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Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

at The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters, NYC
Reviewed by Angelica Villa

The Met’s Heavenly Bodies is a dramatic turn in the museum’s history, a scene where fashion’s indulgence and religious gravity meet in resemblance. In the Costume Institute’s largest exhibition, set in three locations across the museum’s medieval wing, the Anna Wintour Costume Center and the Met Cloisters, darkly lit in stone austerity against opulent detail, walls and figures are adorned in iconic couture and religious relics. Placing modern design amid the Met’s collection of medieval and Byzantine reliquaries creates a variegation of sensory response. The resulting display is a prismatic concoction of the religious, the secular, and all of their conflictions and resonations. [Read More…]

image

The Active And Eloquent Stills In Out In The Street

at Muzeumm, Los Angeles (through October 21)
Reviewed by Genie Davis

We ain’t gonna take what they’re handing out
When I’m out in the street
I walk the way I want to walk
When I’m out in the street
I talk the way I want to talk 
— Bruce Springsteen, “Out in the Street”

Thoughtfully, beautifully curated by Juri Koll, the group show Out in the Street, at Muzeumm through October 21st, is a presentation of both the gallery and The Venice Institute of Contemporary Art. The show features the photographic art of Asif Ahmed, Debe Arlook, Sunny Bak, Hasmik Bezirdzhyan, Nick Bradley, Rodrick Bradley, Larry Brownstein, Cosimo Cavallaro, Ray Carofano, Liz Chayes, Jeremiah Chechik, Diane Cockerill, Lynne Deutch, L. Aviva Diamond, Jenny Donaire, Doug Edge, Maureen Haldeman, Louis Jacinto, Josh “Bagel” Klassman, Juri Koll, Eric Kunsman, Stephen Levey, Lawrie Margrave, Leigh Marling, Alberto Mesirca, Stefanie Nafé, Ave Pildas, Osceola Refetoff, Dotan Saguy, Buku Sarkar, Lana Shmulevich, Carl Shubs, Jeffrey Sklan, Ted Soqui, Stephen Spiller, Stephanie Sydney, Edmund Teske, David Valera, and Jody Zellen. [Read More…]

art

Cloud Nine Soars at Torrance Art Museum

Reviewed by Genie Davis

It would be difficult to imagine a more ethereal, haunting, and prescient exhibition than Cloud Nine. Danial Nord’s solo project contains elements that are both seemingly mystical and sci-fi; it’s wonderfully unique, a merging of technology and sculptural art that reflects both the exhibition’s meaning, and how it is shaped. [Read More…]

film

art

Summer Wheat: Catch and Release

at Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles (Through October 27, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Considering the disheartening, divisive nature of our current political reality, the mind often drifts, yearning for some feminist utopia teeming with independent, iron-willed women. This mythical matriarchy is precisely the type of society Oklahoma-born, Brooklyn-based figurative painter Summer Wheat presents in her delightful current Shulamit Nazarian exhibition, Catch and Release. Bathed in the age-old aesthetics of Ancient Egyptian relief sculptures and Native American textiles, Wheat’s idyllic, vibrant visions depict groups of modern women performing the traditionally male task of fishing. Through these ornate, arcadian paintings, the artist not only subverts traditional gender roles, but also rejects the male gaze, and elevates historically ignored “women’s crafts” to a position of power and prestige. [Read More…]

The Line –>

Urban Death at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre

Reviewed by Hoyt Hilsman

Theme park horror nights are all the rage around Halloween. From Universal Studios to Knotts Berry Farm, the big corporate theme parks spare no expense to scare their customers, who flock to the events at this time of year. However, an underground theater company in North Hollywood has re-interpreted the “horror night” genre into an anti-theme park performance piece that has resonance far beyond simple scare tactics. [Read More…]

The Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Offers Whimsy But No Risks

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

With No Country For Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen brought the Western into a brutal, modern territory. With their remake of True Grit, they dusted off an American classic and polished it with star power, a dash of whimsy, and a mean sheen of menace. Now, the Coen Brothers revel in their love of the genre with the ambitious anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. As a big admirer of both their previous Westerns, I anticipated I’d be an easy mark for loving their latest. But while it’s stuffed with charming stars, colorful characters, and tales of life in the Wild West, this cowboy collection is clunky, indulgent, and ultimately underwhelming. [Read More…]

The Line

Hotel Modern: KAMP

at REDCAT, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Hoyt Hilsman

Hotel Modern is a Dutch theater collective that for more than twenty years have been presenting their unique brand of visual storytelling to international audiences. The group, which consists of Herman Helle, Pauline Kalker and Arlene Hoornweg, combine miniature sets with videography and music to create a haunting and engaging visual and theatrical experience. [Read More…]

David Lynch: I Was A Teenage Insect

at Kayne Griffin Corcoran (Through November 10, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Disturbing yet mesmerizing depictions of death, decay, and deformity bestrew beloved neo-noir director David Lynch’s latest collection of multimedia paintings, watercolors, and drawings currently on display at Kayne Griffin Corcoran. This series of dark, violent, and surreal meditations on childhood and adolescence offers a rare and tantalizing peek into the celebrated film legend’s perplexing psyche. [Read More…]

Visions of Fire and Fury In Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy

Reviewed by Alci Rengifo

The mythological still channels our innermost desires. Myths crystalize what we wish to be, or how we would like to divide the world in terms of good and evil, with a simplicity that is crystalline. This same mythic power fuels Mandy, a wild and haunting cinematic creation. A hallucinatory film with the logic of a nightmare, it manages to combine camp, horror and moments of profound drama in a bizarre yet beautiful canvas. Director Panos Cosmatos announces himself here as an original talent on par with other recent masters of trippy cinema like Nicolas Winding Refn or Guy Maddin. Yet while Cosmatos may bask in the kind of outrageous, visceral creativity more common in post-modern experimentation, his film is a myth forged out of deep fires. It is not an exaggeration to call it Homeric, for it is a journey that feels classic even as it takes place in a modern world. Completing this film’s strange power is Nicolas Cage, who delivers a performance of astounding fury, as if he were a fanatic engaged in holy war. There is a lot of blood in Mandy, as well as chainsaws, burning buildings, drugs and even animation, but it’s never shallow or stale. [Read More…]

Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable

Reviewed by Jill Connor

Garry Winogrand. Park Avenue, New York, 1959 [monkey in car, vertical]

Park Avenue, New York, 1959 [monkey in car, vertical]

Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer
2018 / 90-minutes
A Greenwich Entertainment Release
at Film Forum, NYC

When Garry Winogrand died unexpectedly in 1984, he left behind over 2,500 undeveloped rolls of film. Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable, directed by Sasha Waters Freyer, is a fascinating documentary that examines the quiet life of one of America’s most prominent postwar photographers, setting that in contrast to the professional career he had been most known for.  As a stringer who worked primarily for mass-print magazines such as LOOK and LIFE, Winogrand has long been associated with prominent subjects such as Marilyn Monroe, Mohammed Ali and John F. Kennedy. However, this film’s vast number of interviews — which include his first wife Adrienne Lebeau, Thomas Roma, Jeffrey Fraenkel, Todd Papageorge, Jeffrey Henson Scales, Shelley Rice, Laurie Simmons and Matthew Weiner — show Winogrand as someone who enjoyed his own invisibility while rendering serendipitous inconsistencies. [Read More…]

Mike Kelley’s Day Will Not Be Done

At Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills (Through September 28, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

With its brilliant flashing lights and thunderously ecstatic melodies blasting through the speakers, late conceptualist icon Mike Kelley’s (1954-2012) eponymous installation currently on display at Gagosian Beverly Hills flawlessly replicates the jubilant atmosphere of a rock concert. However, upon noticing two screens projecting videos of gospel singers, an illuminated movie marquee, and a gargantuan phallic rocket pointed towards the visitor, one comes to realize that Kelley here is delving into issues of post-war Americana, the Space Age, and the corresponding meteoric rise of rock ‘n’ roll. He also reveals this beloved genre’s roots in gospel music and dissects the bizarre and beautiful relationship between the sexual and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane. [Read More…]