Christopher Knight, the LA Times art critic, wasn’t terribly impressed by the FADA LA Art Show. But even so, he still found stuff to like:
- A mustard-colored 1968 Minimalist abstraction by Robert Mangold is painted on Masonite, its quarter-circle subdivided into triangular shapes. Vivid physicality marvelously contradicts the work’s strange, tertiary color. (Gana Art)
- Meeson Pae Yang has suspended a galaxy of moss-covered spheres, perhaps 80 or 100, each one dangling a delicate watering system of plastic tubing and little globes. It’s Pandora indoors. (Gallery 825)
- Uruguay is the “guest country” highlighted at the fair. “Dusk,” a looped video projection by Pablo Uribe, focuses on a nattily dressed, middle-aged man on a darkened stage executing a series of exotic bird calls and animal sounds. Whether or not they are authentic is hard to say — until you realize that the queer music he is making is plenty real enough. (Uribe represented Uruguay at last year’s Venice Biennale.)
- Charlotte Park (b. 1918), a little-known Abstract Expressionist painter from New York, has been enjoying a resurgence of interest in her works of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. A large selection of muscular, often chromatically brilliant paintings on canvas and paper show why. (Spanierman Modern)
- The undated “Clivia,” probably from the 1930s, by Henrietta Shore (1880 – 1963) shows the stem, leaves and flowering pink blossoms isolated against an empty field of color, crisply painted and severed from any context other than art. Shore’s best paintings strip floral painting from its Romantic moorings, injecting it with a Modernist clarity associated with her friend and fellow artist, photographer Edward Weston. (Redfern Gallery)
Critic’s Notebook: The LA Art Show (Culture Monster)
