Culture Monster, the LA Times’s excellent culture blog, tipped us to this story from the Sunday paper about an exhibition at the Hammer Museum called Nine Lives. Here’s Sharon Mizota’s story and a taste of what she has to say:

“There’s both a critical engagement with the stuff of the world and a fantastical retreat or projection,” says Los Angeles writer and critic Jan Tumlir. He curated an exhibition last year at Cal State L.A.’s Luckman Gallery that drew a link between the region’s wide-open vistas and themes of illusion, utopia and apocalypse. “This kind of thinking — about whole new worlds rising from the ashes — is helped along by the landscape.”

LA’s Artistic Iconoclasts (Los Angeles Times)