local citizens—the workers, shoppers, school children and street preachers—as they pushed toward greater equality.

Garza was also a film and theater arts student at UCLA, then a producer/director for Emmy-award winning documentaries and primetime shows and for films. (He has subsequently curated many Chicano-themed productions and exhibitions, including La Raza for the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, 2017 to 2018.)

The Other Side of Memory is notable for its documentation of Garza’s East Los Angeles community in the1960s to 70s, along with photos of his South Bronx neighborhood and women demonstrating in New York back then, as he visited his hometown frequently. Also on view are images from Budapest’s 1971 World Peace Council where Garza met muralist David Siqueiros. The show comprises 66 black-and-white silver gelatin prints, brings up memories from 50plus years ago and calls to mind the work of Chicano artists Gilbert “Magu” Luján, Frank Romero and others.

Exhibition curator Armando Durón, a Chicano art collector, selected and paired many photos to conjure up these memories, while encouraging viewers to construct from them their own narratives. In Raza Gothic (1974) an old, poorly dressed Chicano couple, evoking Grant Wood’s American Gothic, is paired with Joyeria Mexicana (1979). The latter shows a younger, well-dressed, coiffed and bejew-

Wardell Milan, My knees getting weak, and my anger might explode, but if God got us then we gonna be alright , 2021. Pomona College Collection. Courtesy of the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College.

eled Angeleno couple—the man wearing an elegant three-piece suit, heels and rings. The woman beside him dons a flowing, printed dress and a fashionable blond shag hairdo.

The equally fashionable Uptown Girl (1968) in New York displays a young mod Latino woman wearing a mini-skirt, boots and hairdo adorned with a scarf, staring pensively into the distance. Soledad (1974) from LA, depicts an old woman with a deeply lined face, also wearing a scarf, staring into the distance. While the girl looks hopeful, the old lady’s face reveals hopelessness.

Perhaps the most dramatic pairing in the exhibition is Feminestrations (1970) in which a crowd of women in New York march for their feminist rights, alongside Junto (1971) which depicts Chicano teenagers marching for freedom and equality in Los Angeles; it recalls the National Chicano Moratorium demonstrations of the1970. Both photos bring to light the activist fervor throughout our country in the 1960s and 70s, an era worth remembering—and perhaps emulating.

Lizzie Gill and Kristen Jensen

Geary Contemporary, Millerton, New York

By Annabel Keenan

At Geary Contemporary, an exhibition pairing Lizzie Gill and Kristen Jensen, shows how nuanced, elegant and powerful the two-person format can be. At first glance, Jensen and Gill’s work have seemingly little in common. Jensen’s Warms (2021) sculptures are visually minimal and consist of two components: repurposed

heating pads covered in used, mainly white, terrycloth towels and hand-built terracotta vessels. Gill’s mixed-media still life paintings contain more colors, patterns and materials (transferred found imagery, acrylic paint and marble dust emulsion). Individually strong, the works on view seem to constantly interact, challenging the viewer to take a closer look.

Though not readily apparent, parallels between the artists emerge. Elements of one body of work slowly reveal elements of the other, providing a new context and expanding the viewer’s understanding of both artists. Taking materials as a starting point, subtle visual connections unfold. The color of Jensen’s ceramics draws the eye onto Gill’s canvases and her vibrant red flowers. Made with marble dust emulsion applied with a cake piper, the thick, raised outline of the flowers pulls the viewer in and draws the eye across the surface to discover additional textures. Her flowers are transfixing; the raised outline of each petal contrasts with the flatness of the paint within.

Looking away from Gill’s work, the rich color of Jensen’s vessels commands the viewer’s attention once again, asking for the same careful consideration of the surface. A closer inspection reveals smooth indentations in the thick ceramics, evidence of Jensen’s hand-burnishing technique. Arduously rubbing the dense surface, Jensen slowly creates a beautiful sheen. This burnishing method further links Jensen with Gill, who sands down the paper pulp of vintage magazines and other found imagery, leaving behind only the transferred images that adorn the vessels in her own work. For both artists, the potentially destructive act of rubbing reveals something beautiful in the surface.

The origins of the materials further connect the artists as they embrace existing connotations of their repurposed items and found imagery. Jensen sources her materials from friends and strangers, sometimes finding heating pads on eBay. Using towels, Jensen taps into our intimate relationship with certain items. Often purchased for their function—to clean a body—rather than aesthetics, towels stand in for private aspects of our lives. Combining these with

palliative heating pads, also associated with personal care, Jensen creates a bed of nuanced meaning for the ceramic vessels to rest. Gill’s found imagery is similarly layered with references, inspired by matriarchal heirlooms. The archaeological and art-historical shapes of her vessels, as well as the domestic settings, each have their own significance in material culture and relate to the places and people who used them.

Viewing Gill and Jensen’s work together is an invitation to look deeper into both artist’s practice. Their use of ephemera in the style of surrealist assemblage highlights the value and meanings we give to objects and offers new perspectives on familiar materials. The closer one looks, parallels between the artists slowly unfold in an exciting process of discovery. The exhibition shows the power of thoughtful curation.

Luis C. Garza, Raza Gothic , 1974. Courtesy of the artist.

Kristen Jensen, Warm #2 , 2021. Courtesy Geary Contemporary.

thecheechcenter.org

Now–April 30, 2023

Iristay’s work is a representation of the identity created in the in-between spaces, creating installation work that critically examines the traditions in the cultures she has experienced, specifically as they relate to tradition, identity, gender, and custom.

Image: Tracing Acculturations, hand cast soil mixture tiles, underglazed paints, metal, 2021 Photographer: Zeynep Dogu

riversideartmuseum.org

February 25-May 28, 2023

Land of Milk & Honey is organized by Ed Gomez, Luis G. Hernandez, Rosalía Romero, and April Lillard-Gomez. Focused on concepts of agriculture in the regions of California and Mexico and drawing inspiration from John Steinbeck’s portrayal of the region as a corrupted Eden, the exhibition questions ethical, cultural, and regional practices related to foodways and the venture from seed to table.

This project was made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation, and the California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support provided by a 2022 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Sustaining Public Engagement Grant, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the American Rescue Plan Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative.Land of Milk & Honey is organized by the MexiCali Biennial.

January 28 – July 9, 2023

Known for conveying her prophetic take on contemporary life through playful and witty narratives in ceramics, this exhibition celebrates the sculptural and functional work of Joan Takayama-Ogawa. Ceramic Beacon is the first significant survey of this respected Pasadena born-and-based artist’s work thus far.

Takayama-Ogawa tackles the key issues that define our contemporary society, from the political, to the historical, social, and environmental.

This exhibition is organized by Craft in America.

Vincent’s Blackberries

Buying blackberries, you held out on me in Hollywood Erewhon.

Tonight is Friday, Christmas lives on and on.

Vincent was out in Aries eyes and feeling good, wanting to meet people: other people who buy blackberries

I was by myself in mascara and behind myself in false eyelashes, at the Dry Cleaners of Black Hearts

I will always hold it against you that you, Camille Waldorf and Vincent Gallo went to Cactus Bar Taqueria without me

On Vine, not La Brea in 2005

—NIKOLA ALEXANDRIA PEPERA

Belated Start, Premature Conclusion

Life doesn’t work out for some people: that sounds fine when you say it theoretically. Until you realize you are one of those people.

The cream doesn’t necessarily rise to the top: It curdles, at the bottom, into bitterness. And all that longing for grace and sweetness culminates in a foul-mouthed kiss.

—JOHN TOTTENHAM

Sans Human Touch

Dear Babs, I have been following a lot of the conversations about AI-generated art and I’m concerned that it’s going to be bad for artists. I’m worried it’s going to steal from existing artwork the algorithm vacuums up and make it so people don’t value the skill it takes to make real art in the real world. I’m concerned because the AI art I’ve seen so far looks really cringe, like it was made by someone who doesn’t think about how art communicates other than through flourishes and fantasy. Should I be worried and what can I do about my concerns?”

—Alarmed About AI

Dear Alarmed About AI, AI-generated art has been a hot topic in the art world for some time now, and it’s understandable that you’re concerned about its impact. On one hand, AI can open new opportunities for artists to create unique and innovative works. For example, the contemporary artist Refik Anadol uses AI to create large-scale installations that combine light, sound and architecture. His works push the boundaries of traditional art forms and offer a unique viewing experience.

However, there are also negative aspects of AI-generated art that are worth considering. Some artists and critics argue that AI-generated works lack the human touch essential to the creation of meaningful art. Furthermore, the algorithms used to generate these works often rely on existing art for inspiration, which can result in the replication of existing styles and motifs.

This is where artists like Trevor Paglen come in, whose work exposes the problems posed by artificial intelligence. For instance, Paglen’s “Training Images” series draws attention to the potential dangers of AI and machine-learning by highlighting the biases and shortcomings of the algorithms used to train these systems.

In conclusion, while AI-generated art can bring exciting new possibilities to the art world, it’s also important to be mindful of its limitations and potential dangers. I would encourage you to continue to explore and engage with the conversation surrounding AI-generated art and to support artists like Paglen who are exposing the critical issues posed by this technology.

Have an art dilemma?

Send your question to Askbabs@artillerymag.com (Babs used ChatGPT to answer this question and illustration created by Dall-e AI)