The Magazine

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RIOT MATERIAL is LA’s premier literary-cultural magazine with an eye on art, word and forward-aiming thought. We likewise focus on niche cinema — Cinema Disordinaire is our best of — Riot Sounds (tracks representing the best in new music) and the latest in Jazz. Our vision, much in the spirit of this great city, is ever-global, working as we do with the best writers, artists, critical and imaginative thinkers from around the world.

We welcome your ideas for reviewing art, literature, music and film, and will consider interviews, profiles of interesting personalities and scenes, social and political commentary, and illustrations entering the public discourse from angles preferably humorous, satirical or of lacerating wit.

If pursuing the review, we encourage you to lean toward an era not long passed when reviews themselves were of an art, a distillation of blood and breath. To that end, let your literary heart, which is adverse to formula, lead.

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Proposals can be sent to submissions(at)riotmaterial.com, with subject lines such as Review, Interview, Illustration, etc — designations adding considerably to our timeliness in response.

Thank you in advance!
RM | Los Angeles
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RIOT MATERIAL

Publisher | Editor-in-Chief
C von Hassett

Co-Conspirator
Rachel Reid Wilkie

A Pitch-Black Comedic Masterwork In Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko South Korean writer/director Bong Joon-ho has been thrilling critics and genre fans since 2006, when he unleashed his rambunctious yet heartbreaking creature-feature The Host. He’s awed us again and again with marvelous movies like the mind-bending murder-mystery Mother, the star-stuffed dystopian drama Snowpiercer, and the whimsical yet brutal fantasy-adventure Okja. By […]

Maria Lassnig’s Ways of Being

at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx In the self portrait Du oder Ich (You Or Me), Maria Lassnig points one gun at the viewer, the other at herself. Either I kill you or I kill myself, or both. Her face expresses fear, dismay, perhaps disgust, but not aggression. If […]

Activating Absence In Lenz Geerk’s Mixed Blessings

at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles (through 12 October) Reviewed by Eve Wood It’s very difficult to create a cohesive and engaging narrative with a suite of only five paintings. It’s inevitable that some works appear more central to the narrative structure than others, and in many cases the viewer is left out of the narrative […]

In Montparnasse: The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dali

Reviewed by John Biscello In Montparnasse: The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dali by Sue Roe Penguin, 295pp., $28.50 A fish rides a bicycle into the Seine. The fish begins to drown and then remembers that it is a fish and starts to fly off into the pipe-smoke colony of clouds. The […]

Richard Stanley Returns With Sci-Fi Head-Spinner, Color Out Of Space

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko Richard Stanley is a filmmaker arguably less famous than infamous. Though he’s directed a pair of thrillers, three docs, and a string of music videos, he might be best known for being fired from the helm of the 1996 studio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Savagely Sharp, One Cut Of The Dead Is So Much More Than Its Buzz Suggests

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko “You have to see it,” I was told again and again by ardent admirers of One Cut Of The Dead. This Japanese zombie-comedy has been bouncing all over the world from one film festival to the next, picking up praise with every stop. But the breathless buzz was strangely, annoyingly vague. There were […]

Taikai Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit Is A Bold But Fumbled Entry In His Lost Boy Trilogy

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko Taika Waititi loves a lost boy. His latest, Jojo Rabbit, is the third coming-of-age comedy the Kiwi filmmaker has crafted that centers on a young boy facing trauma by embracing fantasy. 2010’s Boy ollowed a bullied 11-year-old, who fantasizes that his absentee father isn’t the despicable criminal everyone says, but instead a mix […]

Embracing The (Untitled) Void In Lester Monzon’s Fail Better

at Edward Cella Gallery, Los Angeles (through October 26) Reviewed by Eve Wood I’ve always been partial to exhibitions with oddly self-depreciating titles, and Lester Monzon’s Fail Better is definitely a doozie. A phrase from Samuel Beckett’s novella, Worstward Ho, the original quote reads “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” […]

The Surreal Spirit Of Salvador Simo Busom’s Buñuel In The Labyrinth Of The Turtles

Reviewed by Alci Rengifo An animated movie by GKIDS Films about one of the great iconoclasts and rebels of the cinema is fittingly surreal when the subject in question is Luis Buñuel. The Spanish master has been conjured in numerous films about other people over the years, from his comic-light appearance in Woody Allen’s Midnight […]

Terry Allen’s The Exact Moment It Happens in The West

at LA Louver (through September 28) Reviewed by Eve Wood Entering into Terry Allen’s universe is not unlike the imagined sensation of standing on an egg as it rolls across a hard wood floor, never stopping long enough to crack. The process by which we come to understand and appreciate his work requires a level […]

On Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

By Seren Sensei Toni Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, when she was 39 years old. By this time she was a divorced single mother of two sons and a respected teacher with a master’s degree in English from Cornell. She was an established a senior editor at Random House, the only Black […]

Waad And Hamza al-Kateab, Edward Watts, On Syria And Their New Film, For Sama

By Cynthia Biret For Sama is an extraordinary journey into war through the intimate lens of a woman who, in the course of five grueling years, also becomes a mother. From the 2011 uprisings in Aleppo, Syria, to her daily life in an area under never-ending siege, director Waad al-Kateab offers an unprecedented look into the lives […]

Narrative Painting In Los Angeles

at Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica (through August 31) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner The streets were dark with something more than night. –Raymond Chandler We tell stories in order to live. –Joan Didion The City of Stars, sometimes known as “LaLaLand” — our often misunderstood Los Angeles — has always had a dark side. […]

Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale Is A Savagely Brilliant Masterpiece

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko It’s rare that a press screening comes with a warning. But in the wake of reported walkouts, invites to see Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale came with a warning. In red font, critics were alerted that the film would contain “sexual violence towards women, violence towards children, and violence motivated by racism.” Since […]

Reconsidering Content In Open Call Group 2

at The Shed Bloomberg Building, NYC (through August 25) Reviewed by Jill Conner When The Shed opened in April, it was roundly panned by the cultural press, despite the fact that it is currently the most dynamic platform for emerging, contemporary art made by artists who live and work in New York City. The rough, daily […]

Punch Surveys Sex, Celebrity, Religion And Self-Image

at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (through August 17) Reviewed by Genie Davis Curated by artist Nina Chanel Abney, Punch, at Jeffrey Deitch in mid-city, beautifully assaults the viewer with color, exciting shapes, and vibrant figuration. The current exhibition is an expansion of one presented at Deitch’s New York outpost last year; here the focus is primarily […]

The Aesthetic Of Nostalgia In Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood

By Alci Rengifo Nostalgia has replaced epochs in the modern culture. There is the increasing feeling that while technology certainly races ahead in its advancement, culturally we are obsessively looking to the past. Vinyl is sought after by the kids who are convinced it sounds better than digitally remastered albums on CD or streaming. The […]

Presenting The Sexual Essence Of Morris Graves

at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, NYC (through August 2) Reviewed by Phoebe Hoban Morris Graves is an eloquently quiet artist. And yet the subtle chords he strikes in his delicate, musical compositions have a remarkably powerful resonance, a feeling of total “rightness” that certain artists can achieve, often with the least apparent drama. Graves, a mostly […]

An Interview With Artist and Critic Rose Vickers

By Sam Trioli With the recent group exhibition Future Starts Slow at LAUNCH F18, participating artist Rose Vickers and I took the occasion to discuss her artmaking and extensive writing practices. Rose grew up in Australia and has spent time living and traveling throughout many regions of the world. Rose and I both discovered each other’s […]