Ralph Bacerra at Frank Lloyd (Bergamot through February 6). Bacerra (1938 - 2008) taught at Chouinard and then Otis. He was influential to a generation of Southern California ceramic artists. His work has a classical beauty. He appropriates various cultural motifs - mixing them with traditional forms and ornamentation.



Ralph Bacerra

Miya Ando at Lora Schlesinger (Bergamot through February 6). Miya Ando’s work is sublime. The flat wall pieces are composed of steel, patina, pigment, phosphorescence, and automotive lacquer. The work is an illusion of landscape where the sky meets the sea - much like the photographic series of seascapes by Hiroshi Sugimoto.



Miya Ando

Barbara Kasten at Gallery Luisotti (Bergamot through April). This artist has had a long and distinguished career. This is all the more significant in that she is a woman (tends to be a man‘s world), her work has continuously mined architectural sensibilities, and she continues to develop new approaches to a fairly constant program of glass, mirrors, and controlled light. The works in this exhibition are sort of monochromatic and very elegant.



Barbara Kasten

Tim Ebner at Rosamund Felsen (Bergamot through February 6). Ebner is always evolving. In each successive exhibition he seems to change. His Neo-Geo paintings of the 80’s have been evolved to his current figurative/decorative motifs. These cutouts share spirit with the flotsam/decorative work of Kim McConnell. And they invoke the exuberance of Red Grooms.



Tim Ebner

Don Bachardy at Craig Krull (Bergamot through February 20). This is an exhibition containing only self portraits by Bachardy from 1959-2009. Terrific show. I love portraits. A good portrait marvels me with its technique and seduces me into inferring a story - a transference of my circumstance onto the sitter in the painting. Not much is more “natural” that contemplating the view of another. Bachardy has steadfast been true to the genre. While this genre, portraiture, has not been fashionable he has used it to record our fashionable history.



Don Bachardy

The Last Plastics Show at Cardwell Jimmerson (Culver City through February 13). This is a “partial re-creation of the 1971 Cal Arts exhibition of the same title” (15 of the original 24 artists). The gallery has done another superb job of bringing contemporary history back into view. The 1970 Ed Moses resin painting is killer! Roland Reiss in 1971 cast plastic dog statuettes in resin.



Ed Moses



Roland Reiss

Jedediah Caesar at Suzanne Vielmetter (Culver City through March 6). Suzanne Vielmetter has moved to the other side of S. La Cienega (still on Washington) into an 8,000 sq. ft. snazzy, white-walled-temple. Associate this new space with Blum & Poe’s new palace and Bennett Roberts’ new gallery and it is apparent money has been made in the recent art cycle and there are expectations that good times are again ahead. Beats me the “hows and whys”. All I keep thinking of is the Dire Straits’ lyrics - “…money for nothing and the chicks for free..”



Jedediah Caesar

Shay Bredimus at Koplin del Rio (Culver City through February 20. Bredimus has trained at the Laguna College of Art and Design - they have a really illustrious faculty and increasingly students from this program stand out as shiny new stars-to-be. Bredimus’ work is confidently fluid and dramatic.



Shay Bredimus

Kenny Harris at Koplin del Rio (Culver City through February 20). Kenny Harris is one of Laguna CAD’s faculty. In this exhibition he presents a large selection of plein-air paintings done while in Istanbul for a month. In addition, there are several large formal studio paintings as shown here.



Kenny Harris

Thomas Schutte at Maloney Fine Art (Culver City through February 27. Schutte has modeled figurative sculptures in clay and then photographed them. On this trip to LA it seems there was lots of portraiture to be seen. Things do definitely run in cycles.



Thomas Schutte

Tom LaDuke at Angles (Culver City through February 20). This work with its layers and various styles of material use is engaging. The show feels a bit Medieval to me. Curious paintings by an eclectic artist.



Tom LaDuke

Michael Mararian at Corey Helford (Culver City through February 6). Corey Helford exclusively shows Low-Brow, “new surrealism” painting. I always see the shows here and seldom walk away with much other than the reassurance that I am staying educated in the “now”. Mararian has assembled a group of works that may well offer insights into the disaffected youth of “now”. It is a frightful view and I worry that his survey may well be accurate.



Michael Mararian

Justin Bower at Western Project (Culver City through February 20). Western Project has moved over to S. La Cienega (much easier to get to than Main Street). They’ve a group show and Justin Bower is seen here (as he is in the Torrance Museum portrait show). Bower received his BFA at UofA Tucson and MFA at Claremont. These paintings are arresting. I am not sure of their “take-away value” - but they hijack one’s attention when first entering the room.



Justin Bower

Jason Kowalski at Terrence Rogers (Santa Monica through February 20). Kowalski is a new-comer to the landscape “brotherhood/sisterhood” in LA. His work has been well received and it is easy to see why.



Jason Kowalski

Dean De Cocker at Sherry Frumkin (Santa Monica Airport through February 20). It is a real treat to walk into Dean’s show. His sculptural vocabulary and unique manner of coming off the wall are well recognized signatures. He has moved away from the frank airplane/airfoil motifs of yore and the work now is more purely, abstractly, formal. Dean lived, worked and exhibited in San Diego years ago.



Dean De Cocker

Gerald Incandela at Edward Cella (mid Wilshire through February 27. Incandela produces large scale works that are in part photographic, collaged, and actively “drawn”. Using multiple negatives he essentially collages images in the darkroom that then are differentially developed and fixed by painting the developing image with photographic chemistry (thus the apparent "drawing" where only parts of the image get developer or fixative).



Gerald Incandela

David Korty at Michael Kohn (West Hollywood through February 27). Korty was trained as a printmaker at RISD. His work has a very graphic quality that reflects this training and mirrors the same emotional territory as Alex Katz.



David Korty

Michele O’Marah at Kathryn Brennan @ Cottage Home (Chinatown through February 6). O’Marah is a video artist. Her three videos that comprise this exhibition have been “accessorized” with props from the filming and wall-text so that the whole is an installation. I found myself drawn in by her re-working a re-creation of Pamela Anderson’s “Barb Wire.”



Michele O'Marah

Chris Barnard at Sam Lee (Chinatown through March 13). Chris Barnard was seen in San Diego at Seminal Projects in 2008. His show then was excellent. And this show is excellent. At first blush his paintings seem to be about some sort of sci-fi space - but rapidly I find myself willingly getting lost in a very engaging abstract space.



Chris Barnard

Lizabeth Eva Rossof at Charlie James (Chinatown through February 20). Rossof is a Bay Area Conceptualist. In order to understand this work the process needs explanation. She has contracted with Chinese artisans to reproduce works that normally would be prohibited production in China. There is then the ruse of packing forbidden images of pornography, Tiananmen Square, etc. so that the copies can be exported out of China under the noses of Chinese censors.



Lizabeth Eva Rossof

Vessels at Angels Gate Cultural Center (San Pedro through March. Angels Gate hits about once a year with a refreshing survey of LA Basin talent. This a one of their sweet shows that offers varying technical and artistic approaches to the “vessel”.



Michael Rohde

Wayne Thiebaud at Pasadena Museum of California Art (Pasadena - closed). This large survey of 70 years of Thiebaud painting was luscious. His large, brilliant, sun drenched paintings are a Golden California version of Pop.



Wayne Thibaud

Ray Turner at Pasadena Museum of California Art (Pasadena - closed). Turner has executed rapid portraits on glass of Pasadena residents. About 150 are shown in the exhibition. Ray Turner’s name seems to be coming up frequently in the current LA showscape. This work shows how powerful gesture is - expressed through the musculature of one’s face or the hand of the artist capturing the moment.



Ray Turner

Get out, look at art, have fun.
Doug Simay 2/2/2010

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