In his 1940 essay “The Fall of Paris,” Harold Rosenberg lamented that geopolitical maneuvers, rising nationalism, and fascist aggression had brought about the decline of an almost-levitating capital of modernist culture—once an international “No-Place” of multiple perspectives—and wondered where modernism’s new centers would be and what forms they would take. Surely he did not have in mind an after-party at the Art Basel Miami Beach 2008 fair or an army of Hula-hoopers, marshaled by a German conceptualist, taking up rooftop positions in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Chinatown districts. But

For an artist who cites accidental elements in her practice, Eileen Quinlan is undeniably fixed on the parameters and the quantifiable conditions of making a photograph. While the images she produces are marked by bleeding colors and the incidental abstraction of common objects, Quinlan in her meticulous experimentations stages her materially driven subject matter with the precision and control of a set designer—even employing the trade secrets of commercial photography, such as smoke machines, filters, and strobe and key lighting. For her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, titled “Downtime,”

Given the ruinous economy and the resulting shrinkage of the art world, it’s hardly surprising that someone would literalize the collapse by squeezing a biennial exhibition into the space of an art fair booth. “Boofthle Booth-Booth: Deux Doox—The Hollywood Biennale,” a thirty-artist show organized by artist Mateo Tannatt, attempted to do just that, though the “booth” in question was Tannatt’s apartment, which for two years has doubled as the gallery Pauline, and the self-styled “Biennale” label was a parodic reach. As the subtitle “Deux Doox” implies, “Boofthle” was a sequel, and, like last