LOS ANGELES — In August 1942, thousands of Japanese Americans from Los Angeles began their lives as prisoners on a wide stretch of prairie in northwestern Wyoming.
Abe Ahn
Abe is a writer based in Los Angeles.
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Broadcasting Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES — One of the first objects on display at the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial is a Volkswagen Brasilia, named after the Brazilian capital.
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Sunshine Tinged with Noir at Paris Photo LA
LOS ANGELES — The red carpet at Paramount Pictures Studios didn’t lead to a movie premiere or an awards ceremony, but rather the Lower East Side — or at least its facsimile in the studio’s New York backlot, where brownstone and cast-iron buildings hosted pop-up galleries and bookshops. This was the second year that international photography fair Paris Photo returned to Los Angeles for its American offshoot.
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The Redemption of Ron Athey
LOS ANGELES — Twenty years after performing at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Ron Athey has come a long way from art world pariah to celebrated performance artist.
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Art After the Internet
LOS ANGELES — Much of contemporary life is spent behind a screen for work and leisure, with a great amount of time devoted to forming identities and communities through the internet.
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LA Noise, Loud and Clear
LOS ANGELES — Long after local businesses have closed shop for the day, things become very loud at 3709 W. Pico Blvd. It is the kind of noise that can be mistaken for a technical malfunction, like white noise amplified by a faulty monitor, but at Mata Noise, everything that is harsh, non-musical, and experimental is welcome.
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Meditations in Longing
LOS ANGELES — The writer Rebecca Solnit once wrote, “Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn’t catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don’t exist.” For artists Golnar Adili and Samira Yamin, the process of remembering is no less imprecise.
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Asian-American Portraiture Between Personal and Political
LOS ANGELES — Vancouver-based artist Ho Tam has catalogued many iterations of multiples throughout his career, ranging from commercial imagery to Asian male bodies.
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A Riddle Couched in the Language of Pop
LOS ANGELES — Things are not what they seem in Culver City’s Carmichael Gallery. At first glance, the inscrutable smiles in Beijing-based artist Yue Minjun’s self-portraits express mirth or merriment.
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Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll at a San Francisco Art Fair
SAN FRANCISCO — A flurry of art fairs took place in San Francisco this past weekend, including ArtPadSF, which is the smaller yet debonair competitor to the much larger artMRKT San Francisco and SF Fine Art Fair.
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Attack of the Heads or Os Gêmeos in LA
LOS ANGELES — Perched atop the Prism Gallery is a giant, yellow face with slender eyelashes, narrow eyes and prominent nose. It competes for attention against the many billboards and vehicles along this stretch of Sunset Blvd. The squinty eyes and yellow complexion are outlandishly drawn, but the portraiture here, and many others in the gallery, are never callous or misleading. The Los Angeles gallery’s solo exhibition Miss You features paintings, embroidery and installation art by twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, or Os Gêmeos, whose fantastical imagery blends street-level portraiture and magical realism.
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Some Signs from Day 11 of #OccupyLA
LOS ANGELES — It’s Tuesday, Day 11, and the honeymoon period for Occupy LA seems to have ended. There is much spirited debate about what actions to take and disagreements over how the General Assembly should facilitate discussions. Occupiers who have been around since the beginning are restless from the movement’s week-long dithering while news of conflicts with police in Boston, Seattle and elsewhere have made emotions run high among protesters. Still, the occupation is now 269 tents strong and the amount of creative dissent increases everyday.
