Shana Nys Dambrot
In which all kinds of artists and creatives get in touch with the mysticality of their work as they seek to see the world in profound new ways—paintings about space-time, living ancestors, and the spirit world; new and vintage video art about the future which is now, dance about somatic memory, documentation of highly-staged reality, design objects for the soul, a multimedia platform for the divine feminine, an opera about breaking down, a Scandinavian magic realism verse saga for the ages, life inside global skateboard culture, and more.
Cynthia Hawkins: Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D #9, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 60 in (Courtesy of STARS Gallery)
Thursday, February 1
Cynthia Hawkins: Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D at STARS. Paintings and works on paper offer a series of instructions for trespassing from conventional space into the space-time of 4D. Weaving maps scrawled in oil bars through buoyant abstract spaces, the artist provides a guide for seeing reality anew. Hawkins’ reckonings with the fourth dimension build toward an argument: to reimagine reality, one must first reimagine space. This endeavor demands description in new terms; it demands movement beyond known experience. Abstraction becomes a necessary tool, a path toward hope, even freedom. 3116 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood; Opening reception: Thursday, February 1, 6-8pm; On view through March 16; free; stars-gallery.com.
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV at the Hammer. Amanda Kim’s 2023 documentary traces the life and work of the avant-garde artist best known as the father of video art. Initially coming to prominence in the 1960s, Nam June Paik saw a future in which “everybody will have his own TV channel.” With the advent of social media and platforms like YouTube and TikTok, Paik’s prediction for the future looks startlingly like the present. Part of PBS’s award-winning American Masters series and narrated by Oscar nominee Steven Yeun, this documentary charts Paik’s life from his childhood in Japan-occupied Korea and formative education in Germany, to his ascent in the New York art scene and beyond. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood; Thursday, February 1, 7:30pm; free; hammer.ucla.edu.
LA Dance Project
LADP Presents Summation Dance + Derion Loman at L.A. Dance Project. Summation Dance/LA will make their official west coast debut with a new evening-length work choreographed by Taryn Vander Hoop, which investigates how capitalism lives in our bodies. From the intrusive thought patterns that consume us to the ways we conform to the systems in place, a multi-generational cast of ten artists takes the audience on a journey through a lifespan. Derion Loman’s captivating work features five powerful dancers exploring our intimate relationships with garments. Loman takes a closer, soulful look at clothing, the memory of the people that wear it, and the residual energy they hold. 2245 E. Washington Blvd., downtown; Thursday-Saturday, February 1-3, 8pm; $22-$45; ladanceproject.org.
Ed Templeton: Wires Crossed (Long Beach Museum of Art)
Friday, February 2
Ed Templeton: Wires Crossed: The Culture of Skateboarding, 1995-2012 at Long Beach Museum of Art. Templeton’s 17-year photographic project explores youth culture through his unique perspective, eye and access into the lives of amateur and professional skateboarders, with whom he traveled the globe. Part memoir, part documentation of the subculture as it came of age in the 90s and early 2000s, across photography, collage, text, maps, and eclectic ephemera from the artist’s archives, the exhibition offers an inside look at a significant facet of youth culture as it was being born. 2300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach; Opening reception: Friday, February 2, 7-10pm, $10; On view through May 5, $12 regular admission; lbma.org.
Rodney Graham (Courtesy of Lisson Gallery)
Rodney Graham: Paintings and Lightboxes at Lisson Gallery. Flipping between monumental, back-lit photographs and textured, abstract paintings, Graham’s work always also references his wider interests in filmmaking, literature, music, comedy, and art history. The seemingly oppositional media of painting and lightbox photography are also united by the careful processes of staging and collaging together many diverse elements and influences into singularly memorable and surreal images. Graham employed these twinned techniques of narrative- and world-building throughout his long and varied practice, whether devising one of his many fictional persona, or constructing new paintings from fragments of older ones. 1037 N. Sycamore; Hollywood; Opening reception: Friday, February 2, 6-8pm; On view through March 23; free; lissongallery.com.
Saelia Aparicio: Esfinge Absorta (Courtesy of Gallery FUMI)
Gallery FUMI at Sized Studio. Established in 2008 in London, FUMI’s program focuses on high-level, conceptually and aesthetically audacious designers and artists; each encompassing the value of craftsmanship, traditional techniques, and innovative technologies, while actively blurring increasingly outmoded boundaries between art and design. To coincide with Frieze L.A., FUMI takes a six-week sojourn in Los Angeles, presenting new works by its eclectic cross-disciplinary global roster. 526 N. Western Ave., Melrose Hill; February 2 – March 10; free; galleryfumi.com.
Velma Rosai at UNREPD
Saturday, February 3
Velma Rosai: This is not a human being, and she’s not a spirit at UNREPD. Created in Lamu, a place rich with folklore, ritual, mysticism, superstition, and mythology, and drawing on both Muslim scripture and Buddhist belief, the exhibition follows legends from the aforetimes, that epoch before humans walked the earth, when fire spirits governed civilizations that resonate with our contemporary existence. As humans arrived, the stories contend, these spirits were banished to the realms of desert, forest, and sea. There, they persist to present day, dwelling among us, concealed only by the ethereal veil that separates the visible and the invisible. 642 N. Western Ave., Melrose Hill; Opening reception: Friday, February 3, 6-9pm; free; instagram.com/unrepd.
Adeogun Babatunde Joseph at Taylor Fine Art
Adeogun Babatunde Joseph: The Reverie of the Diaspora Culture at Taylor Fine Art. Arriving in Los Angeles from Nigeria in time for his first solo show here, this charismatic painter was born in the ancient city of Ibadan, and his work expresses the inherent magic in everyday experiences. His bright, bold portraits are a kaleidoscope of color, pattern, texture, and emotional states—peace, guilt, irony—and the beauty of Black skin. 6039 Washington Blvd., Culver City; Opening reception: Saturday, February 3, 7-10pm; On view through February 24; free; instagram.com/taylor.fine.art.
Jessica Simone O’Dowd at Hive Gallery
Jessica Simone O’Dowd: Queen of the Liminal at The Hive. As part of the Hive’s new exhibition cycle’s Rising Stars feature, O’Dowd shares new paintings exploring the process of individuation excavated by memories, emotions, and remnants of relationships. O’Dowd uses expressionist language (influenced by the works of Egon Schiele, Remedios Varo, and Francis Bacon) to depict the surreal and often confusing periods of growth that we experience in these places of in-between. Brushstrokes that evoke the fluidity of nature–ocean currents, tendrils of smoke and flames, dancing waves of light–depict celestial bodies, like that of a goddess of creation and wrath, and pure elemental energy. 729 S. Spring St., downtown; Opening reception: Saturday, February 3, 8-11pm; On view through March 2; $5 suggested donation; hivegallery.com.
Kay Seohyung Lee at Yiwei Gallery
Killing Me Softly at Yiwei Gallery. A duo exhibition featuring British artist Ann Thornycroft and emerging Korean artist Kay Seohyung Lee, blending very different but intuitively complementary work by an established abstractionist and an emerging artist of fluid narratives in an intriguing conversation between personal symbol and optical geometry, lived experience and rarefied idea. 1350 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice; Opening reception: Saturday, February 3, 2-5pm; On view through March 17; free; yiweigallery.com.
Rare Books LA
Rare Books LA at Pasadena Convention Center. Welcoming booksellers and bibliophiles from around the world to share their love of books, fine prints, maps, ephemera, Rare Books LA is also hosting a series of bookish talks at the event, all included with the price of admission. A can’t-miss whether you’re searching for the perfect gift for the book lover in your life or just want to spend a day breathing in historic pages. In addition to rare books, visitors will see everything from historic maps and original artwork to artist’s books and punk zines. 300 E. Green St., Pasadena; Saturday, February 3, 10am-6pm, Sunday, February 4, 11am-4pm; $15-$40; rarebooksla.com.
Villa Aurora
Sunday, February 4
Meet the Artists at Villa Aurora. An afternoon reception honors the Villa Aurora/Thomas Mann House’c current artists-in-residence cohort. Constantin Lieb (a screenwriter interested in the combination of narrative cinema with literary forms and themes from the visual arts); Arjuna Neuman (a filmmaker, artist, and writer born on an airplane); Molly Nilsson (a Swedish-born artist, producer, and songwriter working on her 11th album); Julian Rosefeldt (a video and film artist whose works like the avant-garde blockbuster 2015 Manifesto, oscillate at the interface between narrative film and complex video art); and Maryam Zaree (an actress, writer, and filmmaker who was born in 1983 in the political prison Evin in Tehran). 520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades; Sunday, February 4, 4:30pm; free w/ rsvp; vatmh.org.
Still from Before I Let Go (2022), dir. Cameron A. Granger (Courtesy the artist / REDCAT)
Monday, February 5
Offscreen Schematics for Past Futures at REDCAT. Four short films that complicate visions of space and place, poking holes in colonial and patriarchal interventions and intentional displacements of communities. A variety of offscreen voices—a benevolent, but naïve interviewer based in Bad City, United States; Jamaican poet Una Marson; Bangladeshi architect Keshef Mahboob Chowdhury; and Thai automated tour guide Kanya —offer points of entry into the planned and unplanned forces that form industrial cities, tourist-driven regions, and pastoral villages, sketching critical, speculative, and sobering perspectives that allow viewers to interrogate what unfolds around us. 631 W. 2nd St., downtown; Monday, February 5, 8pm (live and streaming); $12; redcat.org.
Linnea Axelsson
Tuesday, February 6
Linnea Axelsson presents Ædnan w/ Saskia Vogel at Skylight Books. Join the winner of Sweden’s most prestigious literary award as she makes her American debut with an epic, multigenerational novel-in-verse about two Sámi families and their quest to stay together across a century of migration, violence, and colonial trauma. In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the earth, and my mother. These are all crucial forces within the lives of the Indigenous families that animate this groundbreaking book: an astonishing verse novel that chronicles a hundred years of change. 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz; Tuesday, February 6, 7pm; free; skylightbooks.com.
Last Days at LA Phil
Last Days at LA Phil. Based on the film Last Days written and directed by Gus Van Sant and produced by HBO Films, this new opera plunges into the torment that created a modern myth. Blake, a successful musician, has recently escaped rehab to return home. The safety of his house is soon disrupted by a slew of unwelcome guests, never-ending phone calls from his Manager and stalkers. Blake responds by hiding and disassociating from his surroundings. As the chaos around him reaches an apex, a ghostly apparition offers Blake a way out—in the form of a bullet. 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown; Tuesday, February 6, 8pm; $66; laphil.com.
JOJO ABOT at L.A. Louver
Wednesday, February 7
JOJO ABOT: A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING at L.A. Louver. A multimedia experience of sculpture, textiles, film, spatial sound, painting, and performance brings together manifold aspects of the artist’s ever-expanding oeuvre. Unlimited by categorical confines of genre and medium, this exhibition focuses on the transformative and sacred power of the divine feminine. The experience is enhanced by three discrete activations—including tonight’s Weaving Sacred Futures conversation led by JOJO ABOT with artist and abolitionist Patrisse Cullors, cultural leader Michelle Mitchell, and artist Alison Saar. Exploring the role of creatives, leaders and world builders in creating spaces for free thought, limitless expression, and communal solidarity, this discussion will delve into the potential we have to serve as vessels who channel consciously from the inner/outer spirit realm for the birthing of harmonious and life-affirming futures. 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice; Wednesday, February 7, 6-8pm; free / rsvp required; lalouver.com.
Adeogun Babatunde Joseph at Taylor Fine Art
Coraline, by Jeremy Anderson (Gallery FUMI)
Voukenas Petrides: Cloud Chair (Courtesy of Gallery FUMI)
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