Rob Pruitt
Rob Pruitt
Until 19 April
Mary Goldman
Man of mystery and intrigue, Rob Pruitt always seems to keep everyone guessing by coming up with some new art form: flea markets at the Frieze art fair, a display of office chairs at Artla and now for his first solo show at Mary Goldman, Pruitt delivers these gorgeous and gracefully rendered near life-size portraits in conte crayon on brown Kraft paper. 'Thinking Cap', a Malcolm X baseball cap sub lit with neon so it hovers like the lowrider cars, steals the show in the back room.
Wanchegi Mutu, "A'gave you", 2008
Wangechi Mutu
Until 3 May
Suzanne Vielmetter
Wangechi Mutu's installation of felt walls, packing tape mountains and framed collages, hung salon-style, radically transforms the gallery. The collages reveal the intricate detail of this artist's vision as if broken down frame by frame. Though they are not as extraordinary as the giant collages on Mylar, they allow the viewer to focus in on the surreal and biting world of Wangechi Mutu.
Daniel Dove, 'Autopsy', 2007
Daniel Dove
Until 24 May
Cherry and Martin
Daniel Dove, yet another MFA Yale graduate, is making a splash in the art world. Dove's paintings really do merit the attention, with their dual focus on representational images derived from contemporary America and his clever manipulation of space on the canvas.
Justin Beal
Justin Beal
Until 19 April
Acme
Please wash your hands before entering Justin Beal's first solo show at ACME, which reveals sculptures made with clean glass surfaces on metal armatures and sometimes wrapped in cling film. Though the press release spoke of 'free radicals' and 'anti-oxidants', I felt like had visited a bathroom of the future where germs were kept to a minimum and everything really was made of melamine.
Stef Driesen
Stef Driesen
Until 12 April
Marc Foxx
Antwerp native Stef Driesen does not disappoint with an earthy and typically muted Belgian palette of browns, ochres and black. The paintings, which start off very much in the figurative realm, move beyond the body to suggest cave-like landscapes. Occasionally a limb or the shape of a body appears fleetingly. The most successful paintings carve out space on the canvas into another realm, where pools of muted light emerge from underground realms or darkness penetrates.
Agathe Snow
Agathe Snow
Until 3 May
Peres Projects
As I write this Agathe Snow is hurtling across America in a rented U-Haul van. Her life belongings, which include loo-roll, desks, dirty laundry, her performance partner Marianne, a guy named Pat and her pet bird Alzheimer, are packed into the back, which also doubles up as a makeshift studio. Just days ago, Snow was evicted from her Chinatown apartment in the heel of downtown New York when a hedge fund bought the building. The artist will show up in LA's Chinatown just in the nick of time to make a performance art piece, where the Agathe Snow Massive will dig to China with a q-tip - earwax cleaner to you and I. Snow's next U-Haul stop is Marfa, Texas for a three-person show. Hell, it beats paying rent!
Cathy Akers
Cathy Akers
Until 17 May
Honor Fraser
In the project room at Honor Fraser gallery, emerging artist Cathy Akers shows installations which reveal a woman's world in miniature. The figurines, which look like they might have been made with marzipan or some sweet confectioner's fare, have clearly escaped the wedding cake. In 'Hertopia', a fabulous diorama, one of three in the show, Akers' ladies are free to misbehave. They can be glad, mad and really really BAD - where do I sign up?
Drew Heitzler
Drew Heitzler
Until 10 May
Redling Fine Art
Drew Heitzler, who created a collaborative film with Amy Granat, which is in the Whitney Biennial T.S.O.Y.W. (2007), shows a series of large-scale stills from the film for his first solo show at Redling Fine Art. Just one year back Heitzler, Justin Beal (showing at Acme) and Flora Wegman were the brains and brawn behind The Mandrake in Culver City; I guess pulling pints works as they are storming the city with their own solo shows.
Cynthia Ona Innis
Cynthia Ona Innis
Until 3 May
Walter Maciel
Cynthia Ona Innis' images look like they might have been caught in a fisherman's net. Soft, undulating amoebic shapes glide across the canvas, recalling jellyfish, shoals of fish in cool blues, green and earth browns.
Frèderic Chaubin
Storefront for Architecture
Until 17 May
My first Storefront experience in New York was a performance, 'Who moves these walls anyway?' with Vito Aconcci and numerous women with conical scarlet wigs dressed in black, moving in and out of the revolving doors and on to Kenmare Street. It was as bizarre and exciting a New York night as any I can remember. That the Storefront is coming to LA - even if temporarily - is a bellwether of the rapid pace of change in La la Land. On show is 'CCCP', [Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed], which examines architecture of the last two decades of the Soviet Union, photographed by Frèderic Chaubin.
London native Emma Gray writes about the arts in Los Angeles and was the former West Coast Editor of ArtReview magazine. As well as being the LA correspondent for Saatchi Online's magazine, she writes the L.A. Confidential column on Artnet.com.
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