Rebekah Weikel

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  print January 2023

  “Flanagan’s Wake”

  “Flanagan’s Wake” was like entering the aftermath of an unbridled party: A debauched spirit lingered dimly over this group exhibition organized in honor of writer and performance artist Bob Flanagan (1952–1996). Curated by Sabrina Tarasoff, the show was conceived as an ex post facto conversation with the late artist, whose transgressive oeuvre pursued pain, ecstasy, and restraint.

  Flanagan faced every day as though it were his last. Born with cystic fibrosis, he was told by doctors that he would not live long; yet he miraculously endured the disease for forty-three years. Raised in Glendora,

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  picks September 30, 2022

  Dean Smith

  Selections from three bodies of works on paper are featured in Dean Smith’s “The center is the edge of the threshold,” which the Oakland, California–born artist has been diligently refining since the early 2000s.

  Drawings from the “labyrinth” series, 2012–, are subtle but striking. On blemished vintage paper are dimensional, diagrammatic forms elegantly rendered in graphite. Rectangular structures appear frequently, suggesting monoliths or portals. On occasion, a faint orange pencil is delicately applied as a framing device that, as we see in untitled [ds_57], 2020, binds a pale, slightly upended

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  picks August 01, 2022

  “Lyrical Cool: A Tribute to Shirley Berman”

  While a student at Hollywood High, Shirley Morand was prevented from accepting a scholarship to the San Francisco School of Fine Arts by her father, who felt she didn’t need further education. Sometime later, she would receive a tap on the shoulder while in line for Cocteau’s 1930 film, The Blood of a Poet, at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles. The year was 1951 and she was instantly smitten with Wallace Berman, her pursuer and future spouse, a young well-read regular on the Central Avenue Jazz circuit who, by 1957, would arrive as a compelling assemblage artist and media synthesizer at his