The Great Dick Dale, Dead At 81

March 18, 2019 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

RIP
1937 -2019

“Misirlou,” 1963, from the film A Swinging Affair

Dick Dale, 1941, on his WLD 45 Flathead Harley. See his 1963 performance of "Misirlou" at Riot Material.

Dick Dale on his 1941 WLD 45 Flathead Harley

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 […]

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

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Activating Absence In Lenz Geerk’s Mixed Blessings

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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

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

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

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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 […]

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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

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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 […]

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Presenting The Sexual Essence Of Morris Graves

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