Current Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions:
Doug Simay's Best Picks

I spent 3 Doug-style-days in LA.  Man, did I see a lot of art.  But it was work.  The current-LA-artscape is not a visual treasure land.  Good shows are sort of like abalone – you can find ‘em but you gotta look hard.

Chinatown:
Fringe was just installing Marilla Palmer and Eric Leiser (through May 17).  What I saw of Palmer’s paintings and sculptures was both beautiful in the classic sense of art materials and conceptually provocative.  Her irrepressible creativity produces remarkable amalgamations.
Agathe Snow shows assemblaged found-object sculpture at Peres Projects (through May 3).  It is hard to present assemblage that is fresh and stands apart from the long history of accomplished masters of the technique.  But this work is smart and the components seem chosen for their color/structure rather than for their implied meaning.
Quoting from David Pagel (LA Times April 11, 2008): “Part of the power of (Macha Suzuki)’s sedate, well-adjusted sculptures resides in their capacity to translate the virtual space of painting into three dimensions.”  - at Sam Lee (through May 10).

Downtown:
Li Jin and Liu Qinghe at MoronoKiang (through April 26) are mid career proponents of the Chinese ink and brush techniques that China’s long aesthetic history has favored.  These two masters bring the honorable and much admired Chinese painting skills into the current time.  The paintings can be easily evaluated using Western critical theory but unswervingly remain proud of their Chinese heritage.  This is effective Chinese contemporary art (there is real substance here as compared with the Chinese neo-Pop stuff that now dominates the art marketplace).
Molly Barnes Collection at Pharmaka (through May 31) is a killer exhibition.  Molly was present during my visit and we enjoyed swapping stories about the artists/artworks of the last 30+ years in LA.  She has a tremendous collection and this is a joyous exhibition.

Culver City:
Wangechi Mutu at Susanne Vielmetter (through May 3) is a terrific 3^rd  LA exhibition for the artist.  The wall work is a pastiche of painting and collage.  The sculptures depend heavily on plastic packing tape. Her work is dense and complicated – yet efficient in getting to the point.  A large painting by her is in MOCA’s  Collecting Collections show (Bunker Hill through May 19).  To compare “then” with “now” demonstrates how effectively inventive this artist can be.  
Across the street at Billy Shire (through May 3) are paintings by Iva Morris (decorative realism) and Brian O’Connor (allegorical realism).  These two guys are very accomplished painters and their skill is worth experiencing.
Honor Frazier (through May 17) is showing paintings by Canadian artist, Andre Ethier.  Unusual, grotesque, surreal, symbolist paintings bring to mind James Ensor or Odilon Redon.
Christina Malbek at Kim Light (through June 14) starts with photographs taken in different cities.  She then uses the computer to cut/crop/recombine the images into a new scene.  This scene gets translated to canvas with airbrush using electric colors.  The work demonstrates how computer technology can assist in making the creative product without totally subverting it.
Laddie John Dill’s trademark concrete and glass wall sculptures are instantly recognizable.  His new work exhibited at LA Contemporary (through May 17) is cleaned up, more heroic, and confidently evolved from the last decades.

South Bay:
The Torrance Museum (through May 31) exhibits “PIX: Recent Photos from the Post-filmic Era”.  After the invention of photography, still photographs were state of the art.  Then there were linkages of many stills – film - and photography had a new state of the art.  How can a still photo be relevant in the post-filmic era?  This show has 8 LA basin artists who have answers to that question.

Beverly Hills:
Robert Graham is a master of the human form.  Looking at his heavy, black encaustic nudes on paper, is to marvel at how easy he makes a gesture do double duty as an expression and as a representation.
Judy Fox forms ribald sculptures made of poly-chromed terra cotta. You have to see to believe.  She goes beyond Duane Hanson as a hyperrealist sculptor.  Ace Beverly Hills (through May 17)
Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian (through April 26).  I am normally not a Kiefer fan. But this body of contemporary work is magnificent. In the world’s show-palaces there is no shortage of Kiefer on view – particularly in Europe. I think this is the best of his work I have yet seen.  

Bergamot:
Adonna Khare at Lora Schlesinger (through May 10).  This artist is at the top of her game in drawing. Regardless of one’s bias for what is best to draw using a pencil, Khare’s ability to render with a pencil is flawless and imaginative.
Salomon Huerta at Patrick Painter (through May 10) paints huge heads encased in Mexican wrestler masks.  The paintings are visually arresting and quite painterly with evidence of the artist’s brush.  They are more expressive than the cool, “low rider” approach to painting that launched his career. 

Mid Wilshire/West Hollywood:
Louis Stern exhibits Frederick Wight (through June 7).  Wight was a distinguished professor at UCLA.  He died in the very late 80’s.  Joni Gordon (Newspace) used to represent him and it appears that Stern has taken over that charge.  As these paintings age – they appeal to me more than ever.
Jared Pankin at Carl Berg (through May 17).  Using wood scraps and taxidermic animals Pankin creates rough, biomorphs that are exuberant and amongst the most imaginative and creative sculptures being done in LA today.
Dennis Hollingsworth has exuberant paintings at Michael Kohn (through May 31).  Impasto takes on a whole new dimension in these pigment-puddled abstracts.  This work makes CoBrA look adult. 

Show missed (damn!):  Bergamot: Kadzuo Kadonaga and Masami Teraoka opened 4/19.
Don’t miss: John Sonsini at ACME (April 26 – May 24). 

Have fun,
Doug   4/20/2008