Gracie Hadland

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  diary May 30, 2023

  Hollywood Babylon

  LAST TUESDAY NIGHT, the LA art world converged on Western Avenue—just south of Melrose among a strip of futon stores, smoke shops, and gas stations—to witness the unveiling of David Zwirner’s new outpost. The block was mobbed as I arrived with the artist Larry Johnson. “Oh my god,” he whimpered with incredulity. “This is where it is? I spent my whole life on Western Avenue . . .”

  Located at the conflux of Hollywood (a few blocks from the Paramount Lot) and Koreatown, this stretch of Western was once a hotbed for seedy gay bars (Larry favored the Black Lite) and still is for sex work (it’s not

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  diary February 23, 2023

  Fast Company

  LAST SUNDAY NIGHT, the eve of Frieze Week in Los Angeles, people spilled out of the gallery Gattopardo into a strip mall parking lot for a reading celebrating a new collection of writings by Giovanni Intra, published by Semiotext(e). The late artist and writer was one of the founders of the gallery China Art Objects, which in the late ’90s was crucial in putting LA back on the art-world map. He died at the age of thirty-four of an overdose and a certain scene dissolved with him. Those in attendance, some who had slept with him, done drugs with him, or worked for him, hadn’t gathered in a while.

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  picks October 29, 2020

  Nour Mobarak

  At Hakuna Matata—a sprawling outdoor project space in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles (aka the backyard of the curators Eli Diner and Anh Do’s home)—the artist Nour Mobarak presents two new bodies of work. Atop the property sits a series of semi-spherical sculptures from which mycelium cultures—namely, the rooting matter of mushrooms—grow. In the uneven dirt mound under these pieces, I sensed a slight trembling beneath my feet: Subterranean Bounce (all works cited, 2020), looped recordings of balls and other round objects being bumped and rolled across the floor, was playing