CONTINUING AND RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS
April, 2006
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Larry Bell showed his glass cubes in the movement-defining “Primary Structures” show at the Jewish Museum in New York City way back in 1966 with other mega-minimalists such as Eva Hesse and Don Judd. He has also been associated with the “Finish Fetish” school and the Light and Space movement that grew out of L.A.’s unique relationship to aerospace and our special kind of light. All those strains are brought together in a new series of glass cubes, whose intense focus on process can be appreciated by even the uninitiated who know zip about Stella. These glistening, equilateral, super slick and mirrored cubes shown on pedestals reflect the gallery space, each other and the viewer. They revive all the syntax of Minimalism, from that style’s insistence that the viewer’s perception interact with and complete the gestalt, to its almost reactionary call for order in a politically unraveling world--certainly the case today as it was in ‘66 (Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica).
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 Larry Bell, “Cube #20,” 2006, coated glass, 20 x 20 x 20”. |
 Robert Zakanitch, "Butterfly Frog," 2001, acrylic on canvas, 54" x 69 1/4". |
Robert Zakanitch, a New York based painter long associated with the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970’s, created his series of Lace paintings in 2001 as a response to 9/11. Zakanitch used lace as a metaphor--relating it to ideas of comfort and femininity often associated with decorative motifs. The work on view here includes works on canvas from the 2001 series along with works on paper covering the last five years. Each piece incorporates an intricate pattern painted in white that fills the majority of the canvas. These fanciful lines stand out from the darkly painted backgrounds.
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| Zakanitch juxtaposes the patterns with symbols and figures including birds, flowers and hands. Using the pattern to house these other motifs, he surrounds them in a maze of interlacing lines that create zig-zags across paper or canvas. Zakanitch’s depictions of lace, however, are not airy and light. They have a looming presence, perhaps because the decorative motif is painted against a dark ground, or perhaps because of when they were made (Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica). |
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Mark Stockton makes small pencil drawings centered on large pieces of white paper. His contact sheet sized works depict images appropriated from the mass media. Whether drawing individuals—OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, the Unabomber--or situations—the street intersection where the L.A. Riots began, the white bronco that Simpson infamously drove--he picks images that are familiar and recognizable. By using people and events culled from the media as his source Stockton offers a filtered view of what is memorable and therefore important in today’s society. The small scale makes the works precious and, because he is a skilled draftsman, the works project more than their size would have you believe. In addition to the numerous small drawings, Stockton also presents a selection of enlargements. The large pieces, for example a portrait of Jonbenet Ramsey, are more aggressively drawn and confrontational as the subjects become larger than life. Stockton is a talented artist with a specific goal. He is definitely someone to watch (Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Downtown).
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 Mark Stockton, "Michael with Baby," 2006, graphite on BFK Rives paper, 1 x 1 1/3". |
 Gina Han, "Blue/Blue III," 2003, acrylic on canvas, 46"X46". |
 Stevie Love, "Idyllwild12," 2004, acrylic paint on Fabriano paper, 14" x 18". |
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The new work by Gina Han and Stevie Love, here titled “Sequence,” updates us on the state of their research into the plasticity and elasticity of acrylic colors. Laying up relatively thick pools of congealed and congealing paint respectively on canvas and paper, these two painters build up subtle oscillations of tone and hue. In “Blue/Blue III” Han sets up a pattern of small cloud-like shapes, each accented by a similar smaller shape of a different color or hue. This acts a little like an optical illusion without breaking into actual afterimages. In “Idyllwild 12” Love dots thick paint across the surface of the paper, and then subtly draws other paint into combined patterns that look like the pixelated traces of liquids merging. Both bodies of work share a similar gentleness, and a playful quality which makes their pairing a pleasure to engage (ANDLAB, Downtown).
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Karl Haendel is a young Los Angeles-based artist who is as well versed in theory as he is in recent art history. For this, his first museum show, he has created a structure in which to view his drawings that juxtaposes elements of his studio environment with the more traditional display space of a gallery or museum. These are drawings as mediated experience; mediated because they are based on advertisements, newspaper clippings, family photographs, money and even other drawings. These realistic drawings were created with the aid of an overhead projector. Haendel’s drawings are large, beautifully and skillfully executed works on paper made with pencil. His subject matter ranges from a penny, to a new Cadillac SUV, to fragments from other works of art, as well as scribbles and even his own thumb print.
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 Karl Haendel, "$56,055, 2005," pencil on paper, 93 x 130". |
| This work is about juxtapositions in which disparate elements play off one another. The multiple references that Haendel imposes makes the work both original as well as infuriatingly academic (Museum of Contemporary Art [MOCA], Downtown). |
 Roy Dowell, "Untitled (#889)," 2003, acrylic and burlap on canvas, 52 x 40". |
A mini retrospective of the work of Roy Dowell includes forty paintings, collage and works on paper dating from 1981 to 2005. As has been his way, Dowell includes bold colored passages of abstract form that may be lushly painted in places or collaged from bright pre-printed materials in others. He toys with the recessive properties of space, line and color to subvert aesthetic and common sense expectations we have about dimensionality: painted flat forms move toward us, clearly collaged elements seem to sit back away from the decorative surfaces. Dowell’s rich play on patterning and pictorial space defies both the modernist grid and the logical space we physically occupy; this is its cerebral side. As an added bonus, over the 20-year arc sampled, the work has also consistently been just plain lovely to look at (Margo Leavin Gallery, West Hollywood).
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An excellent and consciousness raising show reminds us that for a very long time and in many eras, art was the voice of opposition. The Artist as Social Critic includes 150 paintings made by artists who have addressed issues of society and injustice from the 1800s to the present. There are some wonderful individual works by museum level socialists we know and love, such as Honoré Daumier and José Clemente Orozco. They are accompanied by contemporary local luminaries who have made social and racial issues their main subjects: Betye Saar, George Herms and a host of others too numerous to detail. (Tobey C. Moss Gallery, West Hollywood).
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 James Gill, "The Demagogue", c. 1964, varnished charcoal on heavy paper, 24 3/4 x 32 3/4". |
 Fikret Atay, still from "Tinica," 2004 (detail), video with sound. 7:32 min. |
 Miranda Lichtenstein, “Untitled #2 (fruit), “ 2002-2005, Polaroid. |
| A residency at Monet’s Giverny gardens was the source of Miranda Lichtenstein’s work here. Consisting of a large set of diminutive Polaroid photographs and three larger black-on-black C-prints, Lichtenstein deals with the idea of transient beauty, suffusing her images with the atmosphere of the sumptuous still life painting that is associated with 18th century painters like Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin. The miniature size of the Polaroids, the high gloss finish of the prints, and the delicate beauty that the isolated forms and saturated colors deliver add up to hedonistic visual delights. In the video room next door, Fikret Atay has loops of three works being projected: “Rebels of the Dance”, “Tinica” and “Bang!Bang!”. Working in his native Turkey, the artist makes videos that offer short, almost photo-journalistic sketches of life around him. Using a portable consumer camera and existing lighting, Atay films locals as they conduct mostly everyday activities: they perform in dance, they beat on makeshift drums, and they run around playing war games while making all the war sounds boys make. His work is interesting for the slice of life it offers in a very unadorned manner. It pits the ordinary against the not so ordinary simply by creating work in a place where those parameters seem hard to measure--a Kurdish city near the border of Turkey and Iraq (Hammer Museum, West Los Angeles). |
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Anthony Hernandez has been making photographs documenting his surroundings since the 1970’s. His current works--large scale color photographs made with large and medium format cameras--focus on details and places. Two early series, one from 1984 entitled “Beverly Hills,” and another from the 1970’s depicting downtown Los Angeles, contrast two different L.A. locations.
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 Anthony Hernandez, "Beverly Hills #19," 1984, cibachrome print, 27 x 27". |
| The photographs in “Bev-erly Hills” are 35mm color shots, many depicting people of, or visiting the posh streets of Beverly Hills, dressed to kill-- as if they belong. The images are both a cutting and humorous look at the stereotypes and clichés that have given Beverly Hills its reputation. In contrast the earlier black and white images shot downtown focus more on the gritty aesthetic of street photography. These images depict people in motion hurrying from here to there along busy sunlit streets. Hernandez’ black and white photography is reminiscent of the works of Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander whose keen instinct and casual shooting style have become synonymous with this type of shooting. Hernandez’ pictures, while not as well known, are a welcome addition to this important genre of photographic picture making (Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica). |
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