Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Henry Taylor’s B Side: Where Mind Shapes Itself to Canvas

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Henry Taylor: B Side
at MOCA Grand, Los Angeles (through 30 April 2023)
Reviewed by Eve Wood

Ages ago when there were LP records and 45s, the B side of a popular single made allowances for experimentation and could be counted on as an alternative vision to the more mainstream and compulsory hit single. B sides were not the reason you bought the album, but they were perhaps a more authentic representation of the artist’s vision, and every so often a great B side would feel akin to unearthing gold. Henry Taylor’s thirty-year retrospective at MOCA Grand pays homage to the unexpected, the visceral, and the odd man out, and like any successful B side, you want to keep listening. [Read more…]

In This Moment Of Collective Anxiety, New Images of Man Ponders The Human Condition, And Further Disquiets The Sense

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at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Genie Davis

Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, the expansive exhibition New Images of Man is a both a revisiting of and expansion on a 1959 exhibition of the same name at MoMA in New York City. A tribute and comment on the human condition, the original exhibition, curated by Peter Selz, focused on new figurative work following WWII. As such, it included a wide range of artists, from de Kooning to Giacometti, working in both sculptural forms and painted images. The Blum & Poe iteration offers its own view of figurative human depiction in a vast variety of genres, from pigment prints to acrylic and oil-on-canvas, fabric, paper-mache and other mixed media, as well as sculptural figures in bronze, plaster, and even created from a mixture of fabric and human hair. [Read more…]

Punch Surveys Sex, Celebrity, Religion And Self-Image

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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 on LA-based artists, thirty-three in all — contemporary artists creating figurative and abstract connections with culture, society, and humanity. [Read more…]

Serpentine Fire: Radical Artists and Innovative Mediums

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at Quotidian, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Genie Davis

With Serpentine Fire, now at Quotidian, curator and gallerist Jill Moniz has assembled an astoundingly innovative, resonant show from artists who have pushed the limits of their materials and subjects. The title of the show is taken from an Earth, Wind, & Fire song, and just as the band offered a breath of exciting fresh air with its early music, so does this exhibition. [Read more…]