by Jody Zellen Charlie James Gallery , Los Angeles, California Continuing to May 24, 2025 Nancy Baker Cahill, “Pia Mater VII,” 2024, archival pigment on silk suspended over an archival pigment print on canvas mounted to Dibond, secured with aluminum magnet slat, 47 X 38”. All images courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles. Nancy Baker Cahill is a Los Angeles-based media artist known for her immersive installations, films, sculptures, digital photographs and technically complex augmented reality (AR) experiences. She came into prominence with “4th wall,” an augmented reality public art platform that "geolocates dynamic visual content to enhance viewers’ perception of historic places or social situations via immersive art experiences." An illuminating aspect of Baker Cahill's practice is how seamlessly she flows between analogue and digital presentations. Though most of her work is rooted in digital technologies, not all of it requires hardware and software to view, as the multiple series of works the comprise “Seismic” attests. The digital prints of the “Pia Maters” series combine two layers of imagery, one on silk and the other on canvas. “Distortions” are abstract collages that juxtapose static printed fragments from Baker Cahill's AR creations with drawn renderings and miscellaneous geometric shapes in a range of colors and textures. “Widows” is a series of wall-based sculptures that cluster torn pieces of painted paper. And in the basement we encounter “Slipstream,” a large-scale installation and projection. It contains organically shaped fragments of ripped graphite on paper drawings that appear like arrays of feathers extending across the wall. The effect is that of a living organism that ebbs and flows in sync with the different hues of an animated projection that maps to these sculptural forms. Nancy Baker Cahill, “Widow III,” 2025, graphite, graphite powder, acrylic, silk, holographic particles, paper, 38 x 39 x 13”. On a modest-size screen is the short video “Carbon 1” (the first in a series of six) which explores themes of "ecological collapse, digital distortion, and cultural instability" as described by the artist. Here, she films oscillating organically shaped expanses of green that echo a botanical landscape that suddenly morph into twisting flaming tornadoes. Images of water, as well as fire are interrupted by flickering pixels that eventually fill the screen to become digital noise that signifies rampant environmental destruction.    Nancy Baker Cahill, “Slipstream,” 2025, installation of torn and reassembled drawings, dimensions variable. Baker Cahill examines topics ranging from ecological concepts and brain functionality, to climate change and ecofeminism. She is a master at creating algorithms that recalibrate natural phenomena and transform them into vivid abstractions. Out of her experiments in VR Baker Cahill redefines how we visualize three-dimensional space. From that digital point of origination she began to tear apart her drawings and fashion them into sculptures, which became models for a new generation of VR. The “Widows” are examples of this process — graphite drawings that become floral assemblages protruding from the wall. Joining together in “Slipstream” they simultaneously become both static and dynamic forms. Nancy Baker Cahill, “Distortions II,” 2025, graphite, tape, holographic paper, lucite, photographs, AI-generated imagery, paper on aluminum, 24 x 18”. The seven works that comprise the series “Pia Mater,” named for the delicate innermost layer of membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, are combinations of two vibrant digital prints. Each piece is encased in custom armature where the background image — a pigment print on canvas — is overlaid with an identical image printed on silk. There are subtle differences in the images because of the materials on which they are printed. Slight as they are, these variations express the relationship between tenuous states of being and the delicate, as well as resilient nature of the brain. They convey geological associations in which interlocking colorful planes are at once atmospheric and dreamlike. The most compelling works here, the “Distortions,” also tend to be the simplest. These intimate collages unify the varied facets of her practice. In them, she cuts apart and reassembles fragments from drawings, AR generated imagery, as well as holographic paper. Though they are analog, they evoke the more dynamic aspects of Baker Cahill's virtual works. The aesthetic range of ”Seismic” follows this dynamic. While sophisticated algorithms and complex concepts drive the work, the pleasure comes from seeing the visual engulf the technological. Jody Zellen  is a LA based writer and artist who creates interactive installations, mobile apps, net art, animations, drawings, paintings, photographs, public art, and artist’s books. Zellen received a BA from Wesleyan University (1983), a MFA from CalArts (1989) and a MPS from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (2009). She has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1989. For more information please visit  www.jodyzellen.com .

by Liz Goldner Unveil Gallery , Irvine, California Continuing to May 30, 2025 Jean Lowe, “Planned Community,” 2004, oil on unstretched canvas, 120 x 170”. All images courtesy of the artist and Unveil Gallery, Irvine. In an era when reality is often contradicted by the words and actions by our so-called leaders, Jean Lowe’s “Spoiler Alert,” with its papier-mâché potted plants, books and even a fire extinguisher becomes the perfect show and tell.   Lowe grew up in the Bay Area with the freedom to explore a multitude of artistic endeavors, including sneaking into the empty Varsity Theater in downtown Palo Alta to mount improvised performances. She was also influenced by her father, a psychiatrist who, Lowe says, inspired her “to look around the back sides of issues or accepted norms.” When she told her dad that she was majoring in art at UC Berkeley, he said, “Oh darling, what for?” Her response was, “How do I make art in a way that’s not purely self-indulgent?”   Jean Lowe, “POW Carpet,” 2020, housepaint on canvas, 154 x 83”. In graduate school at UC San Diego, Lowe began exploring in her artwork “important issues.” These included “relationships with other species,” environmental concerns, hypocrisy, and pretension. As a working artist, “I’ve explored the same material consistently but from constantly shifting angles and with different formal approaches,” she explains. Self-described as a “conceptual/decorative multimedia” artist, in “Spoiler Alert” her figurative talents are on display in paintings, sculptures, and installations. Jean Lowe, “Bouquet in Shallow Basket,” 2024, casein enamel on papier-mache, 14 x 18 x 14”. One important aspect of Lowe’s work is her anti-Eurocentric perspective. She challenges centuries-old norms of how White people and their environs were depicted. The 10-foot wide “Planned Community” (2004) is a parody of 17th century Dutch landscape paintings. Rather than depicting windmills and other traditionally European scenes, she portrays our industrial expansion and suburban sprawl. That sprawl takes place beneath the kind of vast, luminous sky often seen in those Dutch antecedents. Jean Lowe, “Self Help (Rekindling Your Passion),” 2016, casein, ink-jet print on polymetal, 54 x 37 1/2”. Lowe’s red, blue, and yellow painting “POW Carpet” (2020) was inspired by decorative rugs she has seen in auction catalogs. A closer look reveals that its intricate design is created with numerous abstract images, which usurp our expectations of what a rug should look like. The viewer is also invited to walk on the painted rug, an action that would ordinarily be an act of aesthetic blasphemy. The apparently realistic “Bouquet in Shallow Basket” (2024) is made of papier- mâché, one of Lowe’s favorite creative mediums. Each of her two colorful 2025 “Nature Morte” florals (appropriating traditional paintings) are painted with casein on paper that is besmirched by its accompaniment with 100-plus years old newspaper clippings. They are titled “Swede Fleeing Fire” and “Bear Attack.”   The pieces de resistance  here are several papier-mâché books, each satirizing the ever-popular genre of self-help books. Several are humorously titled, “Rekindling Your Passion for … What Could Have Been, Meaningless Sex, Fatty Foods, Personal Growth, Perseverance and Polite Conversation.” Several others are titled, “Happiness is … A Nipple, A Cupcake, A Car, Family and a White Picket Fence, Second Chance and The Moment.” The point is that artmaking, when poking fun at our insecurities, can elevate us to a higher understanding of ourselves and our place in the world — and do so far more than the self-help books they parody.   Jean Lowe, ”Small Fire Extinguisher,” 2022, casein on papier maché, 7 x 16 x 3 1/2”. Lowe’s three-dimensional papier-mâché fire extinguisher is so realistic that we might easily pass it by. But look closely and it is covered with squiggly drawings and ersatz writings, mocking the instructions on a real fire extinguisher. The artwork thus becomes a metaphor for the message of overall protection of Constitutional rights by our government, especially while so many protective safeguards, from health agencies, to protection of our food and air, to surveillance of foreign threats are being dismantled.   Few recent art shows have so cleverly succeeded in deconstructing the paradigms of our current politics. “Spoiler Alert” not only entertains and delights, but it also offers a serious response to the brazen lies and corruption being committed in broad daylight. Liz Goldner  is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.  Liz Goldner’s Website .

by John Zotos Ro2 Gallery , Dallas, Texas Continuing through May 17, 2025   Yasuyo Maruyama, “Ai 2,” 2021, oil on panel, 16 x 16 x 2”. All images courtesy of the artist and Ro2 Art, Dallas. “Fragments of Identity” provides a selection of Yasuyo Maruyama’s paintings executed between 2020 and 2025.  As such, they summarize her grappling with portraiture over those five years, a period bookended by a devastating pandemic and the dawn of an authoritarian regime in Washington.  Yasuyo Maruyama, “Misaki 2,” 2020, oil on wood panel, 16 x 16 x 2”. In good interpretive fashion, the notion of “identity” is as full of currently unresolvable political significance as it is suggestive of the fact that parts and fragments ultimately comprise a unified whole. This is reflected in the totality of each composite image that Maruyama assembles from numerous photographs of her subjects, resulting in a hyper-realistic representation rooted in the distillation of her source material. The artist’s aesthetic celebrates pluralism genuinely, over and above the kind of one-dimensional depiction common to both politics and popular culture.  Maruyama’s paintings are executed in painstaking detail with traditional Japanese artisanal tools. She overlays pigment and varnish in many layers in order to achieve the remarkable flesh tones and hues that are her trademark signifiers. These technical abilities are brought to bear on themes that wrestle with the ambiguity between human consciousness and artificial intelligence.  The artist’s iconography is informed by anime and manga, references to a technologically augmented world infused with virtual reality — a world heading our way fast.    Yasuyo Maruyama, “Sakiko 3,” 2021, oil on wood panel, 47 x 47”. The images are intensely vibrant and visually arresting. Each is an extreme close-up of head and neck, where the top of the image crops the head and leads the eye in with the subject’s eyes. Usually featured against a monochromatic background, the tight visual focus compresses the subject within a square frame format that always takes us straight to the sitter’s eyes. It is here that the artist spends most of her time rendering volume and depth, in contrast to the otherwise flat surfaces and clean lines that define the other facial features. This is clearly evident in “Natsuki 3,” where, in an image featuring flesh tones, a black background, and pink lips, the otherworldly eyes sparkle like emeralds. They float as if surrounded by a play of reflections that issues from somewhere beyond the frame, making the subject feel like an artificial being, a cyborg, beyond the merely human.    “Karin” is the rare exception. Here the eyes seem to suggest something beyond the frame of the image. Upon close inspection they reveal a street scene, a link to a social reality that the artist hints does actually exist beyond her usual visual puzzles. The eyes are still the most important thematic device in that they get beyond just representing individuation within the theme of identity.   Yasuyo Maruyama, “Chiemi,” 2021, oil on wood panel, 47 x 47”. Cinematic precedents suggest that the eyes signify the artificial aspect of AI, as depicted in the “Ghost in the Shell” films or by the replicants in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner.” More recent examples in the genre, such as the androids known as ‘hosts’ in the “Westworld” series, or the AI character in Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina,” conceal the nature of the machines by opting for a naturalistic depiction of the eyes. With Maruyama, if the eyes are too real she loses what elevates the nature of her sitter’s portraits in the first place. By intertwining both ends of the spectrum, she aspires toward redefining beauty itself, and therefore, reclaiming truth during an era intent on distorting it. John Zotos  is an art critic and essayist based in Dallas.

by Davis S. Rubin Blum Gallery , Culver City, California Continues through May 17, 2025 Robert Colescott, “Untitled,” 1949, gouache and graphite on paper, 17 1/8 x 21 5/8 x 1 1/2”. All images courtesy of © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York. Photo: Evan Walsh Growing up in a Creole family in Oakland in the 1920s and ‘30s, Robert Colescott (1925-2009) was encouraged by his mother — a descendent of African slaves whose husband was of mixed race — to pass for White. After all, he and his brother, fellow artist Warrington Colescott (1921-2018), were both light skinned, so why should they have to face the prejudices and abuses heaped upon Black folks if they could avoid them? It wasn’t until the mid-1960s, when the younger Colescott brother was in his 40s, that he began to embrace his African heritage. While this self-awareness may have been propelled to some extent by the Civil Rights Movement, his shift in identity was largely the result of encounters with Egyptian art and culture during visits to Cairo from 1964 to ’67. Since representing the U.S. at the 1997 Venice Biennale, he has been widely acclaimed for his mature large scale paintings satirizing racism and the stereotyping of Blacks. Robert Colescott, “KiNDRED ONE,” c. 1964, oil, graphite, and collage element on canvas, 71 1/4 x 47 7/8 x 1 7/8”. But that is not the focus, at least the main focus of this exhibition. It was curated by L.A. artist Umar Rashid with the intention of viewing Colescott as the African trickster god Anansi, an idea that the curator believes to be an underlying characteristic of all of the work. With only 3 of the 30 exhibited works dating later than 1978, however, the show is more, and more importantly, an art historian’s treasure trove that sheds light on the relationship between Colescott’s art and his metamorphosis. As early as 1949, in fact, Colescott was already considering race as a subject. Astutely aware of recent developments in modern art, he painted a Cubist composition in which he cleverly immersed what appear to be hooded Ku Klux Klansmen in an abstraction of geometric planes. This was about 20 years after Philip Guston portrayed a KKK member in a Social Realist painting, and another 20 before Guston would produce similar imagery in his now celebrated abandonment of Abstract Expressionism. Robert Colescott, “Untitled,” 1976, collaged photograph on wrapping paper mounted on backing board, 23 5/8 x 34 1/8 x 1 3/4”. Encoded racial content is also present in Colescott’s 1955 Abstract Expressionist pastel drawing, where the subject is watermelons, a common racist trope referring to Blacks. Thirty years later he painted a watermelon in one of his many reinterpretations of works from art history, “Les Demoiselles de Alabama Vestidas” (1985, not in this exhibition ). Robert Colescott, “The Siamese Twins,” c. 1976, acrylic on canvas with wooden cutouts, 100 1/2 x 73 5/8 x 1 7/8”. Photo: Josh White. Like many other artists working in the Bay Area during the 1950s, Colescott explored the blending of Abstract Expressionist brushwork with traditional figurative subject matter. This approach became known as the Bay Area Figurative School style, and is most evident here in “Cloud Watch” (1963). Its subject of a woman looking out a window was a one explored at the time by Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff. Additionally, the slender, elongated bodies of nude female figures depicted in “Untitled” (c. 1963) and “KiNDRED ONE” (c. 1964) display striking parallels to contemporaneous works by Manuel Neri and Nathan Oliveira, but with a significant distinction. While Neri and Oliveira painted human flesh in arbitrary colors, Colescott opted for a shade of tan that approximated his own skin tone. Keep in mind that he did these works some 25 years before the identity aesthetics that prevailed in the 1990s in works such as Byron Kim’s geometric abstractions based on skin colors. In “KiNDRED ONE” Colescott reinforces the idea that this woman is a light-skinned Black by exaggerating the jet-blackness of her pubic hair, and by literally nailing a Whiteface mask over her face. This not-so-subtle commentary on the racist convention of Whites wearing Blackface make-up would reemerge in iconic later works (again, not part of this exhibition) such as the hilarious “ Shirley Temple Black and Bill Robinson White ” (1980), in which the movie stars have essentially switched skin colors. Robert Colescott, ”OLYMPiA’S FOUNTAiN,” 2000, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 72 x 1 7/8”. Colescott’s signature narrative format emerged as early as 1970, and is represented here by an untitled painting that shows Europeans invading Africa and confronting the natives. Other works from the ‘70s reveal a variety of approaches that are as witty as the subsequent ones for which Colescott became best known. Two standouts from around 1976, the year of the United States Bicentennial, are unconventional self-portraits. In one, Colescott took a sheet of wrapping paper imprinted with a grid of photographic portraits of U.S. presidents and superimposed a photo of himself over one of the modules — an omen of the later arrival of Barack Obama. In the other, “The Siamese Twins,” Colescott shows himself peering through a window at a scene involving Siamese twins (male and female). Attached to one another by their hair, they are shown struggling to move in opposite directions. While it is reasonable to assume that Colescott was identifying with the twins as an “other,” the painting may also have been motivated by his split with his older brother (the two never spoke again after Colescott declared himself African American), or by a rocky relationship with his spouse at the time. By the 1980s Colescott was concentrating on large-scale satires painted with thick gestural brushwork in the Bay Area tradition. The latest work in the exhibition, “OLYMPiA’S FOUNTAiN” (2000), is a dazzling, colorful example of his late style. It is both a reinterpretation of Manet’s “Olympia” (1863) and a variation on an earlier revision of the same art historical classic that Colescott painted around 1959. In the later version, the black-skinned maid is more prominent than the white-skinned courtesan. While metaphorically reflecting Colescott’s identity transformation, the painting is also a compelling affirmation of DEI. In that regard, it should come as no surprise if Colescott’s paintings are soon banned from federal museums as degenerate art. David S. Rubin   is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and artist. As a curator, he has held positions at MOCA Cleveland, Phoenix Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, and San Antonio Museum of Art. As a writer he has contributed to Art and Cake, Art in America, Arts Magazine, Artweek, ArtScene, Fabrik, Glasstire, Hyperallergic, and Visual Art Source. He has published numerous  exhibition catalogs , and his curatorial archives are housed in the   Smithsonian Archives of American Art . For more information: www.davidsrubin.com .

by Matthew Kangas Gallery 110 , Seattle, Washington Continuing to May 31, 2025 Li Turner, “Barbie in the Bullring,” 2018, acrylic on canvas, 30” X 24”. All images courtesy of Gallery 110, Seattle. All photos: Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction. In the blizzard of social and political turmoil we now face every day, it is not surprising that artists are increasingly turning to subjects that express protest, resistance and outrage. That being the case, it’s necessary to identify those artists who have been pursuing the topic of injustice all along. Li Turner, for instance, has long committed to social justice, as her exhibit “Facing Down Systemic Greed and Other Offenses” demonstrates. The show addresses an extraordinary range of such topics and in so doing also proves that aesthetic values need not be jettisoned to make points about wrong-headed social attitudes and long-standing tropes of prejudice and sexism. Li Turner, “Keys to Equality,” 2025, watercolor & gouache, 15 1/2 x 19”. In the Pacific Northwest, a leading beacon for Turner and many others concerned with how to reconcile aesthetic values with urgent social intentions was Jacob Lawrence. Following his 1970 move to the University of Washington School of Art (when he simply could not get hired on the East Coast), Lawrence’s use of flattened space, cubist forms, close-ranging colors, and the complete spectrum of historical and contemporary social issues became a paradigm. We see Lawrence’s influence flowering in Turner’s art, as well as in other artists such as Barbara Earl Thomas, Ronald Hall, Gene Gentry McMahon, Robert Colescott, and Roger Shimomura. Li Turner, “Laundry Day & Tanks Don’t Mix,” 2025, watercolor and gouache, 15 1/4 x 21 1/4”. Turner’s preference for small scale also echoes Lawrence, as does her use of opaque gouache and watercolor media. One Lawrence hallmark that attracted the men who hired him at the University was his intuition for perfect placement and composition. Turner’s careful positioning of her figures and their nestling of colors recall the Harlem master, but her palette is wider and more varied. Both formal qualities — composition and color — combine to reinforce her tightly focused subject matter. Turner, who began as a dancer and later studied art at the University of Utah and UC Berkeley, here assembles a panoply of current issues. She addresses the challenge head-on to artists seeking to voice strong opinions on a particular challenge: how to avoid work becoming dated if and when the issue is solved or obviated. Turner’s fresh approach to each picture gives reason to believe her overall body of work will hold up over time. Li Turner, “Annie Oakley and Friends Shoot Down Oppression,” 2019, watercolor and gouache, 18” X 18”. Subtlety and indirection are two tools with which Turner address the natural decay in interest resulting from earnest overkill. For example, in “Laundry Day & Tanks Don’t Mix” (2025) a red-and-pink brick wall separates the upper and lower halves of the composition, as well as foregrounding the woman hanging clothes on a line. At the top, in the distance, tanks encroach. With an ameliorating humor, “Annie Oakley and Friends” (2019) are shooting down corsets on a city’s outskirts, divided by a white picket fence revealing suffragettes and protesters at the base. Similarly, with their backs to the viewer, “Angela Davis, Wilma Mankiller and Gloria Steinem Bay at the Moon” (2019) encases the trio of feminist icons in a big yellow circle. As with Lawrence, real-life historical figures are honored with heroic evocations. Two large works featuring Barbie — a not-quite-real-life historical figure — place the iconic doll in unexpected settings. “Barbie in the Bullring” (2018) is both celebratory and exploitative with its howling crowd of men who may be seen as both cheering and leering. Bikini-clad Barbie is frozen in place, awaiting the release of the bull. Barbie also appears before a shop window in the similarly fraught “#Me, Too” (2018). Looking on are two men, one in a long coat exposing himself to her, the other ogling at the whole ugly spectacle while safely tucked into the lower right-hand corner. The largest canvas here is two by three feet in size. It suggests the potential benefit of expanding the size of her work, which too often feels constrained by its intimate size. Li Turner, “Mother Earth Weeps as the World Fights for Life,” 2025, watercolor & gouache, 16” x 16”. Taking on environmentalism, “Mother Earth Weeps as the World Fights for Life” (2025) is an allegorical image of a nude crouching with long hair concealing her face. She is posed astride three globes: a world map, three infants, and three nautilus seashells. Against a pale blue sky, Turner displays an ability to create visual myths of considerable conviction.  In “Keys to Equality” (2025) a reclining reader is surrounded by tall stacks of books that include titles by women authors such as de Beauvoir, Alcott, Brontë, Cather, and Dorothy Parker. They offer literary parallels to the artist’s efforts, summed up by Emily Dickinson’s directive: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” In the painting’s lower left corner, veiled and kneeling Muslim women are immersed in reading books. Now banned from access to education in Afghanistan, their plight is recognized and pointed out by Turner. Thanks to simplified compositions and careful choices of subject, there is little that Turner has left out of her probing gaze at today’s world. Matthew Kangas  writes regularly for Visual Art Source eNewsletter; Ceramics: Art & Perception (Australia); and Preview (Canada). Besides reviewing for many years at Art in America, American Craft, Art Ltd., Vanguard and Seattle Times, he is the author of numerous catalogs and monographs, the latest being the award-winning Italo Scanga 1932-2001. Four anthologies of his critical essays, reviews and interviews were issued by Midmarch Arts Press (New York) and available on  Amazon at Books by Matthew Kangas .

by T.s. Flock University of Washington, Henry Art Gallery , Seattle, California Continues through August 17, 2025 Tala Madani, “Squeegee Men 3,” 2024, oil on linen. All images courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Jueqian Fang, courtesy of the Henry. For their monographic exhibit of works by Tala Madani, the curatorial team at the Henry Gallery made many excellent decisions, in terms of both selection and installation. Presentation is never to be taken for granted, of course, but Madani’s works present an additional challenge, as they are widely varied in scale and format, from very small paintings to short animations to canvases that tower over the viewer. Let’s start with the latter. In Madani's largest canvases depicting window washers, the world is reduced to the essentials — a surface to be cleaned, buildings so vast we do not see their edges, only figures suspended in a colorful void. Sometimes the bands of color seem rendered by a single stroke of the squeegee, as if the paint itself were merely a residue. Within these rough flat tints, you may find barely sketched silhouettes that sometimes appear as if smudged on by fingers.   Tala Madani, “Film Fall (purple),” 2024, oil on linen. In this play with immensity and erasure, scale is everything. The seemingly infinite facades of the skyscrapers Madani depicts demand attention, induce vertigo, and establish dominance through size. In our increasingly bold global oligarchy, art and architecture share this obsession with monumentality — a luxury that, ironically, rests on the humblest gestures and most precarious labor. The real builders, those who polish, clean and make visible the invisible, are themselves made invisible by their status — precariousness in poverty and immigration status, and readily exploited, from the USA to the UAE. In this troubled reflection, we who stand below and at a great distance, are also left suspended, between fascination and indifference, intimacy and helpless witness. Power dynamics are a primary motif in Madani’s works, taking on a more grotesque and satirical character in her “Bad Father” paintings. In these much smaller windows into an alternate reality, fatherhood is no longer an honorary title or a role to be assumed when convenient. It is an irrevocable physical attachment. The children are unruly protuberances that act of their own accord. The father can no longer flee or ignore his role. He is rooted to the life he has generated.   These children are not the idealized reflection of a lineage, but the grotesque extension of masculinity reduced to its purest absurdity — loud, violent, confused. They scream, struggle and take bats to the furniture. For once, the mother is not there to take the blame, to be the guarantor of a failing upbringing. There's no womb to point the finger at, no mother figure to accuse of having spoiled or neglected too much. There are only these men and their children, bound by a cord that cannot be cut.   In these absurd yet terribly logical scenes, Madani holds a mirror to the certainties of a patriarchal view of fatherhood and shakes them. The child is no longer an idea, an inheritance, a name. The farce that treats boys as a means for men to project their own ego into the future, as “legacy” rendered with vulgar literalism, forces a revelation: The power to give life is not an insignificant privilege nor a way of generating an instrument of one’s own will, but an existential condition from which no one, irrespective of gender, can turn away. Tala Madani, “Shit Mom Animation,” 2021, single-channel video animation, 7:54 minutes To insist even this much might be considered blasphemous to the current order, but Madani doesn’t end her provocations there. With her triptych of “altarpieces”, she turns the solemnity of religious iconography against itself, moving from the groin to the fundament. The images are, quite simply, the rear end of a man bent over, anus and hanging scrotum in full view, rendered in painterly monochrome. This holy image was not entirely Madani’s invention. She is reproducing an actual altarpiece, whose backside portrayed the Cyclopean gaze of an asshole forever directed to the crucifix, a rectum exposed like so many theological gaps. By hiding this element behind the altarpiece, we need not assume that the original’s creator was totally irreverent, though it may look as such. To our modern eyes, trained by centuries of iconoclasm and an increasing disgust with the body’s imperfect frankness, what passes for sacred and profane remains in flux. Tala Madani, “Sports Dads (R&R),” 2024, oil on linen. With Madani, this trio of fundaments is also the most literal example of her ability to point to the otherwise hidden, the invisible work that supports all apparent grandeur. What any official history emphasizes — authority figures, sacred ideals — only holds because something else is exploited or denied. In the balance Madani maintains between the comic and the tragic, we are forced to reckon with the embarrassing revelation that the veneer of the divine always conceals a much cruder truth.  This reversal is fully in line with Madani’s approach. Where sacred art once imposed moral and spiritual authority, it now substitutes a corporeal grotesque which demystifies any pretension to grandeur. Humor in this context is not content to be a mockery, it becomes a tool of delegitimizing power structures without direct challenging them. It’s a consistent feature among artists who grew up amid theocratic and authoritarian regimes, though such plausible deniability regarding interpretation never offers full protection to artists.  This threat of violence — even of dismemberment — comes out more explicitly in Madani’s animations, if still with a morbid playfulness. They are hand drawn: Soft colors, round shapes, a feigned naivety reminiscent of one’s first sketches scribbled in crayon or finger paints. This childlike style belies the more adult content that follows. Madani knows where to press, and does so free of irony. Tala Madani, “Corner Projection (Alsatian),” 2019, oil on linen. For example, a hand plays with a spring, makes it dance, bends it with the amazed insistence of a child who is just discovering the flexibility of things. Then the spring cuts. Suddenly, a finger falls off. The hand continues, fascinated, oblivious to its own wound. One more shot. Another. By the end, all that remains is a trembling stump, brutalized by the mechanics of its own game. In another, a succession of men transforms into furniture and appliances as they read instruction manuals. Their grumbling and grunts of horror only add to the absurdity. Then a child appears, smashing their inanimate but sentient forms — a bloodless blood bath. Tala Madani. “Be Flat,” installation view, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. 2024. Then there is the image of a young girl projected in a dark room where two viewers observe her in a white void. Suddenly, it is she who scrutinizes them, who pulls them into the screen, and shoves them — in a most extreme inversion — into her birth canal and finally allows the void its total erasure. What begins in play ends in dismemberment; what seems a simple task becomes a trap. With Madani, the absurd is never gratuitous. It is the weapon of unease, the lever that pries the lid off the ark. We watch, we laugh, we cringe. And when it’s time to look away, we realize that it is too late: We are already swallowed. T.s. Flock  is a writer and arts critic based in Seattle and co-founder of  Vanguard Seattle .

by Ann Landi Harwood Museum of Art , Taos, New Mexico Continues through September 7, 2025 Charles Ross, “Star Axis: Solar Pyramid,” a tetrahedron built to the angles of the sun at summer and winter solstices. All images courtesy of the artist. © Charles Ross / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Though never as prominent as contemporaries like James Turrell and Michael Heizer, Charles Ross has had a long and esteemed career originally as part of the late-1960s Land Art movement. Like both Heizer and Turrell, Ross has an immense ongoing project in the desert, known as “Star Axis.” It bears a resemblance, at least in photographs, to ancient Incan or Aztec monuments of unknown religious import. The New York Times  has described the colossus, situated on 400 acres within a 76,000-acre cattle ranch in the New Mexico desert, as an “11-story naked-eye observatory made of sandstone, bronze, earth, granite and stainless steel …” Says The Santa Fe New Mexican , “[I]t is an earth star sculpture with angles determined by earth-to-star alignments so stars and other celestial phenomena can be experienced in human scale, no telescope necessary.” Charles Ross, “Solar Spectrum, Dwan Light Sanctuary,” installation, Montezuma, New Mexico. I have not seen “Star Axis,” but I have visited another massive work, “Dwan Light Sanctuary,” a temple-like building in Montezuma, NM, for which Ross created 24 enormous prisms in homage to the visionary art dealer Virginia Dwan, who died in 2022. I myself was seriously underwhelmed, but the kids in my entourage, striking yogic poses on the stone steps, were loving it. Ross discovered a passion for making art while studying mathematics at UC Berkeley. His first foray into light-themed work that would become the ongoing focus of his career occurred when he began using acrylic to construct transparent geometric forms of varying shapes filled with liquid that functioned as prisms. He showed these at galleries in New York and California, including Dwan, through the late 1960s as they became increasingly more complex and ambitious. Charles Ross, “Mansions of the Zodiac: Tau,” 1973-76/2012, acrylic paint and collage using bakelite powder xeroxes of Verenberg photographic star atlas images on canvas, 190 x 63 1/2”. One of his works from that era, “Prism Column,” is present here, rather understated but gleaming sentinel that refracts and reflects the dark blue walls and wood floor of the gallery. Another of Ross’s early works screening just a few feet away, “Sunlight Dispersion” (1972), is a 16 mm film about 25 minutes in length. It consists entirely of a succession of looped time-lapse clips that show the solar spectrum moving through the artist’s studio. The video captures rainbow patterns on a table, floor, and different objects, sometimes suggesting an art-school still-life setup shot through a prism. This may have been radical in its day, but it now seems flat and anti-climactic compared with many video masterworks of the past 50 years. Ross fares better in the large gallery where his “Mansions of the Zodiac” are displayed. These are twelve “Star Maps,” created between 1973 and ’76 and reworked in 2012, each measuring 109 by 63 1/2 inches. In each a notched elliptical shape is positioned against a dark ground. According to the museum’s text, they are “two-dimensional views of the sky overlaying the passage of time onto the spatial arrangement of stars. Ross’s maps employ mathematical precision akin to Renaissance perspective, blending mythology with technology to illustrate cosmic order.”  Maybe so but I didn’t know how to make sense of what look like splotches of blue-ish wash and faint diagrammatic lines perhaps alluding to the constellations. Charles Ross, “Mansions of the Zodiac: Aries,” 1973-76/2012, acrylic paint and collage using bakelite powder xeroxes of Verenberg photographic star atlas images on canvas, 190 x 63 1/2”. The most (literally) sensational piece here, “Point Source / Star Apace: Weave of Ages” (1975/86), is described as “mixed media on paper mounted on canvas, created with 428 photographs from the Falkau Star Atlas which covers the entire celestial sphere from pole to pole, the viewpoint is that of the observer at the center of the earth.” Never mind all the astrophysical data, I just grooved on the big, jagged shapes, reminiscent of the collages of Abstract Expressionist painter Conrad Marca-Relli. It's clear that Ross is an exemplar of the Land Art movement, but this show is not smartly curated and too compacted to demonstrate clearly what his accomplishments and overall achievement have been. A smaller retrospective with more gallery space (of which there is plenty upstairs) might have steered us through the full arc of his career and thus offered more compelling evidence of his importance. This was a missed opportunity. ] Charles Ross, “Point Source / Star Apace: Weave of Ages,” 1975/86, mixed media on paper mounted on canvas, created with 428 photographs from the Falkau Star Atlas which covers the entire celestial sphere from pole to pole, the viewpoint is that of the observer at the center of the earth, 106 x 225”. For more than 30 years  Ann Landi  has reported on the art world for  ARTnews , The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , and magazines like Smithsonian and Art & Antiques . From 2016 till 2022, she published a website for artists called Vasari21, which has now been repurposed into a weekly Substack newsletter, Vasari21Redux .  She operated the Wright Contemporary in Taos, NM, from 2022 to 2024.

by Liz Goldner Grand Central Art Center , Santa Ana, California Continuing through May 11, 2025   Rachel Hakimian Emenaker, “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees,” 2024. All images courtesy of the artist and Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana. The title “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees” describes the creative and philosophical perspective that Rachel Hakimian Emenaker has gained from her self-described diasporic upbringing. The 32-year-old, of Armenian ancestry, grew up partly in Moscow, reveling in its then-vibrant performance and protest art scene (much of it a reaction to the previous Soviet era’s artistic oppression). She also grew up partly in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, a former Dutch colony on the north coast of South America whose profoundly mixed culture includes people of Middle Eastern, Indonesian, Indian and African ancestry.  Having moved four times while growing up and speaking several languages, Emenaker developed compassion for those displaced from their roots who, in the words of the artist, forged new “identities and histories through the fusion of old and new, memory and materiality.” Emenaker believes that diasporic communities blend their identities with one another while maintaining aspects of their ancestral cultures. In a vibrant installation we gain insight into how such new and distinctive cultural identities are formed. Rachel Hakimian Emenaker, “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees,” 2024. Emenaker’s cosmopolitan background is the foundation on which she illustrates gatherings of people of all ages, races and backgrounds from the many places she has lived in and visited. The people in this immersive artwork, many accompanied by their children, meet each other, converse with each other, and even worship with each other. The substructure of “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees” is the supporting architectural features of cities where Emenaker has lived, including buildings, churches, stairways, and thoroughfares in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Suriname. The architecture is inspired by old family photos, memories of places that she has lived in and visited, with embellishments conjured up from her imagination. By portraying architecture, she symbolically engages with various cultural histories, languages, and identities. A Los Angeles neighborhood in the series, near her current home, is identified by a Zankou Chicken outlet, an ATM, and tropical foliage. Rachel Hakimian Emenaker, “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees,” 2024. To create this unusual work, Emenaker has painted nearly life-size people, supported by the architecture, onto four canvas panels, each approximately 13 feet wide by six feet high, all hung from wooden frames from the ceiling. She has joined the four panels to create a welcoming, light-filled enclosure that elicits feelings of comradeship with other visitors in the gallery. Her artistic method begins with outlining the figures, structures, passageways, cars and trees with white wax. Then she carefully paints the details of the many elements within the work with fabric dye, which she explains is permanent and cannot be changed once applied to the canvas. This technique necessitates that she work with her mistakes, creating a fluid, living work of art. The figurative aspects of her work reveal an artist who has assiduously practiced her craft to create finely wrought images of people and buildings. Rachel Hakimian Emenaker, “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees,” 2024. “Fallen Trees” is a metaphor for Emanaker’s depiction of the many architectural structures that she has lived in and among, but which no longer exist. In these spaces loss and regeneration coexist, while her memories of the places they represent are simultaneously illusive and preserved. She muses that the architecture in her panels is more than just physical structures. It is shaped by many people, and carries imprints of those who have lived and moved within those spaces, along with their conversational and cultural exchanges. She adds that when trees fall, their ecosystems intertwine and regenerate into new species; just as people of the diaspora intertwine and regenerate. Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, wrote, “Sorrow … pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.” Emenaker also includes a series of hand-dyed batik panels that depict three buildings that have been destroyed. In layered shades of blue, they are abstracted architectural remains, speaking to loss, memory and fragility. Ceramic tiles are arranged on the floor outside of the installation. These convey fragments of her daily life: cartoons, historical references, recipes, family text messages, and images detailing  war and ongoing violence. Emenaker explains that “[t]he tiles act as metaphors for the compartmentalization required to live in a world overloaded with information.” Rachel Hakimian Emenaker, “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees,” 2024. In 2011, at age 19, Emenaker left Moscow to attend Biola University to study political science, intending to attend law school. While taking studio art classes there, she discovered that “politics can inform art,” and decided to devote herself to the creative process. After graduation, she moved to Armenia for three years, working with mentally disabled Syrian Armenian refugees. She returned to California to immerse herself in her studio practice, receiving an MFA in painting from UCLA in 2024. While still young and relatively new to the artistic vocation, Emenaker has acquired decades of interactive, meaningful life experiences. She mines these experiences in “Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees” to create an unusual and beautiful installation. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/the-democracy-chain-1 Liz Goldner  is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.  Liz Goldner’s Website .

Wing Luke Museum , Seattle, Washington Continues through May 11, 2025   Takuichi Fujii, “Minidoka,” no date, montage with fence and landmarks, watercolor on paper. Courtesy collection of Sandy and Terry Kita, copyright the artist. After she served as curator at the Seattle and Tacoma Art Museums and executive director of Pilchuck Glass School, Dr. Barbara Johns turned to independent work on a forgotten chapter of Pacific Northwest art history: the Japanese American artists who were interned during World War II. The epitome of her research to date, after — resulting in several exhibitions and studies, is the exhibition and publication, “Side by Side: Nihonmachi Scenes.” Building on books she has already written on Paul Horiuchi (1906-1999), Takuichi Fujii (1891-1964) and Kamekichi Tokita (1897-1948), Johns has assembled a tightly focused but deeply interesting group of paintings done before the 1942-45 internment. We see street scenes and portraits from Seattle’s shrinking Japantown, or “Nihonmachi,” the area between Jackson and Weller Streets on one side, and Fifth and Twelfth Avenues on the other. Besides homes, the district featured community social centers, hotels, language schools, restaurants, grocery and clothing stores.   Besides two of her previous book subjects, Tokita and Fujii, Kenjiro Nomura (1896-1956) completes the trio of “Side by Side” artists. Tokita and Nomura were business partners in their No-To Sign Painting Company. Fujii would meet up with them on Sundays to paint street scenes before they all joined the New Deal predecessor to the WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA). Fully integrated into Seattle’s Asian American communities (Chinese, Filipino, Pacific Islanders), the three artists were invited to become part of the Group of Twelve, a mixed-race circle of artists who formed the core of the city’s elite painters and which included University of Washington faculty members and one of the Big Four “mystics,” Kenneth Callahan.   Takuichi Fujii, title page of diary, ca. 1942-45, ink on paper, 8 x 5 1’2”. Courtesy of Sandy and Terry Kita Collection. All went well until 1942, with the issuance of Executive Order 9066 ordering the evacuation and internment of all Japanese-American citizens within 500 miles of the Pacific Coast. Johns includes Tokita’s and Fujii’s wartime diaries (both of which she edited) in a display case (both of which she edited) and displays photo-reproduced pages of their impressions of the camps. All three were confined for the duration of the war. Afterwards, Tokita and Nomura returned to Seattle while Fujii moved to Chicago.   The majority of the works on view are striking fin the apparent similarity among the three artists. They often painted the same street scene together. For example, two untitled works from the 1930s by Fujii and Nomura depict a stretch of Fifth Avenue north of Yesler Way, the original Skid Row. Tokita’s views of Fourth Avenue and Washington Street, Fourth Avenue and the Yesler Way overpass (with its Texaco sign), and the Seattle Art Museum collections of “Billboards” (1932) consistently evoke Edward Hopper and early Stuart Davis. Nomura’s “Street” (1937) is a Yesler Way view which won the Baker purchase award at the Seattle Art Museum’s Northwest Annual, and other works such as “Puget Sound” (1933) were acquired by Tacoma Art Museum. Nomura’s “Yesler Way” (1934) completes the trio’s encounters with the ascending street.   Kenjiro Nomura, “Street,” ca. 1932, oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 28 3/4”. Courtesy of the Seattle Art Museum. Photo: Paul Macapia. Throughout the exhibit we are reminded time and again of the vitality and serenity of the urban mini-neighborhood populated mostly by Issei , or first-generation immigrants from imperial Japan. The “Side by Side” artists flourished in the bustling commercial environment of Nihonmachi, as reflected in their imagery of storefront laundries, bathhouses, and shoeshine parlors. One bathhouse remains until today in the basement of the Panama Hotel on Main Street, open by appointment for public tours. Visitors can see the hastily left-behind personal belongings of many of the bathers on the changing-room shelves. Like the bathhouse, the trio’s paintings have a haunting, elegiac quality to them, vistas of normal life before the catastrophe of incarceration.   Tokita’s documentary camera views of the Frye Hotel, Smith Tower, and Tashiro Hardware store (all still standing) are influenced by his interest in photography, another genre popular in Seattle’s Asian American community. His “Yesler Market” (n.d.) is a series of glances at alleyways, family houses, porches, and tugboats, but does not include people. All Tokita’s locations remain as objective sites for commemoration, like the memorial sites of evacuation on nearby Bainbridge Island, originally populated by numerous Japanese American truck farmers who supplied the Pike Place Market. All their land was confiscated.   Kamekichi Tokita, “Backyard,” 1934, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Seattle Art Museum. Photo: Joe Mabel. One anomaly is a picnic scene from 1929, by Genzo Tomita. In it a large family gathering outdoors is rendered in a highly expressionistic style. It complements a portrait of Fujii’s daughter, “High School Girl” (c. 1934-35). Her studious pose and solemn expression remind us that, despite prosperity and advancement before World War II, prejudice and discrimination still confined the residents of Nihonmachi.   While Tokita’s premature death in 1948 at 51 was precipitated by his camp experiences, Nomura and Fujii survived, each shifting to modernist abstraction of considerable quality and originality. Not a part of “Side by Side,” their post-war development would make sense as a culminating project in Dr. Johns’s worthy historic recovery. Matthew Kangas writes regularly for Visual Art Source eNewsletter; Ceramics: Art & Perception (Australia); and Preview (Canada). Besides reviewing for many years at Art in America, American Craft, Art Ltd., Vanguard and Seattle Times, he is the author of numerous catalogs and monographs, the latest being the award-winning Italo Scanga 1932-2001. Four anthologies of his critical essays, reviews and interviews were issued by Midmarch Arts Press (New York) and available on  Amazon at Books by Matthew Kangas .

Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, California Continuing through May 3, 2025   José Lozano, “Father Son Story,” 2022, mixed media on panel, 12 x 12”. All images courtesy of Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica. José Lozano commented in a recent gallery talk that, while he is a native Angeleno of Mexican descent, he still hasn’t figured out exactly what it means to be Mexican. Raised in both Los Angeles and the Mexican border town of Juarez, Lozano acknowledges there are acute differences between the two cultures. Southern Californians are considered more liberal and irreverent than the border inhabitants, who tend to be conservative, devoutly Catholic, and bound by the conventions of machismo. So, to better understand the various aspects of his heritage, drawing spontaneously, he creates narrative scenes populated with people inspired by family and friends. He calls them “generic Mexicans.” Stylistically, Lozano’s art owes a debt to Mexican comics and “fotonovelas,” as well as to the graphic works of Reginald Marsh, the Depression era New York artist who documented working class Americans, often seen in crowds gathered in everyday settings such as Coney Island beaches or city streets. José Lozano, “Some of the Guests Have Left,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 9 ½ x 12“. Like Marsh, Lozano is more interested in collective identity than in individual personalities. His depictions of crowds represent the gente , the larger community through which Mexicans feel interconnected. Lozano’s concept of togetherness, however, does not necessarily translate into happiness. In works such as “Tres Volcanes Pari” (2024), “Hiroshima Lounge” (2025), and “El Eden” (2025), men and women appear clustered together, most staring at the viewer with questioning or suspicious eyes, not really interacting. Their gritty expressions, teeth exposed, suggest they are frustrated or cynical, leaving us to ponder the sources of their discontent, which could include the burden of stereotype, which casts them as rapists and drug dealers when they are actually honest, hardworking people. José Lozano, “Tres Volcanes Pari,” 2024, acrylic and graphite on panel, 24 x 18”. In a number of charming smaller works, Lozano examines family relationships. “Beach Scene/Mother Son” (2024), depicts a proud demonstration of maternal instinct as a woman lies next to her son protectively while sunbathing. Macho fathers, however, are viewed less sympathetically. A man seated next to the mother in the beach scene, presumably her husband, looks disgruntled, as if he’d rather be somewhere other than with his family. A father’s failure to support his family is the subject of the otherwise charming “Father Son Story” (2022), due to its resemblance to yellow lined notebook paper with doodles that could have been drawn by a daydreaming highschooler. The composition features a variety of face studies, a mask, and various floral motifs. The story’s reveal is a handwritten phrase at the top, reading: “that man is a fraud, unmask him before he fades into thin air, mom rarely gets an alimony check.” Fading into thin air actually does occur in another work, one of several timely musings on the current threat to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans alike of deportation. Given such circumstances, the men and women spinning through the air in the background of “Some of the Guests Have Left” (2024) now take on ominous connotations, suggesting those who have been “disappeared” from their everyday environments with no warning and shipped off to a Salvadoran prison. The same can be said of the naked figures lying on the ground, camouflaged among plants in the lower panel of the diptych “Los Body Snatchers” (2024), where Lozano uses a classic science-fiction narrative — a tactic favored by many Latinx artists today — to communicate metaphorically about what it is like to be the “other.” José Lozano, “Gente Sunning as Gazpacho Police Enters,” 2024, ink on paper, 8 x 20”. Lest we not get the point, Lozano addresses the issue more directly in “Gente Sunning as Gazpacho Police Enters” (2024), where the approaching “gazpacho police” (note the pun on ‘Gestapo’) are shown in the background of a composition dominated by the artist’s characteristic beachgoers. Whereas his practice began as an investigation into common characteristics that constitute Mexican identity, Lozano has now shifted to exploring the topic within the context of surviving the cruel, xenophobic policies of Trump and his cronies, while still maintaining a deadpan sense of humor.

David Zwirner , Los Angeles, California Continues through April 12, 2025 March 22, 2025 Lisa Yuskavage, “Endless Studio,” 2024, oil on linen, triptych, 12 x 31”. All images courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, Los Angeles. © Lisa Yuskavage. Naked women, the artist's studio, lurid colors, dynamic but thoughtful compositions are all elements closely associated with Lisa Yuskavage's paintings. Yuskavage packs each work, large or small, with quirky, personal narratives that engage the subject of artist and muse and, often, exaggerated representation of female sexuality. The artist is present in her most recent compositions, standing at an easel, sometimes wearing a white lab coat with a paintbrush in hand or seen near scantily clad models who taunt or tease the viewer. Lisa Yuskavage, “The Artist’s Studio,” 2022, oil and charcoal on linen 86 x 120”. In Yuskavage's paintings, the studio becomes a stage onto which scenarios are projected. In the monumental work “The Artist's Studio” (2022) — also reproduced on a giant billboard adjacent to the facade of the gallery — a cherub-faced half-nude girl stares out of the painting, dressed in a tight-fitting but also draped pink t-shirt that covers the upper portion of her body. She also wears colorful striped knee-high socks, exposing her bare thighs. She holds a bright green painter's palette that suggests, curiously, she is both artist and model. Behind her is a large painting of a landscape filled with green hills, a few orange clouds, and a single female figure — a peasant character from an earlier work, “Nel'zah’s” (2012) — offering a green plate. Toward the back of the studio, a woman sits at a table reading a book. Miscellaneous ladders, props and unfinished paintings are scattered in the space, all with gray, tan, or light brown hues, in contrast to the more finished and vivid depiction of the figure in the landscape. Lisa Yuskavage, “Painter Painting,” 2024, oil on linen, 94 x 77 1/4”. From the Renaissance to modern times, self-portraits of the artist at work in their studio have been a common subject, as the model is an ever-present option. In some ways, Yuskavage follows in this tradition, inserting herself and prior artworks into her recent paintings. But Yuskavage often poses an ironic challenge or provocation. “Painter Painting” (2024) is a large-scale oil with the artist at its center, her back to the viewer. She is in the midst of creating a grayish portrait of a doll-like woman with huge breasts. The painting within the painting dwarfs the artist, whose head is smack in the middle of her subject's cleavage. Two sketches/studies of nudes are adhered with blue tape to the painting in progress. A small sculptural maquette of the naked woman in the painting is placed on a stool nearby. Older works surround the artist, alerting us that Yuskavage is mining her past for inspiration.  Lisa Yuskavage, “in the Company of Models,” 2024, oil on linen, 77 x 70”. The artist at work is absent in “In the Company of Models” (2024). While the studio setting is similar to that of “Painter Painting ,”  Yuskavage here presents not as a painter, but rather a younger version of herself as a model who emerges from a bright green wall in a like-colored dress. Though legless, her body position suggests the beginning of a formal dance. The central figure — a seductive female nude wearing nothing but beaded panties — is surrounded by stacked depictions of Yuskavage's past paintings, such as the bright yellow “Rorschach Blot” (1995).  This exhibition, Yuskavage's first solo show in Los Angeles in 30 years, includes both large- and small-scale paintings. Seen in relation to each other, the works make informative overlaps that illustrate her process, passions and history — an audacious choice. Yuskavage recontextualizes old works by placing them in a studio setting — as if to say “this is where I began, this is where I am now, and I am happy to take you on a journey from then to now to show you what a magnificent painter I have turned out to be.” Yuskavage has a unique way of celebrating both the vulnerability and stoicism of the artist's model. She has a knack for portraying the complexities of the artist herself at work. Jody Zellen  is a LA based writer and artist who creates interactive installations, mobile apps, net art, animations, drawings, paintings, photographs, public art, and artist’s books. Zellen received a BA from Wesleyan University (1983), a MFA from CalArts (1989) and a MPS from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (2009). She has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1989. For more information please visit  www.jodyzellen.com .

Themes+Projects , San Francisco, California Continues through March 29, 2025 March 22, 2025 Davey Whitcraft, “Altiplánico,” 2025, color photograph on Dibond panel, 60 x 60”. All images courtesy of Themes + Projects, San Francisco. The admiration for paintings so ultra-realistic that they simulate photographs is given a witty reversal in Davey Whitcraft’s conceptual abstractions comprising “To Those Who Create the Future.” Whitcraft’s striking images — to all appearances tours de force of immaculately blended oil paint — turn out to be unframed, Dibond-mounted, square-format photos the size of medium canvases (from 36 x 36” to 60 x 60”). In a kind of sociopolitical camouflage, they mimic the look of ‘flat’ 1960s abstraction. Could they mark a return to art for art’s sake, a time when representation and message art were considered irrelevant and retrograde? Dressed up in such aesthetic disguise, Whitcraft gives us subject matter of disquieting contemporary import: lithium mines in the Atacama Desert along the coast of Chile; the landlocked and toxic Salton Sea in the Coachella Valley; and the oil fields of the scorching Mojave Desert. Of particular interest to Whitcraft is the Atacama lithium deposit, nationalized by Chile in order to protect it from experienced Russian and American strip-mining companies.   Davey Whitcraft, “Valle de la Luna,” 2025, color photograph on Dibond panel, 48 x 48”. The geopolitical importance of petroleum energy and big data cannot be overstated, but the artist, who considers the geopolitical, economic, and environmental aspects of the coming lithium rush, prefers not to polemicize. Whitcraft wants viewers to find their way into these issues “at their own pace, in their own way,” rather than add to the overheated culture of complaint in which we all swim these days.   The paintings’ — oops, photographs’ titles denote their sources; these are, after all, landscapes, if of an unconventional nature. The colors of land and sky are combined and blended, eliminating all references to natural objects but for a hard demarcation line at the center to bottom center of the image, where dissimilar colors abut. Whitaker, who has folded his photos in the past, now employs more advanced processes and software, as well as drones. The illusion of topography results from the color mists that are grounded by faux origami pleats. Davey Whitcraft, “Mino de Litio I,” 2025, color photograph on Dibond panel, 13 x 13”. “Piedras Rojas” (Red Stones) is a rotary scan of desert oranges and purples. “Altiplánico” (High Plateau), its colors given a chiaroscuro shading, is as metallic as Fernand Léger’s early cubist works, with their polished cannons. “Valle de la Luna” (Valley of the Moon) employs a nocturnal palette of muted grays, browns and purples, possibly reflecting its dusk or sunrise shooting time. Also included are four 13 x 13” images entitled “Mino de Litio” (Lithium Mine), arranged on the wall in a grid. They are fine examples of industrial photography done artistically. Davey Whitcraft, “To Those Who Create the Future,” 2025, four-channel 4K video with stereo audio, loop time of 9 minutes and 19 seconds, musical score by Aaron Lepley and additional music by Bob Villain, 50 1/2 x 50 1/2”. A video, “To Those Who Create the Future,” is a montage of drone shots of the desert landscape. You can sense the metamorphic and metamorphosing minerals found there, all of that trapped lithium just begging to be separated out (with the help of music by Aaron Lepley and a performance by Bob Villain). The title of the video and the show as a whole argues that creating the future by dealing with the present would be wiser than trying to restore a gilded mythical past.   Whitcraft has a complicated relationship with painting. His degrees in Media Arts (he calls it “tinkering”), Philosophy, and Critical Theory — not painting — are complemented by his experience of working with Bay Area painter Raymond Saunders, “the master of color field and gradient.” From Saunders he learned a larger lesson than technique: “My mind was blown by how interesting it was to be an artist.” Whitcraft investigates his subjects using the latest technology (Linux, computer, cinema camera, drones) and presents the results of his media research as art exhibitions. Whitcraft also enjoys painting at times, albeit he confesses, imperfectly, to work out pictorial ideas in the form of studies. Those don’t make it into the show for obvious reasons, but I understand that they garner acclaim behind studio doors from artist friends. Will they ever catch up with those photographs? DeWitt Cheng  is an art writer/critic based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written for more than twenty years for regional and national publications, in print and online, He has written dozens of catalogue essays for artists, galleries and museums, and is the author of “Inside Out: The Paintings of William Harsh.” In addition, he served as the curator at Stanford Art Spaces from 2013 to 2016, and later Peninsula Museum of Art, from 2017 to 2020.