Shana Nys Dambrot
This Labor Day weekend, take in some culture that honors the work behind the work of art. An immersive audio installation vibrates at the body’s frequency, a bespoke soundtrack activates an artful fashion show, an audio installation digs into the past lives of historic architecture, an array of world-clock activated light sculptures tune to planetary time, paintings help keep their maker sane, set-piece photography out-tropes art history, multimedia video work highlights sacred forest energy, and more.
Lykke Li: Ü & EYEYE at the Broad
Thursday, September 1
Resonant Tones: Ü & EYEYE at The Broad. For her first museum project, acclaimed musician Lykke Li partners with creative director Theo Lindquist and artist Nick Verstand to transform the Broad’s Oculus Hall into a hyper-sensory cathedral of female romantic fantasy. Combining infinite video loops with multi-channel spatial audio, Ü & EYEYE evokes a powerful emotional state: the eternally returning cycles of love, addiction, relapse, and obsession. The heart of the installation is the sonic landscape, incorporating elements of the ancient solfeggio frequencies tuned to the body’s chakras. Lykke has morphed her new album into a score that trespasses the boundary between pop music and the sacred. Opening night features a performance by Lykke Li and her band in the lobby and third floor galleries. 221 S. Grand Ave, downtown; Thursday, September 1, 11am-8pm; Friday, September 2, 11am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, September 3-4, 10am-6pm; free; advance museum ticketing required; thebroad.org.
Suanjaya Kencut at Lorin Gallery
Friday, September 2
Suanjaya Kencut: Unlimited Frames at Lorin Gallery. Kencut’s In Frame paintings were inspired by the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic which forced most people to live confined inside a home or even a single room. Some coped by exploring knowledge amid uncertainty; some felt crowded and the urge to escape; some relished the void — most cycled through a range of emotional responses. Some who may not have valued interpersonal interactions were faced with a wall, and ended up really missing the warmth of greetings, touches, and jokes; some felt the shift from shelter to cage, and back. In a whimsical but thoughtful surreal style and eccentric palette, Kencut explores these and other paradoxical nuances of what we all just lived through, being alone together. 807 S. Los Angeles St., downtown; Opening reception: Friday, September 2, 6-8pm; On view through October 1; free; loringallery.com.
Madeline Hollander at Jeffrey Deitch
Madeline Hollander: Sunrise/Sunset inaugurates Jeffrey Deitch’s second Los Angeles gallery. Just up the street from his main gallery space, Jeffrey Deitch occupies the former home of LAXART with an expanded program, kicking off with Hollander’s live perpetual clock installation of 96 recycled automobile headlights. The headlights form a global time zone map that performs with the earth’s rotation. As the sun rises and sets across the globe, the headlights react, turning on when moving into the night and off when entering daylight, blinking and shifting in real-time according to their location in the world. The result is an image of global connectedness emerging from the interaction between individual actions, technological automation, and cosmic forces. 7000 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Opening reception: Friday, September 2, 6-8pm; On view through October 22; free; deitch.com.
Erik Mark Sandberg, Antonio Ainscough, Austyn Taylor at Thinkspace Projects
Saturday, September 3
September Exhibitions at Thinkspace Projects. The group show Habitat features the surreal naturalist paintings of Kevin Peterson, Kisung Koh, Jacub Gagnon, and Anthony Solano. Erik Mark Sandberg’s Golden Pacific offers an idealized sunset-bathed surreality themed around recreation, love in the modern age, or the reality of the digital realm. In the newly expanded compound’s new courtyard and galleries, the eclectic and ambitious group show Amplify brings together new work from 34 artists from the Thinkspace family, offering a real-time snapshot of the New Contemporary art movement. 4207-4217 W. Jefferson Blvd., West Adams; Opening reception: Saturday, September 3, 6-10pm (w/ music & live painting); On view through September 24; free; thinkspaceprojects.com.
Mary Kelly: Corpus at Vielmetter Los Angeles
Mary Kelly and Paul Mpagi Sepuya Vielmetter Los Angeles. Mary Kelly: Corpus restages Kelly’s ambitious 1984-85 installation, originally made as the first part of a larger project titled Interim. This will be the first complete installation of Corpus, including all 30 panels, in the U.S. since 1990 when the entire Interim project was exhibited at the New Museum to broad critical acclaim. In Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s Daylight Studio / Dark Room Studio, the artist uses natural light or red “safelights” and props to create playful references to European and North American 19th century daylight studios and to the dark room – here referenced with a double-entendre as both the space where film is processed and printed and those dark rooms in which other forms of exposure and revelation occur. 1700 S. Santa Fe, downtown; Opening receptions: Saturday, September 3, 4-6pm; On view through October 15 and 22; free; vielmetter.com.
Susan Chen in Wonder Women at Jeffrey Deitch
Wonder Women at Jeffrey Deitch. Meanwhile back at the original gallery on Orange Dr., enjoy an expanded version of an acclaimed show first exhibited at their New York gallery in May: Wonder Women, curated by Kathy Huang. The wide-ranging exhibition is eclectic in style and mediums, presenting Asian American and diasporic women and non-binary artists responding to themes of wonder, self, and identity through various modalities of figuration. 925 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood; On view September 3 – October 22; free; deitch.com.
Alexander McQueen, Woman’s Ensemble (Dress and Leggings), Spring-Summer 2010, Gift from the Collection of Regina J. Drucker (Photo courtesy of Museum Associates/LACMA)
Sunday, September 4
dublab’s Self-guided Musical Experience at LACMA. When you visit Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse, immerse yourself in the accompanying soundtrack inspired by music from McQueen’s runway shows and the artworks on display. This exhibition soundtrack, created by Bárbara Salazar and Alejandro Cohen of dublab, reflects the vast, eclectic, and at times unpredictable musical taste that defined McQueen’s runway shows. The mix’s jarring changes and contrasting choices not only respond to, but also provoke a conversation about, the meaning of McQueen’s work in our present-day context. With selections that range from classical to post-punk, dance, and pop, Bárbara and Alejandro not only represent the designer’s own choices but also respond to the legacy of his work. (The soundtrack is also available on Mixcloud and Spotify.) 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile; Sunday, September 4 – Saturday, September 10; free w/ admission, free-$25; lacma.org.
Bibi Davidson at Matter Studio Gallery
Bibi Davidson: Imaginary Matter at Matter Studio Gallery. Davidson’s illustrative-style works are allegorical representations of the chaotic and unsettling realities of her childhood. Her boldly colored narrative paintings are autobiography and social commentary, layered with humor. The girl in the red dress that populates many of her paintings functions as her alter ego as well as a symbol of her inner turmoil. Through the process of painting, Davidson charms and calms her inner self. Her captivating, quirky works investigate personal and universal conflicts, as well as the chaos that defines our times. 5080 W. Pico Blvd., Mid-city; Opening reception: Sunday, September 4, 4-7pm; Artist talk: September 18; Closing reception: October 2; free; matterstudiogallery.com.
Ranu Mukherjee: What We Lose is All Around Us, 2021 (Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco)
Tuesday, September 6
Ranu Mukherjee: Dear Future at 18th Street Arts Center Airport Campus. In a multichannel hybrid film and selection of mixed-media paintings informed by ruptures and imaginary forests, Mukherjee contemplates forests as sites of survival, biodiversity, non-human agency, indigenous struggle, and interspecies communication. In her speculative process, an emergent urban forest connects visions of an ecological future with histories of colonization and the lush internal spaces of longing, desire, and the imagination. Public programming will include workshops, discussions and live performance. 3026 Airport Ave., Santa Monica; On view September 6 – March 4, 2023; free; 18thstreet.org.
Ongoing
LABOUR: sonic activation, villa aurora (Virtual). A work-in-progress by the sonic duo LABOUR (Farahnaz Hatam and Colin Hacklander), conceived during of their fellowship at the eponymous artist residency, the piece continues their exploration of nuanced format with regard to acoustic space as a potentially radical gesture. Through a series of playful spatial arrangements, LABOUR invites the listener into acoustic space through a sequence of sonic activations that highlight the localization of sound and its often complex interaction with space. Using psychoacoustics and algorithmic compositional processes, the unique in-house pipe organ and grand pianos, acoustic percussion, and acoustic kamancheh performed live. Now streaming on YouTube; more information here: vatmh.org.
LABOUR: sonic activation at the Villa Aurora
Editor’s note: The disclaimer below refers to advertising posts and does not apply to this or any other editorial stories.
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.