June Editors’ Picks

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ As we break from Snap Reviews for the summer, enjoy monthly picks from Carla’s editors across art exhibitions, books, food, and more. ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Coming Back to See Through, Again (installation view) (2023). Image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, Los Angeles.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Njideka Akunyili Crosby at David Zwirner ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

I’ve always loved Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s insistence on collage—she builds up her paintings over layers of transferred images culled from her personal archive and various media sources that picture the African diaspora. By painting limbs and leaves at various transparencies on top of the transferred images, Crosby mediates how much of the photographs are visible, at times privileging opacity and concealment over clarity. In her show at David Zwirner (one of two inaugural exhibitions in the gallery’s new L.A. space), the layers of her new works felt even more jumbled than they have in the past—especially a series of paintings that depict large tropical foliage, in which the figure-ground tangles into a dense web of color and form. In some, a latticed wall cuts into the frame, reminiscent of the domestic spaces that feature more prominently in paintings like Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens (2021), a touching portrait of Crosby and her young child sitting on a screened porch, surrounded by lush foliage.

Ejuna na-aga, ọ kpụlụ nkọlikọ ya (2022) omits the figure altogether, instead honing in on a densely-filled corner of a bedroom in which an array of patterned garments spill out of an open closet, a plastic wrapped wedding dress hanging proudly on a nearby hook. Other objects in the scene—a poster of a vibrant Nigerien market, several teapots, a framed photograph of a child, and the children’s book Without a Silver Spoon—a Nigerian story that teaches honesty—begin to build out the identity of the home’s inhabitants. In this way, Crosby’s work is a dynamic blend of diasporic history, archive, and personal reflection, as well as a touching mediation on the spaces and connections that make us human.

Coming Back to See Through, Again runs through July 29, 2023.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Reading ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

At the outset of Mat Johnson’s Invisible Things (2022), a group of astronauts discovers a large glass dome on the surface of Venus’ largest moon. They soon find themselves inexplicably transported inside the bubble, where they find a U.S.-like civilization filled with “the Collected,” or people who have gone missing on Earth. What unfolds is a political sci-fi, centering on two political factions—one fighting to keep the status quo with religious zeal and the other leading a revolt to return home to Earth. Meanwhile, rumors of “invisible things” and haunting anomalies (like the errant floating person or exploding head) act as the wild card amidst the political theater.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Eating ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

In spite of the June gloom, we’ve been dreaming about BBQ in my house (my husband made BBQ twice in a row last weekend amidst cold temps and cloudy skies). We’ve also been inspired by a recent trip to Bludso’s BBQ on La Brea. From the ribs to the pulled pork to the chicken sausage—yes, we got all three—the meat was all perfection, and the mac ‘n’ cheese was particularly devilish.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Around Town ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

Anytime you can feel like a local in L.A., it feels like a victory. Chevalier’s Books in Larchmont Village is the kind of cozy neighborhood bookstore that instantly transports you to a smaller city and a slower pace of life. The shelves are lined with handwritten staff recommendations, and on several occasions, I’ve taken verbal suggestions from staff and been pleasantly surprised by excellent novels that I likely would not have reached for myself. On a recent trip, they even gift-wrapped several books I picked up for my family—an elegant touch that you don’t often see these days.

–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Au Jus (installation view) (2023). Image courtesy of the artists and Bel Ami, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Au Jus at Bel Ami ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

For five or so years, my private New Year’s resolution was to “consume less, create more,” thus, it has at times been difficult to reconcile the fact that my creative practice relies on consumption. The same can perhaps be said of artists Juliana Halpert and Parker Ito. In the press release for Au Jus, their two-person show at Bel Ami, Ito writes that his website “is like a Tamagotchi; I have to keep feeding it images or it will die.” I think that without images I might die, so I keep scrolling and screenshotting and downloading and printing and pasting them to my wall.

This is what Halpert and Ito have done in most of the works on view at the gallery—fed images through various cameras and scanners and printers to see what comes out the other side. But they are not mere recipients, cogs in the machinations of image-making: After an (ex!)-boyfriend told her she was a hobbyist photographer, Halpert lugged a heavy camera across state lines to photograph an orchid competition. One of the resulting C-prints, Orchid Dreams (ribbons) (2023) is too green, but who cares. The red-black rebate of the negative seeps into the top of the frame and she doesn’t crop it out.

Jules Olitski’s gloppy impasto painting, Power Switch (1990), hangs nearby. Ito apparently acquired it in a trade: an image for an image. A scan of a reproduced Olitski painting from a book also appears in Halpert’s Beyond Bounds (2020). The work initially reads as a subversive one-liner until I realize that the scanning and the photographing have shifted the color of the canvas slightly, and now it’s the same red-black as the film rebate. The tape-like shapes around the edges make the whole thing look like the peel-apart layer of old Polaroid pack film, just the residue of an image.

Across the room, textured images of religious icons make up the backdrop of Ito’s panoramic Clear Sushi series (all 2023). They look like gravestone rubbings, another kind of residue. Smaller images are layered in the corners of each canvas, including various art historical reproductions; images of the glitchy, colored bands generated by a malfunctioning photo scanner; and an AI-generated image of a busty “fantasy barmaid,” which I learn by feeding a screenshot through Google’s reverse image search. As with the works on view, the images here don’t always make sense together, and certainly don’t add up to something neatly-defined. Instead, they seem to suggest that consuming and making images is fundamentally part of how we live.

Au Jus runs through July 8, 2023.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Reading ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

In Rahel Aima’s 2021 essay “What color is the future?” she suggests that blue, a color seldom found in nature, is the color of the future, not least of all because of the blue light of the screens that surround us. It is not a flashy piece of writing, even for its varied references to Paris Hilton, VR headsets, and Avatar, and I am still somewhat confounded by the scope of what it achieves while remaining pointed and unhurried. In the conclusion, Aima writes that she finds herself “worrying less about what the future looks like, and more about what it does—and for whom. The thing about futurism is that even when it reaches for liberation, it’s an inherently fascistic enterprise.”

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Eating ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

In an Eater L.A. article detailing the drama over Salt & Straw’s recent opening next door to the 17-year-old Pazzo Gelato, Kim Malek, Salt & Straw’s co-founder and CEO, referred to herself as a “family-owned small business owner.” That might have once been true, but in 2017, the company received substantial investment from restaurateur Danny Meyer, best known as the founder of Shake Shack (which, incidentally, opened on the other side of Pazzo Gelato late last year). There are other reasons to pay Pazzo Gelato a visit—it’s delicious, they have good coffee, and the folks who work there are kind—but I’ve been visiting a little extra lately in small protest over the fact that the already-gentrified stretch of Sunset is becoming increasingly corporate.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Around Town ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

Tucked beside a Knights Inn just south of the 101, the cocktail bar Thunderbolt is, like so much of Los Angeles, easy to miss when traversing the city by car. Their inventive offerings feature fat-washed spirits and tall mounds of pebble ice and oddities like clarified tomato water, and surprisingly, everything on their Southern-inspired food is gluten-free. Get the fried chicken biscuit, but be advised, like so much of Los Angeles, there is also no parking.

–Erin F. O’Leary

Maria A. Guzmán Capron, Pura Mentira (installation view) (2023). Image courtesy of the artist and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles. Photo: Ed Mumford.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Maria A. Guzmán Capron at Shulamit Nazarian ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

At Shulamit Nazarian, Maria A. Guzmán Capron’s densely clad and richly layered wall works appear like a cast of funky characters. Playfully patterned fabrics are sewn, stuffed, quilted together, and finished with acrylic, spray, and latex paints to create nearly anthropomorphized femme figures that call out to the viewer in mysteriously tender and captivating ways. In Pura Mentira (meaning “pure lie” in Spanish), the Oakland-based artist draws from the telenovelas of her youth to explore themes of distortion, hyperbole, and indulgence. Capron approaches lies without judgment or skepticism, and instead considers how fibs might function as vehicles for experimentation or portals to other realities where unruly and hard-to-believe narratives run wild.

In Gata Salvaje (2023), the puffy, animal print-patterned bodies of two surreal figures swirl and subsume one another. The background figure tenderly envelops the figure in the foreground, and both gaze coyly at the viewer as if extending an invitation to join their shenanigans. Yet, throughout the exhibition, something made me feel like I was already a participant or a character in this telenovela. Moving further into the space, lavender blobs painted directly onto the gallery’s walls give way to limb-like shapes. The forms culminate in the final gallery, where they reveal themselves as belonging to a giantess, her bestial face composed of custom-made functional sculptures.

To be in the galleries at Shulamit Nazarian is to be housed in the body of Capron’s femme colossus. In this space of intrigue and hyperbole, the viewer is invited to swap guilt for pleasure, shame for pride. The space is alive and it’s warm here.

Pura Mentira runs through July 1, 2023.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Reading ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

I recently visited Heavy Manners Library, where I picked up a copy of RoseLee Goldberg’s 1979 book Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present from Thames & Hudson’s World of Art series. Goldberg’s text chronicles a history of performance art from Futurism to the pioneering work at Black Mountain College to the somewhat volatile and reflexive U.S. and European performance practices of the ’90s. I own so many gems from this series! They’re not only beautifully designed but are also consistently an accessible beacon of information. Other faves include Black Art: A Cultural History, Art and Climate Change, and Digital Art.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Eating ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

I ♡ Lowboy in Echo Park. I go so often that the GPS on my phone automatically routes me there if I turn on my car between the hours of 6 and 9 PM on the weekends. I go for the burgers and cocktails but stay for the massive poster of a young Brad Pitt in the women’s restroom.

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ Around Town ⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚

The nearly 100-year-old Point Vicente Lighthouse in Rancho Palos Verdes sits on the edge of a 130-foot cliff. Though access to the lighthouse is limited to monthly Coast Guard-led tours, the park next to it is the perfect spot for a picnic or a stroll along the mustard-dotted coast. Be sure to watch for the swarms of bees that pass through every now and then on especially humid days, and if you’re around at dusk, keep an eye out for the woman who is said to haunt the lighthouse and its grounds.

–Alitzah Oros

Alitzah Oros is an art historian currently based in Los Angeles.

More by Alitzah Oros

Erin F. O’Leary is a writer, editor, and photographer from the Midwest and raised in Maine. A graduate of Bard College, she has lived in Los Angeles since 2018, where she writes about photography and image culture. Her work has appeared in Carla and Photograph, among other publications.

More by Erin F. O'Leary

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and the founder of Carla. She is an arts correspondent for KCRW. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), OCHI (Los Angeles), and City Limits (Oakland).

More by Lindsay Preston Zappas