Jordan Riefe

This month, the Frieze Los Angeles art fair takes over the backlot at Paramount Pictures. In recent years, film fortunes have plummeted at the venerable company, a decline symbolized on the New York City street portion of the backlot where artist Kori Newkirk’s Signal, a collection of tumbleweeds, have congregated as if in a ghost town. Look closer and see they are not weed, but TV antennas....

Art lovers have a soft spot for people like Vivian Maier, whose career was stamped with the irresistibly romantic and quintessentially tragic hallmarks of the unknown artist. She lived anonymously, earned a modest income, dedicated her life to her art and made no money from it, and died alone and without resources — only to enjoy global fame and stratospheric sales in the years following her death....

Invader is back in Los Angeles. Ground zero of the new campaign is Over the Influence gallery, in the heart of the Arts District, where his new show, "Into the White Cube," in on view through Dec. 23. One wall holds mosaic variations on his signature character and other popular works, while another is pasted with photos of the work in situ in cities around the globe....

Warhol’s Silver Clouds idles on the floor and ceiling of LACMA’s BCAM lobby as visitors make their way to "Merce Cunningham, Clouds and Screens," on view at LACMA through March 31, in anticipation of the choreographer’s centennial year, 2019....

Born of a settlement consisting of just 11 Mexican families in the 19th century, the rich diversity of its population — Chinese, Mexican, Native American and Caucasian — was reflected in its architecture in the first half of the century, a period Huntington Library assistant curator of architecture and photography Erin Chase burnishes in her new show, "Architects of a Golden Age: Highlights From the Huntington’s Southern California Architecture Collection," on view through Jan. 21....

For his first show in L.A., Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei scores a hat trick with three simultaneous exhibitions, at a trio of the city's most impressive art venues. The newly relocated UTA Artist Space presents "Cao/Humanity" beginning Oct. 4 in its Beverly Hills gallery, whose interior was designed by the artist in anticipation of this show. Across town, on Sept. 29, New York gallerist and one-time MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch inaugurated his new Hollywood space on Highland Avenue, renovated by Frank Gehry, with Ai's Zodiac, a series of large-scale works, on view through Jan. 5....

The bicoastal group show “Visual Language” is presented simultaneously by Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles and Faction Art Projects in New York through Oct. 6. Words in art can be used to clarify or obscure, and sometimes are employed as abstract forms. But in the modern era, protest has been an emphasis....

At first glance, it's easy to see Andy Warhol's impact on the work of artist Knowledge Bennett, who has made cultural iconography his subject matter and silkscreen his process. However, Bennett's most recent series, Orange Is the New Black, confronts race issues in ways that aren't likely to be mistaken for the work of the pop art icon....