Vision Quests: Arts Calendar September 22-28

Art based on dreams, architectural memory, art school vision quests, indie art and design convenings, artists as filmmakers, queer Southern painting, music-inspired California painting, abstract mandalas and firefly magic, sculpture and sound at the observatory, a creative stroll through Elysian Valley, spoken word and occult-adjacent actionism, performance art for progress, the global landscape, the truth in painting.

Mohammad Barrangi at Advocartsy

Thursday, September 22

Mohammad Barrangi: Dreamscape at Advocartsy. Barrangi’s world exists in the realm of fantasy, yet seems to have a reality of its own. Trumpeters ride flying elephants, a lady carries an upside down zebra, cats hula-hoop, and play the fiddle while processions of revelers parade forth in antique bathtubs. Yet somehow it all makes sense, and invites the viewer to put logic aside and play along. 434 N. La Cienega, West Hollywood; Opening: Thursday, September 22, 7-10pm; On view through November 5; free; advocartsy.com.

The Schindler House

Imaging the Schindler House at MAK Center. A panel featuring projects related to the Schindler House from three prominent LA-based architectural photographers, in conjunction with the site’s centennial exhibition. Mona Kuhn presents 835 Kings Road, a lyrical reconsideration of the history of the house and its romantic interludes. Joshua White excavates a 30-year archive of photographs centering on the Schindler House. Janna Ireland discusses the entanglement between photography and modern architecture. The conversation is moderated by Silvia Perea. 835 N. Kings Rd., West Hollywood; Thursday, September 22, 7-9pm; free; makcenter.org.

The Other Art Fair Los Angeles

The Other Art Fair at Barker Hangar. The indie, artist-driven fair that could returns to its expansive Barker Hangar setting this weekend, eschewing the typical white-walled experience on the conviction that art is for everyone. Expect immersive installations, emerging artists, gin & tonics, music, tours, performances, workshops, tattooing, people watching, and most importantly, a sense of discovery. 3021 Airport Ave., Santa Monica; Opening night: Thursday, September 22, 6-10pm; Regular fair hours Friday-Sunday, September 23-25; $10-$45; theotherartfair.com.

Diamond Stingily in The African Desperate (Dir., Martine Syms)

Friday, September 23

Martine Syms’ African Desperate at Laemmle’s Glendale. The feature directorial debut from acclaimed visual artist Martine Syms tracks one very long day for Palace Bryant, a newly minted MFA grad whose 24 hours in art school become a real trip. If this were a reality show, she would be the person who was not here to make friends. Palace needs to get home, back to Chicago from upstate New York. But that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory night-long odyssey, stumbling from academic critiques to back-seat hookups. Opens at Laemmle Glendale on Friday, September 23; laemmle.com.

Chloe Chiasson at UTA Artist Space

Chloe Chiasson: Bird on a Wire at UTA Artist Space. Featuring multidimensional paintings and sculpture, the exhibition offers an autobiographical take on queer Southern adolescence. Born in a conservative small town in Southeast Texas, Chiasson’s practice explores self-expression and queer identity through a personal, and at times rose-colored, religious lens. This new body of work brings a fresh yet familiar perspective to the coming-of-age narrative with sculptural paintings that range in scale as well as relativity. 403 Foothill Rd., Beverly Hills; Opening: Friday, September 23, 6-8pm; On view through October 22; free; utaartistspace.com.

Paige Emery in Fulcrum Festival at Mt. Wilson

Fulcrum Festival at Mt. Wilson Observatory. Fulcrum Arts’ Deep Ocean/Deep Space Festival animates the Mt. Wilson Observatory grounds and telescope silos this week/weekend with several opportunities to think differently about our place on this earth and our place in the cosmos. Paige Emery’s sculptural installation Methods for Descrying, Intimate Eyes that Listen considers the space for intimate otherness in data interpretation. An extension of the exhibition FEELERS, produced by SUPERCOLLIDER, this installation is located at the lookout point outside the 100-inch Hooker Telescope. freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) is an immersive installation by pioneering new media and conceptual artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff, who transforms the interior of the Hooker Telescope observatory with video and sound. Both installations are open during regular hours September 23-25, 11am-5pm, free. After hours on the evening of Friday, September 23, 7-11:30pm, Fulcrum Arts presents a special evening of sonic immersion and star gazing with performances by freq_wave artists Lawrence English and Minoru Sato inside the installation; $50-$150; fulcrumfestival.org. 

Normal Objects: CLEAR LA

Normal Objects presents CLEAR LA. In a tech-mad world, design collective Normal Objects considers some intriguing alternatives. The core team, their collaborators and platformed partners craft astonishingly analog, functional, witty, high-concept work lands somewhere between art and design. And for ten days, they’re hosting a pop up salon and exhibition showcasing rare, hand-made, post-industrial object and decor design with guest artists curated from the U.S., Mexico, Europe, Canada, and South America). As much a 10-day community watering hole for L.A. creatives to coalesce around artful elevated objects as it is a design showcase for nest-featherings. Friday, September 23 – Sunday, October 2, 10am-6pm; by appointment only; downtown location provided with registration; free-$50; instagram.com/normal.objects.

Saturday, September 24

Frogtown Artwalk. A self-guided, pedestrian-forward afternoon visiting scores of art studios, design and architecture workshops, pop-up galleries, and unique creative businesses in the diverse and eclectic Elysian Valley neighborhood. With dance performances, multiple music stages, processionals, seed-bombing, riverfront strolling, bike-path exploration, shopping, eating, drumming, clowning, stories and poetry, screenings, outdoor light projections, and a big queer dance party, bike or rideshare and walk around in one of L.A.’s most interesting neighborhoods. Kick-off/Hub at Taylor Yard Bridge; Saturday, September 24, 3-10pm; free; evartscollective.com.

Heather Perry at Gabba Gallery

REMIX: The Art of Music at Gabba Gallery. REMIX is the gallery’s beloved annual music-themed group exhibition curated to delight art-lovers and music-lovers alike. More than 50 local and international artists created visual artworks using music as their inspiration. The results are dazzling and diverse: imagined album covers, portraits of rock idols, paintings inspired by songs, and much more. A portion of every sale will be donated to Adopt the Arts, a non-profit that helps fund arts programs in public elementary schools. 3126 Beverly Blvd, East Hollywood; Opening: Saturday, September 24, 6-10pm; On view through October 8; free; gabbagallery.com.

Sharon Ellis at Kohn Gallery

Sharon Ellis at Kohn Gallery. Ellis’ visionary landscapes merge symmetrical composition with brilliant, glossy color hovering in the realm of the sublime; and a radical ability to synthesize the conventions of naturalistic forms with inventive compositions is fundamental to her work. Art for Ellis is ultimately a spiritual practice, harkening back to 19th century aesthetic principles and craftsmanship. As she states: “I feel that my work follows in the tradition of love for the natural world, obsession with the painted universes we create, and a reverence for the mystery of imagination itself.” 1227 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood; Opening: Saturday, September 24, 6-8pm; free; kohngallery.com.

Bettina Weiß at Edward Cella Gallery

Bettina Weiß: Cosme at Edward Cella Gallery. Weiß considers her abstractions to be depictions of nature through geometric forms as they occur in micro and macrocosm. Lush in color, texture, and visual subtleties, her hard-edge paintings offer an exciting interplay of forms and colors created on wood panel surfaces. Alternatively lyrical and muscular the works on view offer the most cohesive understanding to date of the Berlin-based artist’s current practice in the United States. Edward Cella Gallery at the Himalaya Club, 1109 N. La Brea Ave., Inglewood; Open House Reception: Saturday, September 24, noon-7pm; On view through October 7; free; edwardcella.com.

Jeanne Dunn in Brand 50

Brand 50 at The Brand Library. The Brand’s annual juried exhibition has developed a national reputation that this year drew more than 1,200 entries. From that number, Juror Shannon Currie Holmes selected the 89 artworks on display. This year they celebrate not only the creativity of the exhibiting artists, but also that of the hundreds, if not thousands, of artists who have been included in their juried exhibitions over the past 50 years — whether in ceramics, multimedia, or works on paper. 1601 W. Mountain St., Glendale; Opening: Saturday, September 24, 6pm; On view through December 30; free; brandlibrary.art.

Ron Athey at Coaxial

Sunday, September 25

Ron Athey: Our Lady of the Spasm at Coaxial. Coaxial’s September artist in residence is the inimitable performance and visual artist and activist Ron Athey. He appears in a solo performance which includes elements from the healing temples known as Asclepion: dream chambers and healing water. Sections to be worked on and performed include a vocal but non-lingual litany, fountain action, and first attempts to develop a supernatural lighting installation. 1815 S. Main St., downtown; Sunday, September 25, 7:30pm; coaxialarts.org.

Tingatinga, Abdul Amonde Mkura, at the Fowler Museum

Tingatinga at the Fowler Museum. This exhibition showcases a series of animal paintings made by members of the Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society in the 1990s. The Tingatinga style began with Tanzanian painter Edward Saidi Tingatinga (b. Dar es Salaam, 1939; d. 1972). His paintings are characterized by flat, stylized animal depictions clearly outlined against a monochrome ground. Toward the end of his short life, Tingatinga took on apprentices. A cohort of his former students continues to train students and keep alive his distinctive style. 308 Charles E. Young Dr., Westwood; On view September 25 – January 8; free; fowler.ucla.edu.

Kristina Wong

Monday, September 26

Rick Griffith at Roski Talks

Tuesday, September 27

Roski Talks: Rick Griffith at USC. Rick Griffith is a British-West-Indian collagist, writer, letterpress printer, designer, and optimist futurist. As a designer, he works at the intersections of programming, policy, and production. His works and comment are system aware and perpetually working towards new understandings of design’s power and authority over people and the everyday things people make and consume. Griffith shares why he continues to love design after 30 years and what he is currently excited about in the areas of design, system change, and knowledge production. He will also occasionally share what he does not like. Roski Graduate Building, 1262 Palmetto St., downtown; Tuesday, September 27, 7pm; free; roski.usc.edu.

Enrique Martinez Celaya at the Wende Museum

Wednesday, September 28

In Search of Truth with Enrique Martínez Celaya at the Wende Museum (Virtual). The ninth program in the In Search of Truth series is a conversation about the essence of truth in art with artist, author, and former physicist Enrique Martínez Celaya. His monumental and multi-faceted body of work connects art to literature, philosophy, and science, and suggests the map of a territory shaped by self, meaning, time, memory, ideations of home, exile, myth, and identity. His practice presumes art should be not only a cultural pursuit but also an ethical effort that turns thinking into action and aims to understand better and be engaged with the world and ourselves. Wednesday, September 28, 5pm; free; wendemuseum.org.

Kaari Upson, Others, 2019 (still). Video, color, sound, 2:23 min. (© The Art Trust created under The Kaari Upson Trust. Courtesy Sprüth Magers)

Kaari Upson: Selected Shorts at MOCA Grand Ave. A screening of short videos by the late artist Kaari Upson (1970–2021), that demonstrate her uncanny investigations of the overlaps, fissures, and disjunctions between our interior worlds and exterior reality. Upson worked in a wide array of media including sculpture, video, drawing and painting. For nearly two decades, she constructed a singular artistic universe that melded autobiographical and collective traumas, fears and fantasies and often illuminated what might be called “Americanness” or the “American psyche.” In her videos, Upson would play various roles; these selections consider Upson’s enigmatic narrative style and use of repetition and mirroring. 250 S. Grand Ave., downtown; Wednesday, September 28, 6:30pm; free; moca.org. 

Sya Warfield at Gabba Gallery

Christina Ramos at Gabba Gallery

Nichole McDaniel at Gabba Gallery

Jason Mascow at Gabba Gallery

Hayato Takano at Gabba Gallery

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.