Shana Nys Dambrot
Last weekend’s gallery listings were extra — but wait, there’s more. Teaching the metaverse about sculpture and drawing, the interface of dance and sound installation, short films about space inside an art show about anthropo-botany, dance built with future tech, multiple events starting off the Fulcrum Festival of creative singularity culture, art and fashion with a lot to say, a reboot of the Renaissance, art about displacement, art and also poetry about living in Los Angeles, inaugurating the new New York gallery in town, Latinx Heritage Month gets underway, an instagram influencer looks for love, and an iconic artist and lover of fine chocolates gets a posthumous solo show in Venice. Plus, several of our Fall Art Season preview picks — Luminex, Other Places art fair, Chloe Bass, Justen LeRoy and Thaddeus Mosley at Art + Practice, and the Gee’s Bend show at the Huntington — all get going this weekend.
Nancy Baker Cahill at Vellum LA
Thursday, September 15
Nancy Baker Cahill: Slipstream at Vellum LA. These artworks begin as graphite drawings on paper, launching a long odyssey of production as they are torn into pieces and reconfigured in sculptural configurations, documented as 3D objects, altered, lit, and finally animated using CG software. The drawing sculptures form shifting landscapes and subjects, glistening as they breathe, expand, and contract. In some videos, Baker Cahill includes brief textual collaborations with the AI engine GPT-3, to further blur and layer her creative intentions. 7673 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; Opening reception: Thursday, September 15, 7-9pm; On view through October 16; free; vellumla.com.
Faye Driscoll at REDCAT (Photo by Maria Baranova)
Faye Driscoll: Thank You For Coming: Space at REDCAT (Live & Virtual). Choreographer Faye Driscoll is a Doris Duke Award-winning performance maker whose most recent work is a shared rite of passage — a conjuring of the transformative powers of presence and absence. The dance work unfolds within an intimate installation — wired for sound and upheld by pulleys, ropes, and the weight of others — where Driscoll appears alone with the audience. Through an alchemy of body, object, voice, and live sound, she builds a moving requiem for the human body. 631 W. 2nd St., downtown; Thursday-Sunday, September 15-17, 8:30pm; $15-$25; redcat.org.
Short Films at Wonzimer (pictured: Carolee Schneemann’s Traces of Collision)
Film Screenings and Cheyann Washington: The Brain, the Seed at Wonzimer Gallery. Wonzimer is hosting bi-weekly screenings curated by artists, directors, and collaborators, and this week’s films have been selected by artist Sacha Halona Baumann, who writes in part, “This selection centers around artists’ studios as well as how artists interact with space in their practice. I’m interested in how architecture becomes a collaborator.” Currently on view in the gallery is Cheyann Washington’s ongoing exhibition, in which the figure serves as a mirror for nature, drawing inspiration from plant biology and organic chemistry in mixed media paintings and sculptures, colors, silk fabrics, gestural charcoal drawings, and anthropomorphic plants. 341B S. Avenue 17, downtown; Thursday, September 15, 7:30-10pm; free w/ rsvp; instagram.com/wonzimer.
LA Dance Project presents BIGUIDIRIBELA by MUXX Project
Friday, September 16
LA Dance Project presents BIGUIDIRIBELA. MUXX Project, recipients of the LACMA Art + Technology Lab grant, premiere their new multimedia and performance piece BIGUIDIRIBELA at L.A. Dance Project in partnership with LACMA and Fulcrum Festival. BIGUIDIRIBELA (Zapotec for god of bats, or literally ‘flesh eating butterfly’) uses 3D video technologies along with live dance, music and immersive sets designs to explore multiple gender identities in a 21st century context, drawing a line between our origins in deep space to the ‘Muxe’ identity (a third gender of the Zapotec people) as a futuristic, timeless concept. Part of the Fulcrum Arts festival foregrounding the union of art and science as a powerful engine of contemporary culture. 2245 E. Washington Blvd., downtown; Friday-Saturday, September 16-17, 8pm; $20-$35; ladanceproject.org.
Paige Emery, To Recalibrate with Tree Divination, 2022 (Supercollider)
Supercollider & Fulcrum Festival present FEELERS: Towards Reciprocal Sensing at TetraPod Gallery. Through works of video, painting, kinetic sculpture, site-specific installation, VR, and film, the exhibition proposes expanded sensoria, complicating our understanding of feeling, sensing, and knowing. The works adopt deliberate and exploratory methods that re-orient humans in relation to more-than-human beings, complicate notions of intelligence, and re-introduce perspectives outside of our own. Part of the Fulcrum Arts festival foregrounding the union of art and science as a powerful engine of contemporary culture. 865 N. Virgil Ave., E. Hollywood; On view September 16-26; Reception: Friday, September 24, 6-10pm; free; supercolliderart.com.
Sofia Enrique at Subliminal Projects
Saturday, September 17
Sofia Enriquez: Mucho at Subliminal Projects. Visual artist and fashion designer Sofia Enriquez’s practice includes fine art, sculpture, bespoke hand-made installations, and clothing. Her work investigates intercultural identity through the use of vibrant distinct symbolism, creating an autobiographical legend that weaves themes of Mexican-catholic iconography, indigenous homage, Spanglish text, modern pop-culture references, and feminine strength. 1331 W. Sunset Blvd., Echo Park; Opening reception: Saturday, September 17, 7-10pm; On view through October 15; free; subliminalprojects.com.
Storm Before the Calm at Praz Delavallade
Storm Before the Calm at Praz Delavallade. Curated by Michael Slenske, this wide-ranging group show explores how, as global temperatures increase, so does the disorder of the planet’s unleashed kinetic energy. We’re in a high entropy moment that is unleashing a new physical, but also metaphysical, landscape onto the planet. Artists have always responded to the earth’s weather patterns, seasons, and thermodynamic changes in real time. But how do artists concerned with landscape respond to a planet in a state of high entropy that cannot be reversed, one trapped in a political climate where, to quote Yeats, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile; September 17, 6-8pm; On view through October 29; free; praz-delavallade.com.
Isaac Pelayo
Isaac Pelayo: The New Renaissance. Isaac Pelayo is a head on crash collision between the Renaissance and Street Art. The juxtaposition between his meticulously rendered brushwork of classical style imagery and loose expressionistic careless drips with the use of oil paints, spray paint, and oil sticks create a dramatic atmosphere that is an intoxicating marriage of two worlds that don’t inherently belong together. 1443 W. Jefferson Blvd., South LA; Saturday, September 17, 7-10pm; free; instagram.com/isaacpelayo.
Luciana Abait at LMU
Luciana Abait: On the Verge at Loyola Marymount University Laband Art Gallery. Across painting, photography, sculpture, video installation and augmented reality, the exhibition centers on environmental precariousness and conjures imaginary worlds that portend global climate catastrophe. As an immigrant from Argentina to the US from Buenos Aires, Abate extrapolates from her own feelings of displacement and vulnerability to urge us to consider how global warming is wreaking havoc, especially on the lives of climate migrants. 1 LMU Dr., Westchester; On view September 17- December 10; Reception: Saturday, September 24; free; cfa.lmu.edu/labandgallery.
Kristen Liu-Wong at Corey Helford
Kristen Liu-Wong: Hard Pressed at Corey Helford Gallery. Liu-Wong’s work blends everyday occurrences from her life with abstracted nightmares and crude humor. Trained as an illustrator, she tries to tell a story with every piece she makes, developing a personal and slightly sinister narrative within each painting. Using vibrant colors, heavy patterning, and tight compositions, the work draws inspiration from a variety of sources including but not limited to American folk art, the cartoons she watched as a kid, Shunga (Japanese term for erotic art), and her appreciation for architecture. 571 S. Anderson St., downtown; Opening reception: Saturday, September 17, 7-10pm; On view through October 22; free; coreyhelfordgallery.com.
Idris Khan at Sean Kelly
Idris Khan Inaugurates Sean Kelly Los Angeles. For the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Sean Kelly, Los Angeles is pleased to announce The Pattern of Landscape, a new body of work by Idris Khan. The show features large scale paintings, bronze sculptures, watercolors on paper, and photography. The exhibition is notable for a series of profound developments in Khan’s work which incorporates both music and text for the first time. The artist layers a square field of musical notations and scores upon a rectangular ground of text derived from philosophical writings, producing a window of music. This frame within a frame structure is a device Khan hopes will allow for a deeper visual experience. 1357 N. Highland, Hollywood; Opening reception: Saturday, September 17, 6-8pm; On view through November 5; free; skny.com.
Patrick Martinez at Charlie James
Patrick Martinez: Promised Land at Charlie James Gallery. Martinez considers his life and his city at an inflection point, himself a new father looking to the future and pondering how his family will fit into the changing landscape of Los Angeles, while at the same time reflecting on the city as it was when he was a child growing up in Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley. The show is populated with a prodigious array of new large-scale abstracted landscape paintings, accented by a neon on Plexiglas sign piece – the works collectively meditating on the passage of time and its impact on the lived environment, and by consequence its impact on communities of people. At the same time, Southland Vol. 2, curated by Martinez, brings together artists who share his fascination with the geography and culture of greater Los Angeles. 969 Chung King Road, Chinatown; Opening receptions: September 17, 6-9pm; On view through October 22; free; cjamesgallery.com.
Jack Skelley at Beyond Baroque
Jack Skelley: Interstellar Theme Park book launch at Beyond Baroque. An evening celebrating Skelley’s new poetry collection, joined by poet Amy Gerstler and writer Benjamin Weissman, who will also read from their new work. Exploding pop archetypes ancient to modern, Interstellar Theme Park assembles decades of perverse verse and prose by the Los Angeles writer. Its thrill-ride poems and stories spotlight pop divas, punk epiphanies, good acid, bad brains, adverse adverts, legalized fascism, economic meltdowns, psychedelic cave drawings, schizoid pronouns, the hallucinations of romance, Catholic sex, Disneyland, and Catholic sex at Disneyland. 681 Venice Blvd., Venice; Saturday, September 17, 7-9pm; free; beyondbaroque.org.
The Un-Private Collection: Hank Willis Thomas + Robin D. G. Kelley (The Broad)
Sunday, September 18
The Un-Private Collection: Hank Willis Thomas + Robin D. G. Kelley at the Broad Museum (Live & Streaming). Artist/activist Hank Willis Thomas will speak with his mentor and former teacher, UCLA professor and noted author Robin D. G. Kelley about Thomas’s art practice and his activism as co-founder of the organization For Freedoms. The Broad recently acquired America (2021) by Thomas, which is on view along with his work 15,580 (2017), 2018 in The Broad’s special exhibition This is Not America’s Flag through September 25. 221 S. Grand Ave., downtown; Sunday, September 18, 2pm; free-$20; thebroad.org.
Narsiso Martinez at MOLAA
Latinx Heritage Month Celebration at Narsiso Martinez: Rethinking Essential at MOLAA. The Museum of Latin American Art kicks of Latinx Heritage Month with a full day of art workshops, popup shopping, books, dance classes, food, cultural conversations, and more. On view inside, Martinez’s exhibition has, as curator Gabriela Urtiaga writes, “an interest in reclaiming the place of creation as a tool for transformation and social justice, as a banner of a decolonization of the status quo, and the artist as a seeker in the margins, a rag-picker of history. Meditative contemplation [of his paintings] reveals life stories, many of them from indigenous communities, which the artist has managed to document from various avenues: from his own experiences, through talks and encounters with the actual protagonists in his work.” 628 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach; Sunday, September 18, 11am-4pm; free; molaa.org.
Adam Sass at Book Soup
Tuesday, September 20
Adam Sass: The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers at Book Soup (Live & Virtual). Sass appears in conversation with Julian Winters to discuss his latest novel. The book’s protagonist, Micah Summers, runs a popular Instagram full of drawings of his numerous imaginary boyfriends (ninety-nine so far)–though he’s never had a real boyfriend before. But when a meet-cute with Boy 100 goes wrong, Micah embarks on a Prince Charming-like quest throughout Chicago to find true love — for real this time. In-store at 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, and on Crowdcast; Tuesday, September 20, 7pm; free; booksoup.com.
Beatrice Wood : Untitled (Head in Abstraction), 1996 (LA Louver)
Wednesday, September 21
Beatrice Wood at L.A. Louver. Wood is not only a figure central to the international Dada scene of her time and an institutionally recognized artist, as well as something of a feminist icon for her fierce independence, she holds a unique position in the history of Southern California. From her birth in San Francisco in 1893 and her involvement with creative spheres in Los Angeles in the 1920s, to electing Ojai as her permanent home in 1948 and her passing there in 1998 at the incredible age of 105, Wood is rightly characterized as the ultimate “California artist.” This selection of works, dating from 1917 to 1996, represents the breadth and variety of Wood’s art and provides remarkable insight into her extraordinary life and creative process. 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice; Opening reception: Wednesday, September 21, 6-8pm; On view through October 29; free; lalouver.com.
Sharon Lockhart: Eventide at REDCAT
Sharon Lockhart: Eventide at REDCAT. “Sharon Lockhart’s latest film, EVENTIDE (2022), is a meditative, non-narrative single long shot that uses choreography to explore landscape, communal relations, solitary searching, psychic endurance, and the play of light moving through darkness. Locating drama in the real-time shift of evening fading into night, and in the emergence of stars, this is perhaps Lockhart’s most optical and painterly moving image to date, composing figures, scenography, and soundscape into allegory and abstraction. Shot on the Swedish coast with a close-knit group of friends Lockhart has been involved with for years, EVENTIDE is concerned with grieving and the future.” —Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer. The program includes a live performance by Petra and Tanya Haden, as well as a discussion with the artist. 631 W. 2nd St., downtown; Wednesday, September 21, 8:30pm; $12; redcat.org.
Beatrice Wood: Elsie, 1934 (LA Louver)
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