Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford
Ongoing
Steve Turner Contemporary Art
Peering between the louvered windows from the top floor of the monolithic Broad Contemporary Art Museum, one can barely make out Mark Bradford's new, on-going project on the roof of Steve Turner Contemporary Art just across Wilshire Boulevard. Once spotted, the message is clear: two huge words, "Help Us", painted in white against a black background. Like an S.O.S. following some mass disaster, the words are politically charged, and in the shadow of Broad, they become a barbed and pointed critique. To watch a video of Mark Bradford's "Help Us" click here.
Erika Vogt
Erika Vogt
Until 7 June
Daniel Hug
Erika Vogt's unique processes of creating photographs, film and video often become entangled and confused, resulting in some very compelling images. Inserting her own image into these obscure photographic spaces, Vogt creates a unique form of portraiture that doubles, negates, inverts and often rejects the artist's "self."
Andrea Cohen
Andrea Cohen
Until 21 June
Walter Maciel
Andrea Cohen's sculptures are crafted through conglomerations of natural and synthetic materials--Styrofoam, plastic, wood, paper, pool toys, hand-dyed vinyl, industrial packaging. Through their effortless balance, these free-standing constructions reveal complex topographies that seem suspended on the verge of collapse.
Sandeep Mukherjee
Sandeep Mukherjee
Until 21 June
Sister
In this two-part show that occupies Sister's main gallery and a new exhibition venue two blocks away, Sandeep Mukherjee is given ample space for his cosmic abstract paintings to resonate. Fluid, detailed and slightly psychedelic, Mukherjee's compositions play with modernism and its history while defining their own language.
Shana Lutker
Shana Lutker
Until 14 June
Suzanne Vielmetter
In her first solo show with Vielmetter, Lutker mines history to emphasize the power plays between individuals and civilizations. Her sources range from an appropriated newspaper ad placed by Thomas Jefferson to Greek architecture and what looks like an Aztec temple in this group of sculpture, photographs and drawings.
Margie Schnibbe
Margie Schnibbe
Until 14 June
Circus Gallery
Margie Schnibbe is an artist that supports much of her practice through another art form, that of producing adult films. This solo show of drawing, painting and "soft" sculpture will double as the set for a new pornographic film she will produce in the gallery. By transposing one industry onto another, Schnibbe seems to probe the economic drives of both. And if her drawings weren't so conceptually clever and her sculptures were any less compelling, this whole undertaking would be all too gimmicky. Luckily, Schnibbe is delightfully sincere.
Emilie Halpern
Emilie Halpern
Until 28 June
Anna Helwing
Emilie Halpern's photography, video and sculpture delicately hinge on atmospheric phenomena, natural wonders, scientific magic, and hopeless sentimentality. This new show promises to build on the quiet and simplicity that Halpern is so talented at picturing.
Naotaka Hiro , film still from 'It On It'
Naotaka Hiro
Until 7 June
The Box
The Box's upstairs gallery features two of Naotaka Hiro's performative videos as well as an installation of the object the artist has long been fixated with, a human scull. Packed in white sticky rice and suspended from a wire, the sculpture becomes a kind of aesthetic anthropology, an idea that continues in a video made in collaboration with Sid M. Duenas that screens in the basement gallery.
Ellen Berkenblit
Ellen Berkenblit
Until 28 June
Michael Benevento
It's hard to believe this will be Ellen Berkenblit's first solo show in Los Angeles; her loose large-scale paintings seem fit for the lax west coast bent towards art making, and particularly the kinds of work that emerged from L.A. in the 1990s. Here, it's possible that Berkenblit's familiar figure may adopt some new significations.
Monika Baer
Monika Baer
Richard Telles Fine Art
Monika Baer's paintings, drawings and collage turn acculturated fragments of everyday lives into potent signs, loaded with meaning. Her new show pictures the breast-like forms abstracted, repeated, disembodied and reduced to simple geometries. Protruding from seams that run vertically down each canvas, the flattened forms hover between baby blue grounds.
Catherine Taft is a Los Angeles-based writer and critic. Her writing on contemporary art and culture has appeared in magazines including Modern Painters, Art Review, Artforum.com, and Metropolis M and in various museum catalogs. Her recent projects include curating a series of video and film screenings throughout LA, and research and curatorial assistance for the Getty Museum's exhibition, 'California Video' (March 2008).
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