Writing in these pages in 2013, critic Bruce Hainley asked, “Aren’t the ‘life,’ ‘body,’ and ‘face’ of Michael Jackson in the running for some of the most abstract events of the last century?” Indeed, in his lifetime, Jackson complicated notions around his own race, gender, and cultural identity, and his transformation (what Hainley pointed to as “transgendering”) took place before a critical public eye. Todd Gray was Jackson’s exclusive personal photographer in the late 1970s and early 1980s—and thus enjoyed a proximity that allowed him a privileged view of the celebrity in construction—and many

“RUN 12: God is a Jacket” was Susan Cianciolo’s first exhibition in Los Angeles since her 2016 survey of works from the 1990s to the then present at 356 S. Mission Rd. There, her kits—Fluxus-inspired cardboard boxes packed with handmade clothing and ephemera—featured prominently. Here, Cianciolo offered another means of retrospection in framing the show through RUN, the label she managed between 1995 and 2001. A willfully inefficient production system, predicated on improvisatory and seemingly ludic collaborations involving friends and family members with varying technical skills, it yielded