David Muenzer

• 

  picks October 29, 2019

  “At the Edge of Things”

  The paintings and drawings by Jo Baer, Mary Corse, and Agnes Martin in “At the Edge of Things” range in date from 1959 to this year, but all are grounded in phenomenology and investigations of borders. Corse has beveled some of her stretcher bars so that the paintings become wall-mounted plinths, extending out to meet the viewer’s gaze. Most of Martin’s vertical graphite lines in Untitled #12, 2002, do not touch the edges of the canvas but fade out near the top and bottom. An arm span of taut cloth becomes an arena for mental projection, as evinced by occasional titles (Gratitude, 2001, and

• 

  print April 2019

  D’Ette Nogle

  Have you ever introduced your occupation with a hyphen, slash, or conjunction? Yes, I’m an artist-writer-curator, homemaker and entrepreneur, DJ/activist. You might string together nouns as a feeble form of pushback against the inevitable reductivism of identity’s shorthand. Still, even these linguistic acrobatics fail to offer an account of how your different careers might interrelate. D’Ette Nogle’s objects, videos, and performances emphasize a natural affinity between art work and other kinds of labor, often foregrounding the professionalization of artmaking.

  Take, for instance, her most recent

• 

  picks November 14, 2018

  Genevieve Belleveau

  Genevieve Belleveau’s solo exhibition “Circlusion” centers on a performance in which the artist vacuum-seals a participant adorned with fresh flowers inside a latex covering. At the opening, Belleveau herself was sheathed in the BDSM habit of a latex bodysuit and boots to facilitate the process, titled Vac-Bed Pressed Floral Arrangement Demo (all works, 2018). But the tone of the demo, completed with performers Iggy Soliven and Themba Alleyne, was more mutualistic than hierarchical: The seams of the bed were checked and rechecked, the air flow was tested, and decisions about the placement of

• 

  picks May 23, 2018

  Stephen Prina

  Are you a lefty or a righty? How about your earlobes—attached or unattached? The codes that make up a genome and determine such traits are immensely complicated, but the categories these traits are sorted into can appear strangely arbitrary. After all, what is the significance of flesh (or lack thereof) connecting the head and the earlobe? Stephen Prina’s exhibition “galesburg, illinois+,” which has been shown at various venues since 2015, links seemingly consequential and coincidental biographical details to question deterministic understandings of personal histories.

  Prina’s project presents

• 

  picks February 02, 2018

  Barak Zemer

  While the photographs that make up “Transit,” Barak Zemer’s first exhibition at this gallery, are descriptive of people and things, their heavily structured compositions—both as individual images and within the group of pictures—trouble a documentary read of the work. The camera often frames an action or a thing, as in Gate, 2017, which centers on a gleaming model airplane positioned at an airport boarding gate, or Transit, 2017, which shows an eerily bright apple cupped underneath a drinking glass on top of a black faux-leather car dashboard.

  Framing takes many forms in these works, whether it

• 

  picks September 17, 2017

  f. marquespenteado

  The seemingly disparate mediums that comprise f. marquespenteado’s current exhibition, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”—collage, textile, and painting—seem to commune without hierarchy. In the press release, the artist describes a fictional scenario: Lupe, the protagonist, hosts a dinner in which she asks her friends to evaluate a new crush. While this framework may seem to unify all the other elements of the exhibition, the extreme detail in the physical works and the comparatively broad strokes of the story confuse such a reading. Take the collage salsa 01, 2017, for example—the repeated square

• 

  interviews August 01, 2017

  Rey Akdogan

  Rey Akdogan’s works touch on invisible standards and everyday objects, such as crash rails, in order to mine emotional reactions and systemic analysis. The latest exhibition of concise gestures by the New York–based artist is on view at Hannah Hoffman Gallery in Los Angeles through August 26, 2017.

  I AM INTERESTED IN MOTION, our everyday lives, and how we move through space. Each of my works extracts elements from much larger systems. And usually they are standard systems that perform specific tasks in our everyday lives. A standard is something that—if it works well—we don’t usually register.

• 

  picks July 14, 2017

  Gelatin

  In Paul Wegener’s 1925 silent film Der Golem, the titular construction comes to life when a magic word, written on paper, is inserted into the clay creature’s chest. Gelatin’s exhibition “New York Golem” takes consecrated insertion to an absurdly literal end, as ceramic totems shaped by the artists’ genitals are supported by an array of improvised pedestals.

  The sculptures are each titled New York Golem (all works 2017), and some have only the barest hint of figuration. Display apparatuses throughout the show seem to be frantic amalgams of studio supplies and readily available materials. The

• 

  picks June 09, 2017

  Camille Blatrix

  The three small dyed-resin and metal sculptures that anchor Camille Blatrix’s current exhibition call to mind the injection-molded parts that find their way into modern households as light switches, plugs, or routers. But each of the artist’s sculptures, no bigger than an average hand, imbues these anonymous forms with emotional intensity via the care of his elaborate dye treatments and the memento stuffed in each ersatz device—a ticket stub, a note, or a plastic flower.

  Facing the three mounted totems is a framed poster, Unview 2008/18 (all works 2017), in which a pixelated ink-jet print depicting

• 

  interviews April 21, 2017

  Joe Goode

  Joe Goode’s deadpan images of milk bottles, suburban homes, open skies, forest fires, water, and smog are included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Menil Collection in Houston; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Goode has worked in Los Angeles since the 1960s; his latest exhibition, “Old Ideas with New Solutions,” features recent paintings from several series he has been working on over the past half-century. The show opened

• 

  picks January 05, 2017

  “Ma”

  A faceted crystal paperweight with engraved letters spelling out the dates and title of this exhibition sits atop a stack of pink, marbleized stationery. Arp-like but ultimately practical marks—part of a printed map of the gallery—are visible through the clear object, which is in fact a sculpture by Bedros Yeretzian, Mutual Enemy Arousal Souvenir: ‘Ma,’ Chateau Shatto, 12/10/16—01/14/17, 2016, signaling that the informational and the aesthetic will comingle throughout the exhibition.

  This perversity of proximity is understated, but prevalent in works by Fiona Connor, who also organized the show.

• 

  picks October 24, 2016

  Paul Sietsema

  “Where do you see yourself in five years?” asks the New York Times job listing in Paul Sietsema’s ink-and-enamel drawing Vertical newspaper (thin green line), 2016, with some letters obscured by an unctuous mark. That white enamel is materially distinct from the ink rendering of the broadsheet below, but it is also not all it seems—the glob is the base for a painting of a paint-dipped coin, tossed onto the Times.

  Such exacting representations throughout the exhibition bring up questions such as What do I see? and How was this made? That they come up simultaneously reflects the interchangeability