It’s official: your LA art guide is here! From Amy Sherald at Hauser & Wirth to John Waters at Sprüth Magers, here are Artmuse Selects’ top gallery shows to see this spring in Los Angeles.
Any exhibition by Amy Sherald is a must-see; her latest show, which opened at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Saturday, is no exception. The artist is known for taking time with each incredible portrait and painting around ten works per year, which of course, from a market stand-point, only increases the demand for these works (a 2015 painting by Sherald titled The Bathers fetched $4.3 million at a Phillips auction last December).
Presenting a group of five beautiful new portraits, Sherald’s work honestly confronts their viewers. The show’s title—”The Great American Fact—nods to Anna Julia Haywood Cooper’s 1892 essay that stated Black people “are the great American fact; the one objective reality on which scholars sharpened their wits, and at which orators and statesmen fired their eloquence.”
Pictured: A Bucket Full of Treasures (Papa Gave me Sunshine to Put in my Pockets...), 2020 | courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, photography by Joseph Hyde
Che Lovelace’s gorgeously-colored canvases use the visual language of flora and fauna as well as imagery from Lovelace’s homeland, Trinidad. These stunning works colorfully depict scenes from the artist’s own life and his encounters—physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual—that shaped the way the artist views the world.
The king of camp, John Waters has worked for over five decades, furiously examining his passion for celebrity, glamour, Hollywood and fame. Known as a “trash cinema auteur” and visionary artist, Waters is most famous for his films Hairspray (1988), Female Trouble (1974) and Serial Mom (1994) but his practice also includes video art, sculpture, installation and photography. This playful show at Sprüth Magers brings together over thirty works and provides a wonderful survey of Waters’ prolific artistic outpour.
Anna Weyant’s large-scale paintings that reference magical realism and Dutch still lives begin with something that, to quote the artist, “is just not right.” Using muted palettes and beautiful precision, the artist creates scenes that recall childhood bedtime stories and fairytales with an adult twist. Each figurative painting and still life features immense wit amid something that might otherwise conjure unsettling emotions.
Jose de Jesus’s incredible paintings meld together a number of genres and styles, from abbreviated line drawing to mimetic realism. For the Brooklyn-based artist and arts educator, genres offer a rich resource to cull influence and images from. Especially interested in socially-engaged art forms including Mexican Muralism and the 1930s printmaking collective Taller de Gráfica Popular, de Jesus Rodriguez uses painting to explore the lines between reality and appearances and the idea of collective harmony.
Through April 24
1700 Santa Fe Avenue, Suite 440
Pictured: CA-75, Duvalin, 2021 | courtesy of GAVLAK
Shattered Glass is an incredible group show that centers artists of color whose work demands to take up space. Curated by Deitch gallery director Melahn Frierson and the independent curator and art historian AJ Girard, this show attempts to feature many artists of color in order to correct for the historical absence of Black and Brown artists within the white cube space due to institutionalized racism that is been embedded within society and the artworld. While the magnitude of artists presented is impressive, the quality and diversity of work shown is awesome.
The over forty artists featured in this brilliant show include Ambrose Chinaza Agbor, Diana Yesenia Alvarado, Mario Ayala, Tyler D. Ballon, The Perez Bros., Ariel Dannielle, rafa esparza, Delfin Finley, Kohshin Finley, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., Bryant Giles, Lauren Halsey, Kezia Harrell, Jammie Holmes, Amani Lewis, Kenrick McFarlane, Murjoni Merriweather, Mario Moore, Jaime Muñoz, Simphiwe Ndzube, Bony Ramirez, Devin Reynolds, Gabriela Ruiz, Phumelele Tshabalala, Raelis Vasquez, Vincent Valdez, Fulton Leroy Washington (aka Mr. Wash), and Kandis Williams. Video screenings by Antoinette Brock, Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Shaniqwa Jarvis and Raj Debah, Alima Lee, Elise Peterson, Clifford Prince King, Devin Troy Strother, dana washington-queen, Mandy Harris Williams and Rikkí Wright.
Through May 22
925 North Orange Drive
Pictured: Tyler Ballon, When the Trumpet Sounds! , 2020 | courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch
Andrea Joyce Heimer’s rich tapestry-like paintings distill grand narratives that depict a stage of life for Heimer’s characters. These incredible paintings evoke ancient friezes and tapestries and contain complex symbols and iconography that harken back to antiquity and the bible. Heimer’s latest show at Nino Mier is a must-see, and her rich personal mythologies invite viewers to endlessly engage in the process of looking.
Sandra Cinto’s Cosmic Garden is a beautiful exhibition that presents spiritual work that uses the sky, space and the cosmos as its visual language. For a new edition of Cinto’s Cosmic Garden installation, which was originally installed at Ginza Maison Hermès, Tokyo, Cinto bathed the walls, floor, and ceiling of Bonakdar’s Los Angeles gallery with a blue gradation that the artist interspersed with meticulously-applied wisps of delicate white ink that suggest waves and galaxies throughout the space. Cinto also presents new paintings and a participatory postcard project that invite us to meditate upon a beautiful world filled with wonder, love and amazement.
ONWARD 2.0 is a group show centered around the practice of portrait painting. Presenting works by artists who each approach the genre from an entirely different angle, ONWARD presents a beautiful range of works that show portrait painting is born again and again, with each canvas.
Artists include Antonio J. Ainscough, Aaron Robert Baker, Deirdre Sullivan-Beeman, Susan Carr, Vivien Chung, Sullivan Giles, Alex Graham, Joel Hernandez, Christopher Michael Hefner, Waylon Horner, Craig La Rotunda, Barbara Johansen Newman, Mac Blackout, Mayon Hanania, Michele Melcher, Grace Milk, Mark Miller, Rachel O’Donnell, Krissta Passanante, Valerie Pobjoy, Skyler Simpson, Jared Tharp, Paul Torres, John Worley, Jasmin Worth, among others.
With Brooklyn-based artist Summer Wheat’s exhibition of new paintings at Shulamit Nazarian, the artist explores the gendered archetypes found throughout history, relationships to labor and the monumentalizing of the everyday in order to create works that are grounded in the quotidian yet create an expanded story of experience. These colorful works absurdly intertwine the wrinkles of anxiety with the singsong and carefree until they weave delightful stories of existence, stories that entail both the bitter and the sweet.
