Catherine WagleyThis week, a Culver City show includes decades-old blood from a boxing gym, and a Berlin-based artist creates an imaginary, pro-tech cult.
See me, don't see me
Artist and dancer Myrrhia Rodriguez debuts a work-in-progress at Pieter this weekend. Called “Now You See Me?” it’s about a woman’s body, the space it does or doesn’t take up, and how physical presence relates to psychological presence. Rodriguez worked with four other dancers, and will incorporate video footage as well as everyday objects. The short, in-process videos she’s posted on Instagram have been compellingly restless and a little bit funny. In one, a dancer rests her cheek on another’s bent-over back as the two walk across the room with their arms hanging loosely. 420 W. Avenue 33, Unit 10, Lincoln Heights; Sat., April 23, 8:30 p.m. pieterpasd.com.
Geometry for imperfectionists
The floor paintings in Raphaela Simon’s current show at Hannah Hoffman Gallery are a highlight. You can look down and see an imperfect black-and-blue triangle, then look up to see red and black rectangles stacked on one another. Her strokes and layers are visible. Edges can be wobbly. Geometry looks better when it’s below you, in front of you and not at all straitlaced. 1010 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood; through May 21. (323) 450-9106, hannahhoffmangallery.com.
Same old tricks
If you’ve followed art for a while, Julian Schnabel’s reputation precedes him. The art world forgave him some of his antics when he directed the quite-good film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but before that, he had spats with critics: Robert Hughes, longtime writer for Time, allegedly had to ask that libelous references to himself be removed from Schnabel’s memoir. In the 1980s, Schnabel had a plate-shattering phase, during which he would fill large canvases with broken porcelain. There’s a plate painting in Schnabel’s current show, “Infinity on Trial” at Blum & Poe, with scraps scattered across a reddish background. Old work hangs alongside new work, and most of it holds its own, like The Edge of Victory, from 1987. Schnabel stretched a tarp from a boxing ring across canvas. The materials list suggests there’s blood and sweat on the tarp, the stuff of life literally taken from a gym, altered just enough and hung on a wall. 2727 S. La Cienega Blvd., Mid-City; through April 30. (310) 836-2062, blumandpoe.com.
Timur Si-Qin's Mirrorscape Effigy 1 (2016); Credit: Courtesy of Team Gallery and the artist
Wi-Fi in a stone
Last year, artist Aram Bartholl installed a Wi-Fi router inside a large rock and placed it in a field near Neuenkirchen, Germany. Visitors could build a fire next to a boulder to “fire up” its router, since the boulder contained a thermoelectric generator to convert heat to electricity. Visitors who had phones could then access an archive of survival guides to help “solo survival in the chaotic world of computer programming” and “solo survival in the wilderness.” Bartholl, whose projects often put the digital and the natural on a collision course, will be talking about his work at LACMA with Kathy Rae Huffman, a curator and writer who specialized in electronic art. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire; Tue., April 26, 7 p.m.; free with RSVP. (323) 857-6010, lacma.org.
Cult for consumerism
A brochure accompanies Timur Si-Qin’s show at Team gallery’s Venice bungalow. It looks like something you’d find in a church lobby or alt-medicine clinic: a golden field with a purple sky above it appears on the cover. The text inside explains Si-Qin’s “A Place Like This, New Peace” project as an imagined cult, in which members believe “replication serves variation.” They’re trying to embrace products and advertisement while also embracing ecological thinking. It’s all in bed together — consumerism and environmentalism — in Si-Qin’s work. His epic landscape videos could be Greenpeace calls to arms, or Pepsi commercials. He has a plot of earth and a tree trunk in the galleries, but sleek monitors and computer screens interrupt the naturalism. 306 Windward Ave., Venice; through May 8. (310) 339-1945, teamgal.com.
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