Super Mario's Art: Fine Art in the Fast lane

Monday, February 10, 2025

Frieze Week Los Angeles Guide 2025

Art Fairs

L.A. Art Show - February 19 to 23
Los Angeles Convention Center - South Hall
1201 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90015
https://www.laartshow.com/

Felix - February 19 to 23
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
7000 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
https://felixfair.com/

Frieze - February 20 to 23
Barker Hanger
Santa Monica Airport
3027 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, 90405
https://www.frieze.com/fairs/frieze-los-angeles

Post Fair 2025 - February 20 to 23
1248 5th St, Santa Monica, CA 90406
https://post-fair.com/

Gallery Openings and Happenings

David Zwirner - Lisa Yuskavage (February 18th, opening 6 to 8)
606 N Western Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90004
https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2025/lisa-yuskavage

Loyal, El Royale III Party and Opening
An opening reception will be held Tuesday, February 18, from 6 to 9 p.m. at 450 N. Rossmore Avenue, Los Angeles. The exhibition runs through March 1, daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Please rsvp@loyalgallery.com to attend the opening reception. Valet parking provided.
https://www.loyalgallery.com/exhibitions/el-royale-iii-los-angeles/

Coates & Scarry at Subliminal Projects, February 22, 2025
Opening of Visual Language: Vistas 7pm to 10pm
1331 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
RSVP at subliminalprojects.com

Frieze Opening: ‘David Hammons’ & ‘George Rouy’ February 18, 2025
Opening 6 to 8 pm
Hauser and Wirth: Los Angeles
901 East 3rd Street
Los Angeles CA 90013
https://www.hauserwirth.com/events/frieze-opening-david-hammons-and-george-rouy/

Intertwined: Public Art & Private Collecting with Alison Croney Moses
Date: Wednesday, February 19 · 3 - 4:30pm PST
Location: Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, 1923 S Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, 90021
RSVP Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1230720099949/?aff=oddtdtcreator
Free admission with code FRIEZE25
Join Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in conversation with artist Alison Croney Moses and cultural producer Kate Gilbert as they discuss the works on view in our current exhibition, Alison Croney Moses: Brown Out. The discussion will explore the interplay between public and private art forms, including installations, exhibitions, and discussions about how these realms influence and complement each other. Moses and Gilbert will discuss the ways art can move beyond traditional boundaries, especially woodworking, to inspire shared cultural experiences. This conversation will be held at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, 1923 S. Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA. Nearby street parking can be found on 11th and 15th street.

Frieze Weekend Brunch
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
1110 Mateo Street
Los Angeles, CA 90021
213 395 0762
luisdejesus.com
Frieze Weekend Brunch on Saturday, February 22, from 9am to 12pm in celebration of our Los Angeles community and current gallery exhibitions: Maggie Michael: Root Chords, Earth to Sky, and Margaret Morgan: Love Must Be Reinvented – both artists will be present, along with a special group exhibition of works by gallery artists. Please contact the gallery to RSVP.

Bendix Art Night

Saturday, February 22, 2025
7:00 PM 10:00 PM

860 South Los Angeles Street,

Suite 900
Los Angeles, CA 90014

Super Mario's Art: Art in Fast Lane Has Moved

Hello,

I am pleased to announce that I have moved from blogspot to Substack.

You can subscribe to my blog by clinking the following LINK.

I will continue to post exclusive content here once in a while.

See you on Substack. 😀

https://marioartwld.substack.com/?r=77mh0&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Wildfires, Los Angeles, and The Challenges that Await

It's a New Year. I was going to say "Happy New Year." After January 7th, that all changed. Wildfires in Pacific Palisades, and in the Pasadena and Altadena areas changed the tone of the new year. So many friends and people I know lost everything. Artists were particularly affected. As Matthew Stromberg in Hyperallergic stated "With much of it now in ruins and decades’ worth of heritage burned — from Gary Indiana’s personal library to the sprawling Zorthian Ranch arts community to countless homes and structures — and no clear picture of recovery, artists are reflecting on the staggering loss and beginning to imagine what the future might look like" Planned solo shows and exhibitions are irretrievably altered. Alta Beto, a gallery run by Brad Eberhart, was burned to ground along with a solo show of paintings by Mary Anna Pomonis. Camilla Taylor, Kelly Akashi, and Alec Egan lost their homes, studios, and works that were scheduled to be shown for solo shows at the end of this month, January. Kathryn Andrews lost her home in Pacific Palisades for the second time to wildfires. The damage is incalculable.

With the damage and loss, the question becomes "What do we do?" I am so grateful that the question is being answered not only by the art community in Los Angeles, but by the entire community who are volunteering their time, donating clothes and goods, and donating money to help those who are affected by the disaster. The rallying and the outpouring of help is truly inspiring. However, as time goes on and the disaster fades from memory, the needs will still be there. The rebuilding has to begin and continue. Our challenge to maintain some sort of momentum or movement where a recovery can be acceptable. Unfortunately, things will never be the same. The recovery can reach a point of satisfaction where the people who lost everything can live a good life after the tragedy.

When horror and tragedy hits, plans change, and priorities shift to focus on urgent needs. The first post was going to be an art review. After January 7th, the plans of this blog changed, and priorities shifted. There will be time for art review and criticism. Now is not the time. Below are links to organizations to help artists and their families recover what was lost. It may be cliche, Los Angeles will rise from the ashes like a Phoenix. The artist will make new work. In the end, the art community will be stronger than before. It will take time. I am confident that that LA will emerge stronger. Please give and donate. Thank you

https://www.cciarts.org/relief.html

Grief and Hope

Armory Fire Relief

Art Center Emergency Relief Fund

How to help artists and art workers devastated by Los Angeles wildfires

Monday, December 23, 2024

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I took a sabbatical this year from writing. 2025 will a year to hit the ground running and continue to write. I look forward to sharing with you art from Los Angeles, Southern California and the world. #christmas #christmasart #victorianchristmascards

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Happy Halloween!!

My annual Halloween art post is here! Enjoy this Halloween art.

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Whitney Biennial 2024 " Even Better Than the Real Thing" (Review)

There are ideas and concepts that were revolutionary for its time. These are the ideas that were counter to the prevailing cultural or political trends. Sometimes exhibitions signal changes that were about to happen. The 1993 Whitney Biennial was one of those moments; a bell weather of the emerging culture wars and the rise of identity politics. The 2024 Whitney Biennial "Even Better Than the Real Thing", is a biennial trying to recreate that moment in time. The curators consisted of Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes. The performance program is organized by Iles and Onli, with guest curator Taja Cheek. The film program is organized by Iles and Onli, with guest curators Korakrit Arunanondchai, asinnajaq, Greg de Cuir Jr, and Zackary Drucker. From this committee of curation, the 2024 Biennial became the biennial about decline and redefinition of what is real within the context of the current political, cultural, and social climate of this time. Curators sought to recreate the 1993 Biennial for the 21st century. What resulted is an underwhelming exhibition trying to be relevant in an art world that is dominated by race, class, and gender politics. However, despite the uneven and stale curatorial approach, the art is what saves this biennial.

This year's Whitney Biennial is replete with exceptional art from artists who have a clear sense of the zeitgeist of this age. Maja Ruznic polychromatic paintings, which is one of the best of the biennial, presents a subjective world of emotion and empathy. Ruznic seeks to translate form, color, and composition as a means to heal and recover from the traumatic world around. Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio speaks of objects in encasing them in amber. Aparicio, who is based in Los Angeles and recently had a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, uses amber and objects as way of creating a material narrative that speaks to both immigrant community and the politics in connection with that community.

Pippa Garner, a Los Angeles based artist who was also featured in the recent Made in LA Biennial at the Hammer Museum, is also concerned with objects. However, Garner is interested objects in the context of emerging consumerism that arose in the post war late twentieth century. Rebellious and biting in her criticism, Garner mines and exposes the hypocrisies of American culture. Lotus L. Kang explores the consequences of American greed and disregard for the environment by creating an installation of photographs showing dark and smog filled atmosphere as a result of climate change. Kang photographs are menacing and seeks to immerse the viewer in both the perilous present and an apocalyptic future.

Some artists address the past as a prologue to the future where indigenous cultures are recreated and disseminated as a futurism and a decolonized present. Eamon Ore-Giron's paintings reimagine ancient Mexican and Peruvian gods and places them in the context of contemporary ideas and society. Clarissa Tossin film, 'Before the Volcano Sings" contemplates the recreation of an indigenous culture and uses modern interpretations of Pre-Columbian architecture as a launching point to address what has been lost as a result of colonization and a way to re-establish lost indigenous societies.

Some artist focus on the current condition of a society on the verge of being lost. Kiyan Williams’s outdoor sculpture "Ruins of Empire II or The Earth Swallows the Master’s House", one of the most provocative works in the Biennial, places the White House, and democracy as symbols of white supremacy. Holly Hendron and Mat Dryhurst, "xhairymutantx Embedding Study 1", 2024 is an AI generated painting of a woman with red hair and long uncontrollable hair. The work is a product of text to image generation through AI. The painting explores the conflict between human and machine generated creativity. In a AI generated art, the distinctions between human and non-human is complicated. The breakdown of purity is also reflected in the paintings of Santa Monica-based painter Takako Yamaguchi whose works takes form from the recognizable to the abstract using cues from Mexican muralism to Japanese decorative art. Yamaguchi's work is poetic in its beauty and lyricism.

Isaac Julian's poetic and moving installation "Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die)" is clearly the best of the Whitney Biennial. Focusing on the debate between Alain Locke (1885–1954), philosopher, educator, and cultural critic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Dr. Albert Barnes (1872–1951), the collector who is known for the Barnes Foundation and Collection in Philadelphia. Barnes collected African art and adapted the notion that African art as primitive where modern art used it as a venue of civilizational purity. Locke rejected this idea and that the West's idea of primitive art ignored the complexity and intellectual depth of African Art, which was not "primitive." Walking throughout the installations, the screens, mostly in black and white, portray the intersection of modernism and African Art as way to recontextualize that relationship. In the scenes with Locke and his lover, there is connection between a liberation and reassertion of Black Art and Queer engagement. The screens converge and overlap each over in poetic dialogue of culture, class, race, and the relationship between the Black diaspora and notions of collecting and coloniality. Julian's installation is masterpiece in video installation where engagement leads to an understanding of the past, present and future.

In order for the Whitney Biennial to have a future, it needs to start by rethinking and reimagining what kind of Biennial it wants to be. Does it want to try to recapture a moment long gone? Or does it want to be relevant and focus on American art? It seems to be confused about what is American art, and afraid of defining he very essence of American art. Why not focus on what is actually happening in the United States? The biennial does not need a committee of 8 curators to create a meaningful biennial. Why not focus on art scenes outside of New York and Los Angeles? The true art scene is neither afraid nor hesitant of what it is. The Whitney Biennial suffers from a lack of vision and imagination. The 2024 Whitney Biennial was a missed opportunity. It now has two years to recover and to go back to the drawing board. Let's hope it can recover.