Looking at Los Angeles

An examination of contemporary art created and exhibited in the film and television metropolis

Tim Hawkinson Apples and Bananas, 2010 Apple cores, banana peels, grape skin, twist ties, bread tabs, orange peel and bronze 9 1/2 x 4 x 3 1/2 inches. Courtesy Blum & Poe.

Looking at Los Angeles

Bikes, Bodies, and Blastulas: Tim Hawkinson Talks About His New Work

Looking at Los Angeles

Bikes, Bodies, and Blastulas: Tim Hawkinson Talks About His New Work

From intimate sculptures to mammoth collages, Tim Hawkinson (Season 2) gracefully creates tension between the playful and the profound.  His current exhibition at Blum & Poe continues longstanding threads while …

Looking at Los Angeles

Support Group

Looking at Los Angeles

Support Group

If you type the phrase “I need support” into Google, the first hit is a letter addressed to “Dear Sugar.” Sugar is the advice columnist for the Pop Sugar spin-off …

Looking at Los Angeles

Breaking the Rules: MOCA Reaches Out to a Younger Audience

Looking at Los Angeles

Breaking the Rules: MOCA Reaches Out to a Younger Audience

Last month, MOCA published a new book dedicated to engaging children with its permanent collection.  Aimed at children age 8-12, Breaking the Rules: What is Contemporary Art? exploring works by …

Liz Larner, 2010. Courtesy Regen Projects.

Looking at Los Angeles

Wholeheartedly Real

Looking at Los Angeles

Wholeheartedly Real

Judith Butler, the always agile theorist responsible for Gender Trouble, often says diplomatically dense things like, “a lesbian is what I have been being since college.” She would not say, …

Looking at Los Angeles

The Ring Festival and the Confined Deep

Looking at Los Angeles

The Ring Festival and the Confined Deep

All my windows look into windows of other apartments and, on warm days like those we’ve had lately, I’m set up for delicious eavesdropping. I like it best when my …

The Watts Towers, view of 99-foot tower, which contains the longest slender reinforced concrete column in the world. Courtesy www.wattstowers.us

Looking at Los Angeles

Watts Up: L.A. Struggles to Salvage its Public Art Centers

Looking at Los Angeles

Watts Up: L.A. Struggles to Salvage its Public Art Centers

Fifty years after public outcry stopped the city of Los Angeles from demolishing the world-famous Watts Towers, Angelenos once again rallied to rescue the complex from the City Council chopping …

Looking at Los Angeles

Mel Bochner’s Burnt Tongue

Looking at Los Angeles

Mel Bochner’s Burnt Tongue

Los Angeles galleries are brimming with minimal, kind-of-conceptual abstraction at the moment — Paul Davis’s successions of hinges and wood and Joe Fyfe’s felt and muslin Motherwell spin-offs at ACME; …

Los Angeles Theatre Marquee 35mm Production Still, Between Science and Magic, 2010. Courtesy the artist.

Looking at Los Angeles

This Magic Moment: Diana Thater, Jeffrey Wells at the Santa Monica Museum of Art

Looking at Los Angeles

This Magic Moment: Diana Thater, Jeffrey Wells at the Santa Monica Museum of Art

The Oscars, aka prom night for Hollywood, are just around the corner! Who does The Academy love more: the noble savage, the noble soldier, or the noble soldier–turned-savage? Are you …

AFP/Getty Image.

Looking at Los Angeles

I Am Not Neda

Looking at Los Angeles

I Am Not Neda

I drove into a Westwood parking garage late on Monday and saw that the attendant had been crying. After an uneasy moment–I wasn’t sure where compassion and polite distance met …

Ed Ruscha, "The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire," 1968, Oil on canvas. Courtesy edruscha.com.

Looking at Los Angeles

If You Can Remember the ’60s, You Weren’t There

Looking at Los Angeles

If You Can Remember the ’60s, You Weren’t There

When I moved from Berkeley to Los Angeles five years ago, I thought I was done living in a town that was devoted to perpetually remembering the ’60s. But I …

Looking at Los Angeles

Hollis Frampton Revival

Looking at Los Angeles

Hollis Frampton Revival

Last November, I attended a panel discussion, held at LACMA, on photographs of man-altered landscape. The images in question—coolly composed prints by Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz, and Robert Adams, among …

Mr Deitch's Summery Treat 2006, Courtesy Saatchi Online Daily Magazine; LA's Museum of Contemporary Art, Courtesy SwankeGallery.com

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Pass the Deitch-ie

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Pass the Deitch-ie

If you’re like me, you’ve already been inundated with a whole range of opinions on MOCA’s announcement this week, and it’s only Thursday. Whether they are ultimately booing or cheering, …

Jeff Koons, "Puppy," steel, soil, plants, June 6 - September 5, 2000, at Rockefeller Center

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking At Los Angeles: Against The Deluge

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking At Los Angeles: Against The Deluge

Looking back before moving forward is such an endearing habit—like brushing your teeth before breakfast—that it’s hard to resent the sweeping, often grandiloquent judgments that accompany the end of each …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Squeak Carnwath’s Unique Lexicon Channels the Universal

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Squeak Carnwath’s Unique Lexicon Channels the Universal

“Most of life is invisible to the naked eye,” proclaims Invisible, a painting in Squeak Carnwath’s new exhibition at Peter Mendenhall Gallery in Los Angeles.  At first glance, it appears …

Looking at Los Angeles

Guts Get Out of Hand

Looking at Los Angeles

Guts Get Out of Hand

On 7 AM on Thanksgiving morning, I was sitting on my aunt’s couch in Atlanta, watching news coverage about the “uninvited, well dressed Virginia couple” that had crashed Obama’s dinner …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: The Public School

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: The Public School

Gold Leafing. Sadism & Masochism. Practical Electro-Mechanisms. The Coming Insurrection. What do these topics have in common? Perhaps with some head-scratching we could ferret out a few threads, but here’s …

Looking at Los Angeles

Public Art, Private Viewing

Looking at Los Angeles

Public Art, Private Viewing

When I heard that Marilyn Minter’s video, Green Pink Caviar, would be showing on the Mezzanine of The Standard Hotel, I imagined something exquisite: maybe the projection would appear on …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Westward Expansion

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Westward Expansion

In the previous Looking at Los Angeles post, Catherine Wagley explored the still-healing schism of East and West Germany through an Angelino lens. Meanwhile, the premiere last night of Season …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Berlin Wall Falls in L.A.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Berlin Wall Falls in L.A.

Tuesday night, former U.S. Ambassador Richard Barkley called East Berlin a “profoundly boring place,” drab and depressing compared to other places he’d been. His callous observation loosely framed a panel …

Looking at Los Angeles

The Last Days of Pompeii in LA

Looking at Los Angeles

The Last Days of Pompeii in LA

The Los Angeles art world still has a lot of the laissez-faire approachability that endeared it back in the ’60s, which is why so many artists migrate to L.A. and …