LOS ANGELES — There’s nothing funny about art. Writing art criticism is a serious endeavor. But at some point, the performance of professionalism in the art world just started to feel like one big joke.
Alicia Eler
Alicia Eler is a cultural critic and arts reporter. She is the author of the book The Selfie Generation (Skyhorse Publishing), which has been reviewed in the New York Times, WIRED Magazine and the Chicago Tribune. A native of Chicago by way of L.A., Alicia's writing has also been published in Glamour, the Guardian, CNN, Hyperallergic, Art21 Magazine, LA Weekly, and Aperture. She is currently the visual art critic/arts reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Posted inArt
An Aquatic Video Performance Immerses Us in the California Drought
LOS ANGELES — Imagine that you are trying to get dressed underwater but every time you lift your arms the water you’re wading through pulls them back down.
Posted inArt
Your Art Entertainment Experience Is Here!
MONTRÉAL — In the 24/7 news cycle of BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, and every other “content producer” on the internet, there is a fine line between news and entertainment.
Posted inBooks
Someone Made a Book of #artselfies
The selfie exists everywhere that people own smartphones. DIS Magazine’s #artselfie, published by Jean Boîte Éditions, attempts to freeze one aspect of this cultural moment — the art selfie — by parlaying its meaning into a gleaming, print-only book
Posted inArt
When Consumer Goods Blossom into Otherworldly Fungi
LOS ANGELES — Benjamin Lord’s grossly delectable photographs, on view in his exhibition The New Retail Mycology at Monte Vista Projects, invite viewers to closely consider the social construction of a landscape.
Posted inArt
An Artist Turns Surveillance into Affection
LOS ANGELES — Artist Jennifer Moon is not the first or the last to experiment with self-surveillance, documenting selfies of her every moment for anyone and no one.
Posted inArt
Looking for Actors and Authenticity on Craigslist
LOS ANGELES — Sometimes the best scenes and characters come to writers and performance artists through improvisation.
Posted inArt
Blowing Up Normcore at the LA Art Book Fair
LOS ANGELES — K-HOLE members speak in a pseudo corporate-y performative language, using terms like “onboard” in a way that is cringe-inducing, serious, and ambiguously funny.
Posted inArt
Gillian Wearing’s Masked Confessions
LOS ANGELES — In Gillian Wearing’s work, the artist serves as a conduit for other peoples’ confessions while concealing her own subjectivity. In this exhibition, everyone becomes a stranger — both the visitors to the gallery and the people involved in making the work.
Posted inArt
Jacolby Satterwhite Keeps Reality Virtual
LOS ANGELES — Jacolby Satterwhite’s solo exhibition How lovly is me being as I am is born out of a maternal virtual hive mind.
Posted inArt
Freestyling Animals and Signifying Rappers
LOS ANGELES — Behind every face there is a mask. In Ray Anthony Barrett’s solo exhibition Word is Bond at Diane Rosenstein Fine Arts in Hollywood, the artist investigates American cultural identities through the use of anthropomorphized masks.
Posted inOpinion
A Character Actor Gets a Trilogy of His Own
LOS ANGELES — “Who is Tony Longo?” my editor inquired, after I pitched her on this piece about Thom Andersen’s new short film “The Tony Longo Trilogy” (2014).
