Overduin and Kite
Dan Graham, Stephen Kaltenbach, Lee Lozano
“Joint Dialogue”
Curated by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
January 31st – March 13th, 2010
An accidental nexus of three artists in New York makes for a thoughtful exhibition. It bears the marks of a bad joke made into a really good show: “Three conceptual artists walk into a bar…”
Dianna Molzan
“The Case of the Strand”
November 8, 2009 – January 9, 2010
With splatter-pattern formica and an affection for 80s graphic design, Molzan’s abstractions are more akin to the delicate and silly balancing constructions of Fischli and Weiss than to any particular painting.
Khastoo Gallery
Greg Parma Smith
“Early Work”
November 5, 2009 – December 31, 2010
Parma Smith’s work looks so much like patterns for fancy handbags it was no surprise that the gallery’s subsequent show was a pop-up shop for a bunch of clothing designers. Is his handling critical detourne or just what it looks like? Leaning to the latter.
ltd los angeles
aaron GM
“capezio”
January 12, 2010 – February 27, 2010
Literally half-baked, aaron GM’s clumsy, flour-dusted installation contains more hours of video art than even Andy Warhol, who simply left cameras running for days, could muster. All these videos clumped together make for something goofily charming, daft and witlessly messy, but crafted with the careful diligence of a true neurotic.
Margo Leavin
John Baldessari
“Blue Line (Holbein)”
January 23 – March 13, 2010
Everyone loves John Baldessari. This exhibition of late-80s work and recent museo-commissions hardly deflates his well-earned reputation, but it doesn’t really do much to engorge it either.
Regen Projects
James Welling
“Glass House”
January 30 – March 5, 2010
I sort of like these photos because they make crypto-fascist, self-proclaimed corporate whore Phillip Johnson’s Glass House look like the bloodied set of a slasher film. Incidentally this is not the artist’s intention whatsoever.
Glenn Ligon
“Off Book”
December 12, 2009 – January 23, 2010
Coal dusted text pieces cribbed from the books of James Baldwin. The works look clean, clear, and under control, which is not exactly a good thing. Ligon’s art has entered the refinements of late-period marketeering. Can an artist so famous manage to kick a hole in art anymore, or would it just look like petulant triumphalism?
Marilyn Minter
October 24 – December 5, 2009
Garish, gross-out paintings by Minter fill me with pity for the rich, unsuspecting bastards who buy this aspersive work. Tonguing diamonds with such globular slowness under such synthetic colors for such astronomical prices makes for the definitive picture in the dictionary next to the phrase “money shot.”
Doug Aitken
September 12 – October 17, 2009
If I weren’t from California, I would want Doug Aitken to art direct my fantasies of the place. Being from California, I’m fine with just ambling by his cinematographically precise creations with a warm sense of well being, knowing happily that I don’t have to cough up for their production.
The Hammer Museum
Rachel Whiteread
“Drawings”
January 31 – April 25, 2010
Charming and lyrical drawings from the one-trick pony of late British art.
Rob Fischer
November 27, 2009 – April 1, 2010
Small-town conceptual art. Channeling Rust Belt recollections from The Last Picture Show to Roseanne, Fischer draws from a well of nostalgic neverwas by yanking the old floorboards from farflung high school gyms—though the bucket never goes quite deep enough.
Desirée Holman
November 10, 2009 – January 31, 2010
It begins with a fake baby harem dance party and ends with a disembodied head. Effigies and pantomimes enliven an art that looks more fun than it really is.
R. Crumb
“The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis”
October 24 – February 7, 2010
I love comics in museums, but Crumb’s so goddamned precise that there’s very little difference between seeing these in person and on the printed page. This makes the exhibition merely an excuse to buy the book.
Charles Burchfield
“Heat Waves in a Swamp”
October 4, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Spooky decoration taken to the level of troubling psychedelic illustration. Something kind of wonderful and inspiring about Burchfield, like reading Flannery O’Conner and laughing through the American Gothic put-ons.