10 Art Shows to See in Los Angeles This July
Marc Kreisel’s secret art practice, Gwyneth Bulawsky’s queer and trans landscapes, Barbara Carrasco’s lifelong muralism, and more.
This July, Los Angeles is rife with exhibitions that confront present-day challenges and conflicts in ways that are both pragmatic and poetic. Radical Kinship features eight women artists whose practices highlight informal communal networks, while Eva Aguila looks at the essential but contentious roles played by Mexican workers in the United States, framed by her own familial legacy. A career-spanning show on beloved Angeleno artist Barbara Carrasco at Charlie James Gallery showcases her lifelong synthesis of art and activism. And at Cevera Yoon, Jaime Pattison and Maura Brewer adapt the language and tools of the information economy to create haunting soundscapes and geometric abstractions.
Vincent Ramos: Notice of Demolition or The Horror-Vacui Heavy Haunts House Band for The Haunted House
as-is, 1133 Venice Boulevard, Pico-Union, Los Angeles
Through July 18
By mining popular media and material artifacts, artist Vincent Ramos creates assemblages and collages that examine the affinities and frictions between Mexican-American culture and mainstream American culture as a whole. His evocative patchworks often pay homage to Latine performers or artists who achieved crossover success, such as Anthony Quinn (born Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca in Chihuahua) and Linda Ronstadt, as well as Herb Albert, a Jewish musician raised in Boyle Heights who helped introduce Latin American music to White audiences. Witty and insightful, Ramos’s poetic pastiches wade through the muddy hinterlands of hybridity, raising questions about which narratives are adopted, or excluded, from the mainstream.
Barbara Carrasco: On The Edge
Charlie James Gallery, 969 Chung King Road, Chinatown, Los Angeles
Through July 18
Throughout her five-decade career, Barbara Carrasco has been a leading voice in the space between art and activism, from her role as a muralist with the United Farm Workers and her once-censored mural “L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective” (1981), now on view at the city’s Natural History Museum, to bold, graphic portraits of Civil Rights icons such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Dolores Huerta. On the Edge presents new paintings of children detained under the US’s increasingly draconian immigration policies, each pictured with a butterfly, a hopeful symbol of liberation. The exhibition also features a selection of Carrasco’s historical works, highlighting her poignant juxtapositions of the personal and political.
Erotic Terrains
The Loved One, 1634 West Temple Street, Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles
Through July 24
The Loved One is a new art bookshop and gallery co-founded by publisher Hat & Beard Press and curatorial platform Wienholt Projects. (Art-savvy Angelenos may remember the building as the site of the Enzo Art Fair earlier this year.) Its inaugural exhibition, Erotic Terrains, is a group show primarily featuring LA-based artists who explore liminal spaces and the uncanny through painting, sculpture, photography, and collage. Highlights include Wyatt Mills’s figurative surrealism, Alex McAdoo’s suburban psychedelia, and Francesca Gabbiani’s cut-paper palm tree on fire in “Mutation XLVI” (2023).
