This month’s selection includes several artists driven by material curiosity. Among them, the late Kenzi Shiokava, whose constructions of organic and industrial materials were inspired as much by his Brazilian-Japanese heritage as by the assembly movement of which he was a part. Drips of glaze seem to fall provocatively onto Amia Yokoyama’s ceramic figures, which Candace Thatcher painstakingly creates as analog representations of unseen data. Alison Saar’s mastery of wood and metal is on display in her duo exhibition with the late Brazilian painter Hélio Melo, while Mexican artist Pedro Reyes blends pre-Columbian and stories through volcanic rock sculptures and paintings on amate bark paper.
Kenzi Shiokava
Kenzi Shiokava’s totem constructions – a highlight of the Hammer Museum Biennial Made in LA 2016 – draws on the artistic traditions of Japan and its native Brazil, incorporating them into the assemblage art movement that emerged in South Los Angeles in the 1960s. This presentation of the work of the artist in two career-spanning galleries – the first since his death in 2021 – presents several of these elegant and enigmatic sculptures made of wood, wire, shells and other found objects, as well as constructions compartments that echo those of artist Joseph Cornell, and playful, intimate dioramas filled with toys and action figures, reflecting the breadth of his practice.
Nonaka Hill (nonaka-hill.com)
720 North Highland Avenue and 6917 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood/Hancock Park, Los Angeles
Until July 15
Amia Yokoyama: deployment edge
Amia Yokoyama’s alluring ceramic figures are coated in a dripping, dripping glaze, bordering between eroticism and viscous disgust. In deployment edgehis current solo exhibition incorporating ceramics, videos and holograms, female figures are placed in rhizomatic structures that support or enclose them, suggesting their – and our – place in larger natural or supernatural networks.
Sebastian Gladstone (sebastiangladstone.com)
5523 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, Los Angeles
Until July 22
Linda Arreola: Abstract Wanderings of LA’s Frontier Lands: 2020-2023
Linda Arreola’s paintings incorporate Mesoamerican text and design with geometric shapes, bringing a Chicano/a perspective to hard abstraction, or a minimalist sensibility to Chicano/a art. The works in Abstract wanderings were created during the COVID-19 pandemic and are characterized by intricate architectural compositions, bold colors and glyph-like letterforms, reflecting the heightened prominence words have taken on during our prolonged isolation.
Avenue 50 Studio (avenue50studio.org)
131 North Avenue 50, Highland Park, Los Angeles
Until July 29
Helio Melo & Alison Saar
Sea View’s current two-person exhibition pairs the late Brazilian painter Hélio Melo with Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar, juxtaposing the ways each artist explores myth and history in their practice. Melo was a laborer in the Brazilian rubber industry before taking up painting in the 1970s, and his captivating scenes of animals, people and hybrid creatures in the Amazon reflect rubber trade encroachment and social disruption. of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Alison Saar explores what it means to be a black woman in America, creating life-size female figures from wood, pewter and bronze that reference spirituality, nature and folklore, while being grounded in the historical reality.
View on the sea (sea-view.us)
4166 Sea View Avenue, Mount Washington, Los Angeles
Until August 5
Martha Alf: opposites and contradictions
Matha Alf’s paintings of toilet rolls and pears are deceptively simple. Thoughtful studies of color, form and light, his still lifes engage with 20th century movements such as minimalism, pop art and photorealism while reflecting the influence of Renaissance masters like Vermeer . Through vibrant color juxtapositions, dramatic lighting, and careful composition, this late California-based artist, who died in 2019, was able to present the mundane as monumental.
Michael Kohn Gallery (kohngallery.com/alf)
1227 North Highland Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Until August 5
wishing well
When Sam Parker and Madeline Hollander’s son was six months, he was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called SELENON-related myopathy, which is incurable. They organized wishing well, a benefit exhibition with 100% of proceeds going to fund gene therapy research in hopes of finding a cure for the disease. The exhibition includes the work of over 60 emerging and established artists, including Kelly Akashi, Melvino Garretti, Ruby Neri, Laura Owens, Howardena Pindell, Sterling Ruby and many more.
Parker Gallery (parkergallery.com)
2441 Glendower Avenue, Los Feliz, Los Angeles
Until August 5
Silke Otto Knapp
Silke Otto-Knapp’s monochrome landscape paintings are imbued with a whimsical and enigmatic quality. Regen Projects’ current solo exhibition of her work, the first since her death in 2022, features Otto-Knapp’s late work that shows her refining her pared down painterly language. One of the highlights is “Clouds” (2021), a multi-panel painting inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe “Sky Above the Clouds IV” (1965), reworking the earlier artist’s light landscape into a fractured, ominous scene that is no less captivating.
Regeneration projects (regenprojects.com)
6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, Los Angeles
Until August 12
Pedro Reyes
Pedro Reyes explores recent and ancient Mexican history with his current exhibition at Galerie Lisson. The exhibition presents monumental sculptures cut in volcanic rock and geometric paintings on amate paper, materials used in pre-Columbian and indigenous artistic traditions. The works reflect the tension between the different schools of Mexican modernism – nationalist muralism versus abstraction – while alluding to symbols and glyphs from Nahuatl codices, indicating a common aesthetic tradition that predates European colonialism.
Lisson Gallery (lissongallery.com)
1037 North Sycamore Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Until September 1
Candice Thatcher
Candace Thatcher’s distorted grids reflect the current state of information overload, giving visual form to raw data. Using images found during internet searches, she uses computer programs to extract information about the image’s color, hue and brightness. This data is mapped onto a grid, from which she makes a vinyl stencil to hand-roll the paint, resulting in a gloss colorful abstract fusion of analog and digital.
The landing (thelandinggallery.com)
5118 West Jefferson Boulevard, West Adams, Los Angeles
July 22–September 2
Stay in the Light: Visions of Homeland and Diaspora
stay in the light is a moving examination of the identity construction of the diaspora. The exhibition features photographs by Sossi Madzounian, Ara Mgrdichian and Ara Oshagan, three diaspora-born Armenian artists based in Los Angeles, one of the largest communities of Armenians outside their homeland. Their images reflect how community is building overseas amid ongoing dispossession and persecution in their ancestral land.
Fowler Museum at UCLA (fowler.ucla.edu)
308 Charles E. Young Drive North, Westwood, Los Angeles
Until October 15
