Annie Buckley

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  picks February 23, 2015

  “In Search of the Dot That Created the Circle”

  In “Under the Gaze of Theory,” an essay published on e-flux that tracks the relationship between art and theory, Boris Groys suggests one possible explanation for a notable absence of the spiritual in contemporary art: “Philosophy privileges contemplation. Theory privileges action and practice—and hates passivity.” Recent news from Paris and Copenhagen tragically demonstrates that images about religion, particularly Islam, incite anything but passivity. But art genuinely rooted in religion or spirituality still struggles to find its place in contemporary culture. Into this dichotomous context

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  picks January 30, 2015

  Ai Weiwei

  The voice of Tibetan singer Lolo, who was imprisoned by Chinese authorities for his pro–Tibetan independence songs, eases through the grate of a tiny, dilapidated cell in the prison’s “A Block,” which once housed conscientious objectors during World War I and now resounds with the voices of dissident poets and artists imprisoned around the world. The sound installation Stay Tuned, 2014, is part of Ai Weiwei’s staggering feat of public art currently occupying Alcatraz. Spanning multiple locations in the former penitentiary, the show features a multilayered relationship to site—complicated by the

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  picks August 18, 2014

  Beatrice Wood

  Beatrice Wood is best known for her lusterware pottery, so this exhibition of nearly fifty works on paper, made over the course of a staggering eighty-seven years, is surprising and also gratifying. Despite drawing on styles that veer from commercial illustration to delicate abstraction and Cubist figuration, Wood’s distinct visual stamp and sensibility persist through changing influences and decades. The drawings have the combined openness and intimacy of a daily diary, revealing the wit and humor, pathos and joie de vivre for which Wood’s so well known. For example, works from “Touching Certain

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  picks August 07, 2014

  Gina Osterloh

  On the opening night of Gina Osterloh’s show, visitors encountered an enigmatic sight: a large, red paper screen supported by a simple wood base. The installation turned out to be a prop for Osterloh’s brief but impactful performance. Clad in a nude leotard, the artist swiftly and determinedly enacted a series of operations that altered the paper, at times striking it with her hand or cutting into it with a utility knife. At the close, viewers were guided to chant “prick, prick, prick, prick” as Osterloh leapt through the paper and landed on the floor. The propulsive power of that act and staccato

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  picks May 14, 2014

  “LA Heat”

  When the Chinese American Museum developed an exhibition inspired by two locally made hot sauces, there was no doubt that some found the show’s premise a dubious proposition at best, anticipating flippant treatments of food and multiculturalism. The result is anything but; “LA Heat” embodies a sophisticated, playful, and complex view of culture, specifically positing the cultural coalescences and convergences that happen despite subtle but impactful stereotypes that presume (and precede) separation and difference. The sauces at the center of all this are Sriracha and Tapatío, two businesses

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  picks April 14, 2014

  Jacob Hashimoto

  This third and final rendition of Jacob Hashimoto’s two-story installation Gas Giant, 2014, includes thousands of small rice-paper disks, squares, diamonds, and other shapes, each supported by a thin bamboo frame and suspended from the ceiling by a delicate line. Repurposing parts from its earlier iterations, Gas Giant is an expansive and multifaceted sculptural collage that reaches thirty-four feet into the air, suspended from the upper level of the museum’s airy central space. Throughout, paper pieces are hung in clusters, each organized by color and shape—blue squares, white ovals, yellow

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  picks March 25, 2014

  Rena Small

  The word handmade unravels in the near-impossible task of identifying a divide between tools and technology; what makes a clay pot handmade and a photograph something else, if a human hand is at the helm of both? The word organic is often used, rather less problematically, to describe artworks that could also qualify for that amorphous “handmade” descriptor, and so it is an elegant twist that Rena Small’s longtime project in photography—the medium whose emergence helped give rise, by way of contrast, to “handmade” as a signifier in art—is infused with a sense of organic process. On view in full

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  picks November 11, 2013

  Shizu Saldamando

  Whether drinking, kissing, or huddling in bathroom stalls or on concert room floors, Shizu Saldamando’s subjects exude a sense of glittery calm—the girls are tough, the boys are vulnerable, and nonconformity rules. Cool kids dangle cigarettes emitting shimmering smoke, pose with gestures that seem coded for insiders, and embrace one another with a sweetness more reminiscent of the flowery essence of courtly romance than the edgy complexity of contemporary intimacy. In this exhibition’s delicate drawings, meticulous paintings, and collages, Saldamando lends her subjects (and her friends) a surreal

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  picks September 09, 2013

  “Ignite! The Art of Sustainability”

  From its organizing principle of putting artists in dialogue with scientists and environmentalists down to the reused shipping crates that were used to transport the pieces on view, this traveling exhibition takes a thoughtful and holistic approach to art that deals with the environment. Curated by Kate Davies, “Ignite!” grew out of discussions between the Green Museums Initiative and the Committee of the California Association of Museums; from there, seven of the thirteen participating artists took part in regional conversations prior to making work. The depth and breadth of the show reflect

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  picks May 13, 2013

  Antonio Adriano Puleo

  Stripping away affect and objective referent, Antonio Adriano Puleo’s new body of work relies on form, color, and process. Composed primarily of bits of string, fabric, wood, cardboard, and a large quantity of paint, these paintings and sculptures are refreshing in their direct simplicity. The exhibition as a whole is equally imbued with tradition and innovation, but four works in particular—Untitled 1b-35b, 1c-35c, 1d-35d, and 1e-35e, all 2010-13—embody this fusion; each consists of thirty-five nine-by-twelve-inch paintings in the shape of a grid. Like instruments in an orchestra, each individual

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  picks April 23, 2013

  Connie Samaras

  This comprehensive exhibition of Connie Samaras’s work over the past fifteen years, curated by Irene Tsatsos, includes photographs and videos from six series. Most of the forty-four large color photographs depict land- and cityscapes in the United States and abroad, but two videos included in the series “V.A.L.I.S. (vast active living intelligence system),” 2005, shot in Antarctica, depict living beings, one a seal breathing through a hole in the ice, the other a man, fast asleep in a red snowsuit aboard a plane returning from the South Pole. Though actual human (or animal) life is rarely seen,

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  picks January 08, 2013

  “Lost (in LA)”

  “Lost (in LA)”, curated by Marc-Olivier Wahler and presented by FLAX (France Los Angeles Exchange) with the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, includes works by twenty-nine artists from France and the United States. A handful of familiar Los Angeles names are included—Marnie Weber, Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, Guy de Cointet, and Robert Overby—along with numerous notables from France, such as Mathieu Mercier, Oscar Tuazon, and the 2012 winners of the Prix Marcel Duchamp, Daniel Dewar and Gregory Gicquel. The public gallery space, set on a Hollywood hill with panoramic views of the city, is