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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Looking for Actors and Authenticity on Craigslist
LOS ANGELES — Sometimes the best scenes and characters come to writers and performance artists through improvisation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Young Joon Kwak’s Trans/Feminine Visions
LOS ANGELES — There is a new mutant form emerging, pushing its way past the thin layer that separates the interior and exterior world.