Spencer Longo, Experience the Spirit (installation view) (2024). Ink on paper, 24 x 33.25 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and TORUS, Los Angeles. Photo: Ruben Diaz. In the exhibition Internal Empire at TORUS, artist Spencer Longo creates a web of extremist ideologies culled from a collection of late 20th-century American fringe publications. Lined across the gallery, ten works on paper feature text and images sourced from zines, fliers, and pamphlets published by groups as varied as ecoterrorists, military fanatics, and animal rights activists. Longo digitally layers these motifs and pr ..read more

Ellen Jong, Schmear (2021). Protein resin, lamp black, powder pigments, and archival inkjet print on lycra, 37 x 51 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and The Hole, Los Angeles. Photo: Chris Young. Curated by Dani Tull and Jessica Gallucci, HOLLYWOOD DREAM BUBBLE: Ed Ruscha’s Influence in Los Angeles and Beyond is an expansive exhibition that maps Ruscha’s impact on contemporary artists in the city. Ruscha, famous for wry and winsome paintings, drawings, photographs, and books, often draws power from what he omits: the negative space enveloping a solitary word, big skies framing ..read more

Leer en Español A Project Curated by Artists: 15 Years of ACP (installation view) (2023). Morán Morán, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artists and Morán Morán. To artists Eve Fowler and Lucas Michael, the 2008 recession seemed as good a time as any to open a DIY space in Los Angeles. Fowler and Michael wanted to give a leg up to the artists they admired who were relegated to the margins of the art world. Thus Artist Curated Projects (ACP) was born. Exhibitions were staged in garages, Fowler’s living room, or galleries that had closed for the holidays. As Michael once explained: “we ..read more

Ben Borden, Bloom (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and NOON Projects. Photo: Joshua Schaedel. Ben Borden’s show at NOON Projects hinges on a curious collaboration between nature and nurture. Borden’s paintings are alive in the literal sense: Living materials allow the work to transform in ways beyond the artist’s control. Resembling Petri dishes with their contents tightly compressed, the fifteen wall-hung paintings blossom and break in lustrous currents like an ocean eddy, while others resemble the gastrointestinal system. Tapping into a keen sense of inspection, we ..read more

Jordan Eagles, Queer Blood America (2021) 1982 Captain America, blood of queer man, collection tube, blue nitrile gloves, plexiglass, and UV resin, 10.75 × 8 × 2.75 inches. © Jordan Eagles. Image courtesy of the artist and the Getty Museum. “Ecce homo,” Pontius Pilate declared, presenting the condemned Jesus to the people of Jerusalem—behold the man. This scene is represented in numerous illuminated manuscripts, including French artist Jean Pichore’s Poncher Hours (c. 1500). In Pichore’s illustration, Jesus’ expression is neutral, his posture erect. Only the streaks of scarlet dripping down ..read more

Leer en Español MUXXXE, ENTIERRO (video still) (2023). 3-D animation, 2 minutes and 43 seconds. Image courtesy of the artist and Long Beach City College Art Gallery. Looking like a lace-and-leather-clad spirit, MUXXXE strutted around in massive, knee-high boots and a white zentai bodysuit that covered them from head to toe. Ferocious club-trap-reggaetón beats blasted through speakers, as the fully masked artist delivered Spanish rap lines, rapid-fire. This vibrant performance took place not in a dark club, but under the bright lights of the Long Beach City College (LBCC) Art Gallery as part ..read more

Leer en Español Alex Da Corte, The Conversation Pit (detail) (2023). © Alex Da Corte. Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery. Alex Da Corte’s works possess an irreverent goofiness. A 2021 installation for The Met’s rooftop, for instance, featured an introspective Big Bird sitting on a reinterpretation of a kinetic sculpture by Alexander Calder, while in his Bad Land (2017) videos, Da Corte impersonates Eminem’s alter-ego, Slim Shady, eating cereal and nonsensically fiddling with video game controllers. Unlike an older generation of le ..read more

Janet Olivia Henry, Janet Olivia Henry’s Recent Academic Abstractions (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and STARS, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson. In Janet Olivia Henry’s Recent Academic Abstractions at STARS, the artist uses dolls, drawings, and dioramas featuring miniature everyday objects to create deliciously sharp commentaries on the nexus of life and art. Her sculptural diorama, Wrought: WAC’s Drum Corps (2007–24), depicts a Women’s Action Coalition (WAC) meeting within a version of Phyllis Kind Gallery. The gallery’s central room is filled to the brim with do ..read more

MSCHF, Art 2 (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artists and Perrotin. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli. “Spoiler alert: you are likely to laugh out loud.” So warns the promotional material for Art 2, MSCHF’s second exhibition at Perrotin and their first in Los Angeles. “Be glad this art collective maintains a safe distance from the rules dominating the art world.”1 The volume of your laughter will depend on your sense of humor, but the exhibition’s distance from art world protocol may be overstated, driven as the industry is by the commercial impulse present in much of the work on ..read more

Leer en Español Sun Woo, Salamander’s Cottage (detail) (2023). Acrylic on canvas, 84.5 × 63 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Make Room, Los Angeles. Photo: Jong Hyun Seo. In Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s genre-spanning 1982 book Dictée, the Korean American artist writes: “Being broken. Speaking broken. Saying broken. Talk broken. Say broken.”1 Cha, who was born in South Korea but lived abroad until her death, felt “broken” from her native language and country, an experience that necessitated the highly experimental language in Dictée and elsewhere. Were Cha alive today, she might find a li ..read more