art pickChuck Arnoldi’s long and storied career as a visual artist has led him, across the years, to an eclectic panoply of visual cues, formal experiments, mechanisms of gesture, evocations of experience, and evidence of process. But despite an array of abstract styles from the muscular and rough-hewn to the delicate, pensive, ecstatic, puzzle-solved, color-theorized, and occasionally narrative, Arnoldi’s throughline has always been elemental. Specifically, stone, water, air, fire, and wood—especially wood. For the past several years, he’s remained captivated by the curious and intuitive strength of the epic stone walls that endure at Peru’s majestic Indigenous cultural sites, even as his immediate attention has returned to the fate of trees on fire-ravaged hills much closer to home. Along the way, a series of hefty, chunky, dimensional paintings and assertive sculptures have curiously married these forms, in chainsaw-chiseled carved compositions that reflect the operations of material, action, and color. As always with Arnoldi, ideas may float freely between mediums and idioms, and remain perennially susceptible to unexpected experiences and experiments—but the results are somehow always instantly recognizable as his.

6150 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile; Opening reception: Friday, February 17, 3-6pm; On view through March 25; free; praz-delavallade.com.

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.