Tag: los angeles

Glenn Kaino at Pace Gallery

Known for working in media including performance, film and theater, LA artist Glenn Kaino turns to portrait painting, small-scale sculpture of adapted samurai helmets and Japanese punch embroidery for his first major solo show at Pace Gallery.  Fresh on the heels of a soon-to-close exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum in LA for which he recreated his grandfather’s small East LA market, Kaino continues to probe his heritage as a Japanese American.  The show’s portraits aim to keep a record of community in the form of paintings of Kaino’s friends, musicians and people he meets.  (On view in Chelsea through Feb 24th).

Glenn Kaino, Michael, oil on canvas, 61 x 49 x 3 inches, 2023.

Mark Bradford at Hauser & Wirth

The monumental mixed media artwork ‘Manifest Destiny’ dominates the first room of Mark Bradford’s exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, its tattered surfaces giving it the feeling of a barely surviving relic, its huge scale making it unavoidable.  Emblazoned with a phrase, ‘Johnny Buys Houses,’ that brings to mind road-side signage for fly-by-night real estate operatives and titled after a term that describes relentless European expansion across the North American continent, the piece signals dubious practices with regard to land, property and ownership. (On view in Chelsea through July 28th).

Mark Bradford, Manifest Destiny, mixed media, dimensions variable, ’23.

David Gilbert at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

Patterns of sunlight and shadow falling over arrangements of cut paper and painted canvas give LA artist David Gilbert’s new work at Klaus Gallery an ephemerality that speaks to art as a process of making.  Calling him a ‘discerning scavenger of poignant and beautiful things,’ the gallery points out how Gilbert captures moments in which something special arises from arrangements of everyday objects.  In this image, a single pink bead and isolated dots of red color at top right add balance and interest to the predicament of the dove at center, which may or may not be captured by both painted and actual netting as it attempts to fly upward into the blue.  (On view in Tribeca through May 6th).

David Gilbert, Dove, archival inkjet print, 13 x 8.6 inches, 2023

Cynthia Talmadge at Bortolami Gallery

The streetscape in this painting by Cynthia Talmadge at Bortolami Gallery is a rendition of the gallery’s actual Tribeca location, but created in a pointillist painting style, the place doesn’t quite seem real.  Appropriately, each picture depicts a scene in the imagined life of ‘Alan Smithee,’ a pseudonym used in place of a real film director’s name when (s)he has lost creative control of a film and disowns it.  Talmadge pictures Smithee in various Hollywood haunts (the Scientology Celebrity Center, the Beverly Hilton) and later in New York as he ditches his west coast lifestyle and disastrous film career in favor of a shot at Broadway.  Redemption eludes Smithee but the story – also told with details of Smithee’s life on the cover of various issues of Playbill – entices with its conflict between big dreams and dashed hopes.  (On view in Tribeca through Feb 25th).

Cynthia Talmadge, Maserati (39 Walker), oil and canvas with wood frame, 30 x 24 inches, 2022.

Alex Israel at Greene Naftali Gallery

Known for huge paintings of sunsets, giant sculptures of dark sunglasses and other emblems of life in Los Angeles, Alex Israel continues to channel the allure of Hollywood and its environs with wave paintings and a fantasy street scene sculpture at Greene Naftali Gallery.  Titled ‘Sunset Coast Drive,’ the 44-foot-long strip of fictional and real buildings includes Israel’s own studio at one end and his favorite burger place at the other.  In the foreground of this photo, Israel revives a mural he painted on a building in Venice, CA before it was painted over.  The rest of the gallery is dominated by vividly colored acrylic on fiberglass panels depicting crashing waves inspired by Hokusai and surfing logos.  Their bright colors are alluring, but abstracted to the point of resembling reaching hands, the waves may be less innocuous than they first seem.  (On view in Chelsea through June 25th).

Alex Israel, Sunset Coast Drive (detail), 26 x 528 x 43 inches, 2022.
Alex Israel, Waves, acrylic on fiberglass, 99 x 99 inches, 2022.