She’s A Smasher: Dry Cleaning’s “Magic of Meghan”

January 23, 2020 By CvH Leave a Comment

An ode to The Duchess of Sussex

from the Sweet Princess EP

Self-Released

Dust My Broom: Southern Vernacular From The Permanent Collection

at California African American Museum, Los Angeles (through 15 March) Reviewed by Seren Sensei Folk art and folk artists tend to be an underserved discipline in the contemporary American art world. We gravitate towards fine artists with prestigious arts degrees over the more commonplace culture of folk art, and when we do discuss the importance […]

The Haunting, Half-Lit World Of Yelena Moskovich’s Virtuoso

Reviewed by John Biscello Virtuoso by Yelena Moskovich Two Dollar Radio, 272 pp., $12.74 “But I see my mind’s asleep. Were it to remain wide awake from this point on, we should quickly arrive at the truth, which may well be all around us now (its angels weeping)!” — Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell […]

Tales Of The Unconfined: Alison Saar’s Defiant Women Warriors

Syncopation, at L.A Louver, Los Angeles (through 29 February) Chaos in the Kitchen, at Frieze Los Angeles Reviewed by Lita Barrie Alison Saar’s work combines the raw power of tribal art with the postmodern sophistication of complex cultural subtexts. Her work is made in a near devotional way, which infuses a rare emotional intensity into her new narratives […]

The Shaman’s Bride Lifts Her Veil In Lezley Saar’s A Conjuring of Conjurors

at Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles (through 22 February) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner Born under a bad sign Been down since I began to crawl If it wasn’t for bad luck You know, I wouldn’t have no luck at all In the magical exhibition, A Conjuring of Conjurors, artist Lezley Saar herself becomes the […]

Corporate Fascism And The Aesthetics of Politics

by Johanna Drucker Corporate fascism. We know the term. Now we will see the full ugly face of its wrath in the vengeful fury of Trump. Trump, like all opportunistic social phenomena, is an expression of a trending wave of collective sentiment and will. He is neither sole cause (autonomous agent) nor simple effect (isolated […]

Excerpt from Jaki Liebezeit: The Life, Theory and Practice of a Master Drummer

by John Payne Jaki Liebezeit: The Life, Theory and Practice of a Master Drummer edited by Jono Podmore Unbound, 320 pp., $16.94 The drum master Jaki Liebezeit pursued over a decades-long career an enduring fascination with the core truths of time as expressed via rhythm. Not just a musician who wished to perfect a technique […]

The Swirling Claustrophobias Of Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet

at Met Fifth Avenue, NYC Reviewed by Lisa Zeiger “…the deepest and earliest secret of all: that just as we watch other life, other life watches us.” —Toni Morrison, “Memory, Creation, and Fiction” The superlative Félix Vallotton exhibition recently at the Metropolitan Museum, titled Painter of Disquiet, was an enthralling view of the tension between Vallotton’s […]

A Labyrinth Of Interlocking Lives In Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies

Reviewed by Ruth Franklin Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth Catapult, 243 pp., $16.95 (paper) Review courtesy of The New York Review of Books In an engrossing book published last spring called Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, the Australian writer Jane Alison makes a trenchant observation about the “dramatic […]

Myth-Making, Storytelling, In The Conversive Contemporary Identities

at LAUNCH LA, Los Angeles (through February 8) Reviewed by Genie Davis Shula Singer Arbel, Carla Jay Harris and Christina Ramos each offer gorgeous, personal, figurative work in Contemporary Identities, now at Launch LA. Each artist explores personal and universal identities through contemporary figurative work.

The Danceable Política of Andy Gill’s Gang of Four

Andy Gill 1956 – 2020 RIP by Henry Cherry When Andy Gill died at 64 on Saturday, the sound of revolution was momentarily stalled. Gill was the co-founder of the UK’s Gang of Four, an avant-funk off shoot of that country’s monumentally impactful punk movement of the late 70s. Across ten albums and a barrage […]

Zilia Sánchez’s Sinuous, Overtly Sensual Forms

at Galerie Lelong & Co (ended) and El Museo Del Barrio, NYC (through March 22) Reviewed by Pheobe Hoban Cuban-born Zilia Sánchez, 93, has always been ahead of the curve, even if she has remained for the most part unknown outside her adopted country, Puerto Rico. Her elegant, shaped canvases, many of them takeoffs on the […]

Triangulations Of The Black Cat: Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe Black Like Me

at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles (through March 7) Reviewed by Eve Wood Ghanian artist Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe’s gorgeously rendered oil paintings, on view at Roberts Projects, are stunning both in terms of their visual content and the literal application of the paint. One can make obvious allusions to artists like Kehinde Wiley or Wangechi […]

Art Of The Calculus: Triangulating The Deadly Glowing Crown

A lucid and most luminous accounting of the Wuhan coronavirus and its numerous potentials. by Dan Werb Courtesy of The NY Times Five cases of the mysterious Wuhan coronavirus have been confirmed in the United States, giving rise to concerns about a potential global pandemic. We’ve seen this story before, as health authorities working with […]

In Quiet Chorus: Mary Frank’s ¿Or Was It Like This? and Charles Burchfield’s Solitude

co-exhibiting at DC Moore Gallery, NYC (through February 8) Reviewed by John Haber Mary Frank is not just a visionary. Neither was Charles Burchfield, back when Modernism was just bringing art back to earth. Yet showing them together brings alive their most unearthly twentieth-century visions. Frank has always had an eye on planet earth. She studied […]

Gathering No Moss, Toh-Kichi’s Baikamo Wanders Freely If Not Ferally Through The Avant-Garde

on Libra Records Reviewed by John Payne Since her 1996 duo set with Paul Bley on Something About Water (Libra), pianist-composer Satoko Fujii has led numerous groups in widely varied formats ranging from free jazz to avant-rock to new-music chamber works. The possessor of a most formidable set of playing chops, Fujii is an intellectually engaged […]

Jimmy Heath, aka Little Bird, Takes Soul’s Serenading Flight

Jimmy “Little Bird” Heath 1926 – 2020 RIP by Henry Cherry When saxophonist Jimmy Heath died at 93 from undisclosed causes on Sunday, January 19, 2020, he left younger brother Albert as the last of the Heath brothers, a remarkable trio of musicians who worked collectively and individually to help craft the pillars of jazz […]

In Its Feminist Spin On The Turn Of The Screw, The Turning Fatally Flubs Its Finale

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko The glory of psychological horror is the doubt injected within it. Is there truly a malevolent spirit creeping through creaking halls of the grand old house? Is there someone lurking in the dark, hungry to do harm? Is there a Babadook knock-knock-knocking at the closet door? Or is it all in […]

A Man’s History As Passing Shadow In John Sonsini’s Cowboy Stories & New Paintings

at Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles (through February 22) Reviewed by Eve Wood The iconic and often brutal mythology that informs images of the American West is unreliable at best, specifically as it relates to the larger-than-life stereotype of the cowboy. Forged in the fires of patriarchy, the familiarity of the gritty, rugged lone cowboy making […]

Creature-Feature After Midnight Killed By A Buckshot Of Clichés

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko Heartbreak can be a savage thing. It’s a primal ache that creeps up on you in the middle of the night, ferociously roaring and threatening to tear your heart into tiny pieces. This metaphor is made literal in the horror-drama After Midnight, which focuses on a man-versus-monster battle that begins after […]

Testaments To Treachery And The Trampling Of Souls In C von Hassett’s Don’t Repeat Don’t Repeat

at MASH Gallery, Los Angeles (through 1 February) Reviewed by Eve Wood Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, “For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.” Which is to say, the realization of Man’s or any man’s greatest achievements comes at often dire costs and, perhaps requisitely, at the […]

Beauty In The Slaughterhouse: Francis Bacon’s Books And Painting

Bacon en toutes lettres, Centre Pompidou, Paris (through January 20) Francis Bacon: Late Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (February 23 – May 25) Reviewed by Sarah Stewart-Kroeker and Stephen S. Bush Humans are susceptible to puncture and cut, and in the end, like all dead organic matter, we’ll spoil. Whatever else we are, we’re […]

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