LA is full of oddities, inevitable in a sprawl so expansive and diverse–Halpern’s eye has the ability to make the native seem alien and vice-versa. An image of a smoldering brush fire on a rocky slope, for example, seems pedestrian. Elsewhere, a woman outfitted stylishly in white fur, with jarring, raccoon-eyed makeup seems dropped to earth from space. But, captured in Halpern’s close-up style, she is as believable as the next person on the street.
Read MoreThese tessellated paintings are naturalistic by an abstractly-expressive-mimetic process, a reconciliation of the human creative impulse with the superior natural forces of creation that encompass it. In other words, Whitten’s work seems to be at an ethereal place, where art production rhymes with the ebb of creation at its highest state.
Read MoreSulkowicz is essentially in the business of collecting other people’s stories, which done well could propel the level of her knowledge, based on twenty something years, beyond the norm. We will have to stay tuned to this young woman’s development as an artist and her strategies for healing through art.
Read MoreSpain is not a country that I immediately associate with either historical or avant-garde animation, so I was curious–what is Spanish animation, and what makes it distinctly Spanish? Will these films be interesting for normal people who aren’t obsessed with Spain like I am, or will my boyfriend resent me for dragging him out to see obscure Spanish short animations on a Friday night?
Read MoreFjord’s gallery is brimming with Freedman’s assorted colorful papier mâché and found object sculptures that exist in constant dialogue with his ideas, stories, and sketches; they are the physical manifestations of his ceaseless cerebral exercises.
Read MoreCulture workers–artists, curators, museums, galleries, and even collectors–will need to choose their weapons well at this highly charged cultural crossroads. Will a paintbrush, pencil, theater, soup kitchen, computer, parade, YouTube, or even cash suffice to forge meaningful change? My guess is the means of engagement will inevitably evolve to match the challenge, but that won’t include simply “liking” a picture of a naked and pregnant Trump in the arms of Vladimir Putin.
Read MoreDescendants of trash pickers and connoisseurs of the found object, wearing overalls and hard hats, and “interrupting the waste stream,” the RAIR artists turn trash into artwork of one sort or another, and challenge our perceptions of the discarded.
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