Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

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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…]

The Active And Eloquent Stills In Out In The Street

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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…]

Summer Wheat: Catch and Release

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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…]

Willard Hill: Untitled Works From 2016-2018

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at The Good Luck Gallery, Los Angeles (through October 14)
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner

“Imagination is greater than knowledge.” –Albert Einstein
“Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.” –Frank Zappa

Willard Hill exhibits his exuberant mixed- media (mostly painted masking taped figures and animals) sculptures at The Good Luck Gallery. Hill was a sixty-two year old cook and avid fisherman who suddenly started making his objects as a way to rehabilitate himself after a hospital stay. He just grabbed whatever materials were around, such as masking tape, garbage bags and toothpicks. That was twenty years ago. Then two years ago, the 82 year-old Hill had his first solo art show at The Good Luck Gallery. [Read more…]

Lari Pittman’s Portraits Of Textiles & Portraits Of Humans

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at Regen Projects, Los Angeles (Through October 27, 2018)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Legendary Los Angeles-based graphic painter Lari Pittman’s kaleidoscopic bust portraits and textile-inspired abstracts currently on display at Hollywood’s Regen Projects plunge into the fabric of the subconscious mind. Marking the artist’s eighth solo exhibition at the gallery, these surreal, psychedelic images beg the viewer to consider the connection between the portrait and the still-life, the personal and the universal. [Read more…]

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s The Chiefest Of Ten Thousand

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at the new Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (through November 3)
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner                                     

   My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
—King James James Bible

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s exhibit, entitled The Chiefest of Ten Thousand, at the sparkling new Nino Mier Gallery is as complex and open to interpretation as the Bible passage that the title comes from. Dupuy-Spencer (who is half Jewish and half Catholic) explores the mysteriousness of religion, friendship, love and sex in her large-scale paintings. [Read more…]

The Moth Costume In Hammer Projects: Petrit Halilaj

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at Hammer Museum (Through January 20, 2019)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

While butterflies dancing on a sunlit breeze may epitomize the ephemeral as well as beauty, hope, and transformation, for Kosovan installation artist Petrit Halilaj, the oft-forgotten moth is a far more resilient and tenacious totem. In his eponymous Los Angeles debut currently on display at the Hammer Museum, this celebrated conceptualist shines a light on these nocturnal insects and their many symbolic meanings. Here Halilaj collaborates with his mother to present a poignant collection of oversized moth costumes made with traditional Kosovar tapestries, including qilim and dyshek carpets. [Read more…]

David Lynch: I Was A Teenage Insect

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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…]

Mike Kelley’s Day Will Not Be Done

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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…]

Jack Whitten: Self Portrait with Satellites

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at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Genie Davis

That the late Jack Whitten was an artist of great depth and perception is a given. But the truly fascinating thing, the haunting, resonant thing about the man’s work is its sense of timelessness and immortality. His mastery may not have been fully recognized in life, but with concurrent shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and here in Los Angeles at Hauser & Wirth, Whitten is finally getting a bit of his due, and the timing scarcely matters. Physically he’s gone, but spiritually, his presence is stronger than ever. [Read more…]

I Don’t Like Fiction, I Like History

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

 Realism is best suited to convey the frightening idiosyncrasies of our time. — Duane Hanson

What is reality and how should an artist explore this concept in his or her work? Rejecting art history’s long-standing predilection for idealism, the five hyperrealistic photographers and sculptors on currently on display in I Don’t Like Fiction, I Like History, at Gagosian Beverly Hills present a refreshingly authentic and unvarnished viewing experience. [Read more…]

Forgotten Roots: How Los Angeles Shaped Robert Rauschenberg

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At LACMA (Through February 10, 2019)
Reviewed by Emily Nimptsch

Revealing the divine in the forsaken and the sublime in the mundane, beloved late Neo-Dadaist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) pens his love letter to Los Angeles in LACMA’s current retrospective Rauschenberg: In And About L.A. Although typically associated with the New York art scene of the 1950s and 60s, this iconic collagist actually derived a great deal of creative inspiration from this sprawling metropolis and its sun-drenched shores. [Read more…]

Forcella Reigns: The Men Who Play Cards

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at ZJU Theater, North Hollywood (through 9 September)
Reviewed by Hoyt Hilsman

Neapolitian painter and set designer Francesca Bifulco and her collaborator, musician and sound designer Alex Schetter, have recreated a virtual Naples streetscape that focuses on the timeless ritual of men playing cards. The title of the installation, Forcella Reigns, refers to the rundown neighborhood in Naples that is overrun with violence and organized crime. Yet amidst the poverty and chaos of the Forcella neighborhood, Bifulco has observed patterns of life that are universal in their richness. [Read more…]

In Paris: 1,2,3 Data Group Show; Suter’s Radial Grammar; and VHILS’ Fragments Urbains

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Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx

1,2,3 Data group show, Batia Suter’s Radial Grammar, and VHILS’ Fragments Urbains are three exhibitions of contemporary art taking place in Paris this season. While they vary greatly in form and content, they all use found materials as the source for their art and address the relationship of humans to their environment, both natural and manmade.

VHILS, Fragments Urbains (19 May – 29 June 2018)
at Centre Centquatre, Paris

The Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, who goes by the street tag VHILS (his favorite letters to spray as a teenager), came to fame for his street art first in his native Seixal, and then in a number of metropolises around the world. He created images by stripping, tearing, scratching through layers of posters on billboards, in what he calls an archeological process. [Read more…]

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

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at the Morgan Library and Museum, NYC
Reviewed by Jed Perl

Catalog of the exhibition edited by Joel Smith
Fundación MAPFRE/Aperture, 246 pp., $50.00
Courtesy of The New York Review of Books

This is what the great photographer Brassaï, who spent a lifetime recording the merry-go-round of twentieth-century Paris, had to say about his work: “I hunt for what is permanent.” Peter Hujar, who photographed New York and died in the city in 1987, could have said the same thing. Hujar’s achievement, the subject of a compact, engrossing retrospective now at the Morgan Library and Museum, has a nerve-wracking power. Here is an artist who yearns for the certainty of forever while refusing to deny the indeterminacy of the present. Hujar explores a considerable range of subjects. The exhibition, entitled “Peter Hujar: Speed of Life” includes portraits of friends, erotic nudes, nocturnal cityscapes, and studies of animals in the countryside. Hujar responds to different subjects in different ways. He’s there for the subject. The work never suggests a signature style. Avidity itself is his style. Henry Miller called Brassaï the eye of Paris. Peter Hujar is the eye of New York. [Read more…]

Jess: Secret Compartments

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Reviewed by Shana Nys Dambrot
at Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (through September 7, 2018)

A lifetime-spanning survey of works by Jess (1923-2004) is bound to be a bit meta — because the work that Jess produced across his long career was itself always already a survey of his own life and times. From his earliest paintings in the 1950s to his latter-day collage-based compositions made well into the 1990s, with drawing, sculpture, and video collaborations along the way, Jess was at every moment consciously assembling an archive of his own obsessions. These included but were not limited to literature (especially James Joyce), history, science, mythology, flowers, cats, magazines, tag sales, and interior design. His voracious visual appetite ranged from dreamy homoerotic fantasy to pragmatic current-events clippings, and above all he loved a good story. [Read more…]

Detouring Through Art, History & Language In Cosmic Traffic Jam

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Reviewed Ellen C. Caldwell

Given the current political climate in the U.S., it is no surprise that many artists here are choosing to overtly and directly address politics in their work. At Zevitas Marcus in Culver City, their summer group show Cosmic Traffic Jam does just that, welcoming a wide array of artists of color to use painting to explore politics. [Read more…]

Immersive Forays Into Klimt, Schiele and Hundertwasser

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at Atelier des Lumières, Paris (through 11 November 2018)
Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx

Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Imagine entering a large raw space plunged in darkness. A few structures barely emerge out of the gloom, adding complexity to the basic box: a cube, a rectangular cuboid, and a cylinder. Images start fading in or flaring up on theblack surfaces. Hugely enlarged photographs of people, buildings, bridges, paintings by super famous artists such as Van Gogh and Picasso and Michelangelo fill sequentially the vertical planes. Decorative or architectural elements from every period — balustrades, cornices, columns, metal arches, clockworks are projected on the smaller structures and on the floor. The photographic or graphic elements or details from the paintings duplicate, triplicate, multiply, creating a rhythmic composition. Blown-up out of all proportions, they are then shrunk back to flash, strobe, fade-out, zoom-by at high speed, making it all the more surprising that warnings for epileptics are not issued at the entrance. The experience is not unlike standing at Times Square at night, but the honks of the city are replaced by a classical music track, and fewer people mull around gaping at the bright spectacle. In fact, there is no need to even move, as the show takes place all around, and people do sit or even lie down. [Read more…]

Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain

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at The Autry Museum, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner

“For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face…” — I Corinthians
“In today’s world, love, art and magic are greatly needed” — Fritz Scholder

Things You Know But Cannot Explain is the poetic title of the exquisite Rick Bartow retrospective at The Autry Museum. A heady brew of neo-expressionist drawing, painting and sculpture with lashings of Bacon, Basquiat, Kitaj, Scholder and even Nathan Olivera, this is a show not to be missed. Beautifully installed, with small videos strategically placed around with the artist candidly talking of his life in illuminating ways that enhance the viewer’s understanding of his work. No art jargon here. Just plainspoken words by the artist himself, who had struggled with alcoholism, PTSD and, towards the end of his life, two strokes (from which he would recover). It seems, upon further examination, that the title of the exhibit is more specific than poetic. After his strokes, Bartow knew “things” that he could not explain. [Read more…]