Openings
Saturday the twelfth is the busiest LA day I have written up all year, and it is not close. Thirty odd rooms open between noon and eight across Melrose Hill, La Brea, the Arts District, Boyle Heights and Glassell Park, which is four separate trips pretending to be one night, so build a route before you leave and accept that you will miss most of it. Thursday is the calmer night and the better one for looking: Gagosian and Sprüth Magers twenty minutes apart, Chris Sharp on the east side, and Karma open for a book launch with two shows still hanging. Wednesday is one room, the Dunham at Matthew Brown. The eighteenth is still coming and it is still bigger, which should tell you what kind of month this is.
Wednesday, September 9
Carroll Dunham
Dunham paints in hard outline and flat color, bathers and trees and bodies drawn with a bluntness that has not softened in forty years. It is the only thing opening in the city on Wednesday, which means for one night you can look at it properly.
SourceThursday, September 10
Jia Aili
Aili paints in oil on linen, then builds a second layer in acrylic pen on plexiglass and mounts it in front of the canvas in a custom frame. The two planes slide against each other as you move, so this is a show that punishes standing still, and Camden Drive is empty enough on a Thursday to actually walk it.
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John Baldessari
Baldessari made objects for decades and almost nobody showed them, so this is a room of three dimensional work by an artist everyone knows flat, from photographs and text. Doors open a day before the show officially does, which is the reception, and the Miracle Mile is the one stretch of Wilshire where you can park once and walk the block.
SourceRandy Wray
The show itself does not open until the eighteenth, but Karma opens the doors Thursday for the book, which is the only way to be in that room on a weeknight this month. The two closings are still hanging, so one Thursday stop covers three things.
SourceAdam Higgins
I do not know Higgins's work and I am going anyway, because Sharp's program has earned that much from me. Five to eight on the east side, which is the only Thursday option that is not Beverly Hills or Wilshire.
SourceFriday, September 11
The Perez Bros.
The brothers paint lowrider culture at close range, chrome and flake and upholstery done with the patience of people who have actually done the bodywork. Chung King Road is a short pedestrian row and the reception spills into it, which is the only night all year that block behaves like a party.
SourceSaturday, September 12
June Edmonds
Edmonds builds a painting out of short dabbed strokes in vertical bands, which is a way of making a flag that never quite agrees to become one. First of three opening at Mateo Street on Saturday, the densest single address of the week in this city.
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Sherin Guirguis
Guirguis cuts and layers hand dyed paper into forms lifted from Egyptian architecture, so the work reads as ornament until you notice it is doing structural work. Same building as the Edmonds and the Huynh, so one door gets you three shows.
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Phung Huynh
Huynh draws on pink donut boxes, which is a Cambodian American story told on the only surface that could really carry it. Third of the three at Mateo Street and the one I would save for last, once the other two have set the register.
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Bridget Mullen
Mullen stamps, blots and mirrors her figures until faces double and slip, and she now has enough control over the accident that it has stopped reading as chance. Six to eight on Saturday, one of the few reception times anyone in this city bothered to publish.
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Daniel Gibson
Gibson paints the Imperial Valley he grew up in, figures and desert scrub pushed into a palette hotter than the landscape actually runs. Same reception as the Mullen, and La Brea is fifteen minutes from Parker, so those two pair before you go downtown.
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Marley Freeman
Freeman paints small and in a color register that takes a minute to adjust to, worked thin enough that the weave of the linen keeps coming through. Parker has been closed for installation, so Saturday is the first look at it.
SourceTommy May, Jonathan Ryan, Falon Stutzman
Three shows at once from a gallery that is not on my list yet, which is my error and not theirs. It is four doors from Karma, so the last days and the new rooms are the same stop.
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Ry Rocklen
Rocklen casts and tiles ordinary objects, trophies and mattresses and food, until the thing is still itself but can no longer be used. Ochi is next door at 605 and Baert is three minutes away on Clinton, so Melrose Hill is four shows on foot.
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Adrienne Elise Tarver
Tarver paints Black women half hidden in dense foliage, so you spend the first minute working out where the figure is. Lenworth McIntosh opens in the same room the same afternoon.
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Roxanne Jackson
Jackson glazes ceramic into mutant animal forms that are lurid on purpose and better in person than in any photograph of them. Five to seven is early, and The Pit has moved out of Glendale to Glassell Park, so check the address before you drive.
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Roberta Gentry
Gentry paints flat interior scenes with a mirror doing most of the work, and the reception runs six to nine, later than anything else that night. Sources disagree on which Track 16 space this is in, so confirm downtown before you climb to the tenth floor.
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Carole Vanderlinden
Vanderlinden works small and builds paint in dry chalky layers, so the pictures look older than they are and reward getting close. Karma is also open Thursday evening for the Randy Wray book launch, so you can catch both closings then and skip the Saturday scramble.
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Dictation from the Other Side
Whitcomb has pulled automatic drawing and spiritualist practice into one room, which runs through more of the twentieth century than most galleries will say out loud. Same address and same last day as the Vanderlinden, and the same Thursday window if you want it quiet.
SourceSaturday, September 19
Raffi and Al's
Raffi and Al's has the whole gallery through the nineteenth and the title is the only description anyone has published, which is either confidence or an oversight. Night Gallery is ten minutes from Vielmetter, so pair them and make one trip east.
SourceOn view
Patrick Wilson
Wilson lays flat bands of acrylic with squeegees and tape, then sands and reglazes until the edges go soft and the surface stops looking made. It opened two days before Labor Day with no fanfare, which means you can have it to yourself this week, before the eighteenth turns Santa Fe Avenue into a parking problem.
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Submissions
If you run a gallery in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York and you want a show considered, send it to me directly. I read everything that comes in. I include what I can write two honest sentences about, which is never everything, and I will tell you nothing if the answer is no. There is no charge for inclusion and I do not take listings from an agency unless a gallery contact is attached.
- Gallery name and street address
- Artist
- Exhibition title
- Opening date and closing date
- Reception start and end time
- Show URL
- Press image and the caption you want run
If your gallery is not one I check every week, say so in the first line and I will add it to the list. That happens more often than it should.
