“I used the lines of the streets from old maps in the artwork. There are curves on the right that represent the curve of Girard Avenue on the south end. The curves on the top are like the north end of Draper Avenue.”

“Public art brings it to the people, which for now is especially important in La Jolla because the Museum of Contemporary Art is closed [for renovation],” Edmonds said. “Through programs like Murals of La Jolla, there are these beautiful works of art done by world-class artists, and I’m honored to be among them.”

Using photography, Los Angeles artist Ken Gonzales-Day explores Roman portraits with an interest in interpretation, personhood, and the dynamics of stereotypes. Focusing on the bust of a young child, Gonzales-Day and Getty antiquities curator Jens Daehner discuss the search for real people behind ancient portraits.

"A few months ago, in the midst of the pandemic, I had the pleasure of visiting Lia Halloran’s studio where I experienced these works in progress. Of course, no hugs, no kisses were allowed, just masks and safe distance. But, let me tell you, looking closely at her paintings, I felt that I was diving deep into the cosmos communicating with stars, gods and muses."

Counterbalance features women working primarily in the media of Wood and Textiles, using a hybridized language of adornment and structure. 

The exhibition examines the dynamics of exclusion and violence affecting Latinx and Latin Americans, as well as artists’ strategies to embody justice and creative and personal freedom.

"To be able to see more works by Miami-based artists in museums around the globe will be an incredible achievement for our city and art community. We’re excited to amplify these local artists’ work on a national and international level, while also helping sustain them during these unprecedented times.” - Dennis Scholl, president and CEO of Oolite Arts. 

"Hatton's latest body of work explores the psychological and physical terrain of the post-pandemic world."

Zackary Drucker featured in New York Times article supporting Los Angeles artist, Aimee Gougen. 

"This group show presents works that reflect an ethereal sensibility toward nature. During a time when we were forced to stay home, away from public spaces and other people, the relationship between humans and nature shifted, causing a NATURAL TRANSCENDENCE, and a renewed sense of gratitude for the natural elements that surround us."

"Adams often features himself in his work, portraying himself as Zeus with a freaky looking grizzly bear. The work is a wonderful reminder that figurative painting is not only relevant, it’s ferocious. His images stare straight out from the canvas, locking you into their gaze. But before the relationship becomes a virtual stare-down, humour, compassion and joyous surrealism disrupt the intensity. Liberation ensues."

"Solmi reimagines these figures as devilishly smiling partiers, who are unconcerned with the people – particularly Native victims of colonialist action – who are trampled over by their revelry. The show, through all its varied mediums, points a finger towards the rampant deification of these historical figures despite the atrocities and pain they perpetuated and profited from."

"For Pride Month this year, we spoke with artists of the LGBTQIA+ community about their own self-portraiture and the act of expressing oneself through art. From blown glass to photography to painting, these artworks show us how artists can represent themselves across a wide array of media and genres, including both abstraction, realism, or alter egos."

Jim Adams is presenting a series of paintings as part of Vancouver Special, the triennial presented at Vancouver Art Gallery. These paintings inspired by mythology and the black experience are portraits that merge storytelling of the ancient world and contemporary politics. Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo will be the second in what is envisioned as a series of exhibitions intended to provide an expansive look at contemporary art in the Greater Vancouver region.

 

"My paintings seems spontaneous, but it is not so unexpected, considering the amount of work I do before engaging in a series. I can think about a subject for months before I paint it. I obsessively accumulate many images in my notebooks around a topic. Afterward, in the studio, it is momentarily translated into paint. I know what I want to paint, and then I let the images develop and let them flow. I discover my pictures as I paint them, and I love the surprise of this process."

The exhibit features photographs by 35 Los Angeles-based artists challenge ideals of beauty, representation, cultural capital, and objectivity. The artists in this exhibition, primarily people of color, have radically transformed photography to express their own aesthetics, identities, and narratives.

Solmi will be presenting an immersive, large-scale video installation in a 16,000 square room with over 40 projectors. 

Column: California has a history of racist lynchings too. Ignoring that fact is mass delusion. 
By Gustavo Arellano

“The mythology of the Wild West as being somehow different from the history of lynching is the first part of the problem.”

"I have to be knowledgeable about what came before me, but also use all the tools that are available today. So, I figured out how to domesticate technology. Instead of it feeling cold and distant, I blended it with organic painting texture, and drawings, and with motion capture I created something that, in my opinion, is very human. You feel like you want to touch it, and that’s a feeling that normally doesn’t happen with digital media."

"In recent years, and particularly since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, many of his paintings have focused on issues of systemic racism, including violence against African Americans, slavery and mass incarceration. He has said that he always “believed in the idea of bearing witness to the times in which you live.”

“If you are curious enough, and you get close, you will see that there’s more to the work than just the fence.”

Drawn entirely from the Mead’s collection, the group exhibition Founding Narratives raises questions about representation and the absence of representation in national narratives and in the establishment of a national art, about the significance of “firsts,” and about the interpretative frameworks that museums offer about artists and artworks.