by Jody Zellen Billis/Williams Gallery , Los Angeles Continuing through February 14, 2026 Josh Dorman, “Peardog,” 2025, ink, acrylic, antique paper on panel, 12 x 12”. All images courtesy of Billis/Williams Gallery, Los Angeles. Josh Dorman's idiosyncratic, encyclopedic paintings traverse time and space. They are intricate works that demand our undivided attention. Over the years, Dorman has collected a wide range of printed ephemera, culled from books, maps, magazines and technical manuals, as well as player-piano scrolls, and uses it as pictorial source material. His layered works combine these paper documents with ink and acrylic to create narratives that weave through time.  “Peardog” (all works 2025), one of the smallest paintings in the exhibit at 12 by 12 inches, is also one of the best. Just left of the center of the composition is a "pear-dog" made by collaging a vintage image of a dog's body with an antique diagram of a sliced pear that becomes its head. In the image, the pear functions as eyes. This creature rests in a colorful but ambiguous space that contains both urban elements — geometric shapes representing buildings — and natural ones such as imagined seashells and stalagmites. Along the bottom of this packed painting is an elevated roadway that passes over tree-lined hills. Dotted throughout the composition are collaged fragments of both words and animal imagery. Josh Dorman, “A Golden Age,” 2021-25, ink, acrylic, antique paper on panel, 32 x 42”. In a larger painting, “A Golden Age” (32 by 42 inches), Dorman creates a dreamscape filled with inventive creatures that are amalgamations of animal skeletons with human heads and arms juxtaposed with tools like pliers, as well as parts from antique watches. These creatures wander through a deeply textured red-purple landscape filled with architectural fragments. Dorman bombards us with imagery, making it difficult to construct a coherent narrative. But telling a story is not the artist's intention. Dorman wants us to get lost in his worlds enough to begin connecting the various elements into our own interpretation. Josh Dorman, “Arctic Ice (Dodo),” 2025, ink, acrylic, antique paper on panel, 9 x 12”. During residencies above the Arctic Circle and off the coast of Ireland, Dorman observed glaciers and other features of the natural world he had not previously encountered. These impressions fill works like “Arctic Ice (Dodo)” and “Arctic Ice II,” which are, uncharacteristically, more painting than collage. In both these pieces, Dorman brings together swirling bodies of water, jagged rock formations, and trapped animals, clearly a comment on our changing climate. “Fever Dream” is a hauntingly surreal work that recalls Giorgio de Chirico’s “The Two Masks” (1926). Central to the composition is the upper body and head of a figure submerged in a magenta-hued body of swirling water. The figure has a hollowed-out head. Emanating from where the face would be is a stream of sea creatures and plants flying into the polluted water. Typical of Dorman’s signature style, he weaves painted areas around and has delicately colored and collaged various paper clilppings. Fragments from maps and pieces of historical ships and antique depictions of fantastical creatures complete this dizzying and engaging imagery. Josh Dorman, “The Long View,” 2004-25, ink, acrylic, antique paper on panel, 48 x 52”. Dorman is a master at creating new contexts for found materials. Through recontextualization he refreshes much that is old or familiar. The works function as complex puzzles in which Dorman draws from the past to comment on the present and project into the future. Figures and animals from a wide range of sources and time frames in varying scales and opacities follow roads, cross bridges, populate seas, climb mountains and peer through architectural facades. Each work creates its own unique story that ingeniously links disparate elements from then to now. 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 Lynn Trimble ASU Art Museum , Tempe, Arizona Continuing through February 15, 2026 Michelangelo Lovelace, “No Justice No Peace,” 1993, mixed media on wood panel, 54 1/4 x 48 1/2”. Courtesy of the Michelangelo Lovelace Estate and Fort Gansevoort Gallery. The streets of Cleveland burst to life in paintings by Michelangelo Lovelace (1960-2021), a self-taught artist who professed that “art saved my life.” It was a keen observation, reflecting on the experiences he had growing up in the city he captured with loose, textured marks in bright colors that convey a vibrant kinetic energy. This first retrospective survey of his work, organized by the Akron Art Museum, embodies themes that resonate in the current political climate, from racism to community care. Lovelace paints the best and worst of us, informed by his own experiences as a Black man living in an urban ecosystem where faith and joy intersect with danger and despair. Michelangelo Lovelace, “Katrina Aftermath,” 2006, acrylic on textured canvas, 48 x 51”. On loan from Steve Stoute and Lauren Branche. The exhibition fills three galleries, each with a different focus, an approach that equips us to expand our understanding of the artist’s identity and intentions. Before entering the first gallery, where most of the works highlight social injustice and are hung on bright red walls (the first of three primary colors used as backdrops, a nod to the role of art in Lovelace’s personal journey), viewers encounter introductory text highlighting the artist’s biography. Most notably, it recounts Lovelace’s own memories of drawing in earnest as a 19-year-old arrested for marijuana possession. The judge before whom he appeared asked what he was good at, suggesting that he turn to that if he wanted to avoid future encounters with the law. Painted between 1991 and 1993, a series of mixed media on wood paintings with collaged text and imagery are distinguished by their brick-like-texture, graffiti influences, and frames bearing the artist’s marks. For the “Rodney King Series” Lovelace embedded newspaper clippings and found photographs in works addressing the high-profile case of police brutality and community uprisings in Los Angeles. Police vehicles and uniformed officers appear often in Lovelace’s work, but these pieces in particular punctuate the ways violence against Black bodies intersects with law enforcement. With “Crips & Bloods” (1993), Lovelace counters stereotypes of so-called Black-on-Black crime with themes of Black love and solidarity. With “Amerikkkan Just-us” (1992), the artist calls out the white supremacy and racial disparities that the dominant culture calls “the criminal justice system.” Michelangelo Lovelace, “Black Super Man,” 2018, acrylic on canvas, 43 x 48”. Courtesy of the Michelangelo Lovelace Estate and Fort Gansevoort Gallery. Lovelace documents specific acts of injustice, speaking to the experiences of individuals and communities, but also to the wider systems undergirding them. We can follow Lovelace painting his way through his own life, but also diving into the social, economic, and cultural issues of the day. While drawing us into a particular time and place, the artist prompts us to consider our own life and times and our complicity in perpetuating cycles of poverty, war, and addiction. In Lovelace’s “City Paintings,” such as “40th and Hood” (1994) and “Block Party” (2018), color and movement explode in scenes of people across generations and cultures taking part in the daily activities, from shopping to dancing, that bring them out into the street. But he also explores tragic themes, such as the school shooting depicted in “Streetology” (1999). Many of these works are mounted on blue walls, a color associated not only with the wide-open sky but also with the trappings of law enforcement. Considered with the red walls of the nearby gallery, they reinforce the sense that Lovelace essentially created an illustration of modern-day America, with all its complexities and contradictions. Lovelace makes generous use of text, a choice rooted in the prevalence of signs and billboards in his urban environment. The approach allows him to insert phrases he finds meaningful and powerful, ranging from excerpts from the Bible or the Constitution to slogans such as “Black Lives Matter.” Likewise, roadways figure prominently in his city-themed works, where they sometimes appear as unifying factors in community spaces and other times as dividing lines. Where these roads lead, or whether it’s even possible to escape these city streets, isn’t clear, and the pictures are better for it. Michelangelo Lovelace, “Race for Justice,” 2014, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40”. Courtesy of the Ann and Mel Schaffer Family Collection. Even as Lovelace tackles racism, he also prompts reflection on the specter of sexism and misogyny in both art and society. Women with babies and signs advertising sites of sexualized performance abound on the city streets he brings to life in acrylic on canvas, alluding to the Madonna-whore complex that runs throughout so much of art history. “Genesis” (2018) features Black subjects while quoting “The Creation of Adam,” painted by the 16th-century Italian Renaissance master whose name Lovelace adopted early in his art career. That same year Lovelace also drew on popular culture with his caped “Black Super Man” (2018) as a counter to the white savior complex. Michelangelo Lovelace, “The Deportation of 11 Million Immigrants,” 2016, acrylic on textured canvas. Courtesy of the Michelangelo Lovelace Estate and Fort Gansevoort Gallery. Among the works curated into the final gallery are several inspired by topical news events, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Covid-19 pandemic. Dozens of pairs of eyes peer out from a brick wall in “The Deportation of 11 Million Immigrants” (2016), one of the most powerful works in the show by virtue of the borderland issues impacting the region where it’s being exhibited and the broader spectrum of terror currently being waged against immigrants by the Trump administration in targeted communities. Michelangelo Lovelace, “Self-Portrait,” 1996, acrylic on textured canvas, 50 1/2 x 37 3/4”. Courtesy of the Michelangelo Lovelace Estate and Fort Gansevoort Gallery. Works mounted on a bright yellow wall, many containing American flag iconography but with stripes that run vertically like prison bars, speak to the intersections of racism and patriotism. In some works Lovelace sets people in front of these bars rather than behind them. Works referencing post-9/11 warfare, including “What Happened to World Peace?” (2001) and “Casualties of War” (2003) examine the local and global impact of America’s military-industrial complex. “Art Saved My Life” reveals how Lovelace’s oeuvre ranges from hyper-individual to global. The large narrative scope he is able to address is juxtaposed with a group of intimate portraits drawn using marker, pen, or colored pencil on paper (primarily in 1993) which depict people Lovelace encountered in the rehabilitation unit of a medical center where he worked. Mounted on a bright pink modular wall, they suggest this was a setting where the artist found great joy in the midst of hardship. Lovelace’s own humanity, with its deep connections to artmaking, is the focus of five paintings anchored by “Self-Portrait” (1996), which depicts Lovelace reading a book by a window overlooking the city. The roughly thirty years covered by “Art Saved My Life” lends significant insight into the creative impulses and life experiences that Lovelace channeled into vibrant explorations of personal and collective histories and expressive critiques of social injustice. Lynn Trimble  is a Phoenix-based art writer whose work ranges from arts reporting to arts criticism. During a freelance writing career spanning more than two decades, over 1,000 of her articles exploring arts and culture have been published in magazine, newspaper and online formats. Follow her work on Twitter  @ArtMuser  or Instagram  @artmusingsaz .

by T.s. Flock ANTiPODE , Seattle, Washington Contact gallery for closing date Any artist who ventures to address the slippery subject of intimacy always risks succumbing to sentiment. The domestic, the everyday, the emotional: these are all subjects that naturally invite tenderness, and art history is littered with versions so saccharine that they no longer say anything about real life. But the artist who refuses such complacency understands that the domestic realm and the bodies that inhabit it are places of friction and micro-catastrophe. Intimacy is not a montage of charming vignettes. It is the primal scene of our vulnerability, where life is inscribed in things through wear and care. Rachel Dorsey, “Internal Maintenance (first go),” 2024, conte crayon, graphite, and charcoal on photo backdrop paper, wood, 94 x 54 x 1”. To subvert sentimentality, Rachel Dorsey introduces this rough dimension in “Careworn,” her aptly titled solo show. She paints and draws directly on unstretched fabrics and blankets subtly stained and patinated with natural dyes. The technique successfully evokes a bodily sense of age even while being a bit more sanitary and archival than actual human sweat and rot. There are charming elements, but “charm” is not what Dorsey explores in domesticity. She is after its more corporeal nature: the lingering smudge, the uneven light, the awkward compressions of our personal space. No two surfaces are alike. Some are meant to hang loosely, while others are made to hang flat. Some are opaque, while others are murky scrims with permanent shadows when viewed from behind against the light. Some come attended by other objects, like a chair leaning impossibly beneath or what looks like a crank handle protruding from the thin bar suspending the painting. The latter case is found in “ Basin Baby I and II”  (a single work). The quilted surface is especially scrappy, such that the lower half of the eponymous baby appears divided among variously patterned and colored scraps. The green rickrack trim does not rejoin itself in the lower left corner; it hangs down to the floor. The infant is twisting its upper body and reaching out toward the left edge of the fabric, where the suspensory bar of the artwork terminates in a wooden handle. To the right of the infant, an almost monstrously large adult hand scoops up the head. The overall effect is that the bottom half feels disturbed and divided, while the upper half has a smooth rhythm of hands and bodies curving over each other. And yet, even given this rhythm, one is reaching towards the other, and the other seems determined to get away. Rachel Dorsey, “Gather / come as u are (shaped canvas 3 / bench piece),” 2024, charcoal, conte crayon, molding paste on canvas stretched over custom wood support structure, 84 x 68 x 30”. Photo: Jacob Chung. “ Three’s Company, Two’s a Crowd (after Albertinelli) ” does not explicitly reference Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515), but the adult figures in Dorsey’s larger works often feel evocative of classic portraiture through composition, posture, and the vagueness of their attire, which tends toward cloaks and shawls that give the bodies volume without a distinct edge. They provide a sense of timelessness rather than suggesting an historical period. Thus, in “ Careworn ” both the material dimension of the works and the drawn and painted figures direct us toward a confrontation with the messiness of creating lives together rather than nostalgia. And like the formal quality of Dorsey’s surfaces, the figures are emotionally raw and evocative in a way that also asks to be inhabited. Despite their messiness, the works feel very harmonious in this regard. Dorsey’s works seek multiple avenues to reintroduce the body beyond merely representing it. Not an idealized body, but the real body, the one that sweats, that fails, that falls, that repairs itself, that starts all over again. And with the body comes community, for this human condition is precisely what we share most intimately. Art that embraces fragility and wear and tear de-dramatizes what, in isolation, might seem shameful or repulsive, and places it back within the normal continuum of existence. The piece most illustrative of this is “Attendant (for MVK and MJK).” At a distance, it appears to be a deathbed scene, with the recumbent figure obscured by so many bodies and faces surrounding it. Walking along its nearly nine-foot length, one must take one’s time discerning the various faces sketched sensitively to evoke peace, acceptance, pleading, or sorrow. This would be gratifying enough, but then one steps back slightly and looks down and discovers that “Attendant” renders not one moment in time, but several. Rachel Dorsey, “Wind Down Routine,” 2024, charcoal, conte crayon, acrylic, molding past on machine sewn canvas nailed and tacked to reclaimed cedar spacers, 90 x 108 x 2”. Photo: Jacob Chung. To the lower left, among the turned backs of the figures above, is an embedded scene from another time and place: a woman wearily gazing off to one side and a young girl resting her head on her crossed arms over the edge of some ambiguous barrier. The whole scene is rendered in vivid turmeric orange, as if they were illuminated by a single dim lamp. Surrounding them, more indistinct and ghostly figures are bowing and leaning through the shadows. Following them to the right are two ghostly little dogs. One seems to be staring curiously at the face of a more completely sketched sleeping infant. Move your gaze back up, you are back at where one would expect to find the head of the unseen figure at the center of the composition. In its ambition and complexity “Attendant” is the apogee of the exhibition. Not all of Dorsey’s works compress time and space so explicitly, but this refusal to reduce the subject to a decorative staging is thematic in “Careworn.” And this brings us to the space itself, for it, too, plays a part. Dorsey’s work would have suffered in a pristine white cube. This gallery’s rough-hewn stone walls tell their own stories. In fact, as I was descending the stairs from the sidewalk to the gallery entrance, someone was conducting a walking tour of the Pioneer Square neighborhood and telling the attendees about the long history of the building, and how ANTiPODE’s space in particular sat fallow off-and-on in the nearly two decades since the landmark Elliott Bay Book Company departed the neighborhood. Rachel Dorsey, “Basin Baby I and II,” 2025, charcoal, conte crayon, walnut ink, turmeric ink, acrylic ink, extra heavy molding paste, fabric scraps, lace trim, cotton rickrack, thread, 43 x 36 1/2 x 4”. The gallery shares an entrance with the Seattle Jazz Fellowship, so that you cross between the bar and performance area before reaching the exhibition space. In short, the gallery itself shows its layers and seams, so Dorsey’s work feels right at home in this environment. This is not a condemnation of white cubes, but the closer our spaces and appearances come to being impeccable, the more inhospitable they become. Smooth, sterile, immutable: These are places designed as stages, where art and visitors all perform the most controlled version of themselves. Under such conditions, to truly inhabit a space would mean risking contaminating it, introducing disorder and the indelible mark of human presence. As the most attentive observers of our modernity have noted, a quest for flawlessness fuels shame. It reveals the gap between who we are and who we are instructed to be. This gap is a powerful factor in isolation: We minimize social interaction so as not to expose our space or our bodies to scrutiny. We withdraw. We sterilize ourselves. In this context, Dorsey’s art points to the true substance of intimacy and proposes a far different logic of acceptance. The familiar becomes solidarity. By showing these traces, the artist says: These traces are universal. Accepting this is a way of drawing closer to one another, for we cease to fear that others will see what we hide. And if art can dispel this fear, then it does more than simply reflect reality. It participates in the possibility of a less constrained connection, of a community more compassionate toward itself. These reflections perhaps seem more poignant and urgent to me at this time because, beyond the walking tours at ground level, the federal government has begun expanding ICE operations here in the Seattle area. Reports have come to me from my network that ICE had begun aggressive door-to-door operations in nearby Redmond. This week, multiple schools in Seattle have moved to shelter-in-place formats to avoid the pattern of kidnappings by ICE we have been viewing in Minneapolis. That ANTIPODE is run by immigrants from Tehran, with their focus on immigrant perspectives, is thus of special relevance to Dorsey’s work. While “Careworn” is not explicitly political, it is timely. Many of us are assessing our lives and duties to each other as we seek solidarity in the face of violent cruelty and inhumanity. It’s all very messy, but to rephrase my opening remark: Care and wear are not the unintended consequences of life; they are its inscription. T.s. Flock  is a writer and arts critic based in Seattle and co-founder of  Vanguard Seattle .

by Matthew Kangas Arte Noir Gallery , Seattle, Washington Continuing through February 22, 2026 Sasa Aakil, “Joy is a Revolution,” fired and unglazed terra cotta, various dimensions. All images courtesy of Arte Noir Gallery and the artist. The twenty-five artists  in the “Black Clay” ceramics invitational hail from Washington, Texas, District of Columbia, California, Illinois, Tennessee and elsewhere, but trace their heritages to Nigeria, Ghana, the Philippines, and other lands. As a result “Black Clay” offers a mixture of contemporary art themes — colonialism, racial injustice, Black pride — and conventional ceramic techniques that encompass pottery, figurative sculpture, and wall-mounted functional shapes and masks. Overall, the artists represent a wide spectrum of professionalism, bringing together self-taught folk artists with academics, some using clay along with other materials to convey their intentions. Although the collective effect of the group is impressive, the installation, crowded as it is into a small corner space, is not. Pedestals of varying heights compete with sightlines for wall-mounted works, reinforcing the second-class status so often assigned to ceramics. Regardless, the artists rise above the limitations of the display and offer considerable pleasures and contemplations of aesthetic and socio-political issues, sometimes both in the same artwork. Tammie Rubin, “Always & Forever (ever, ever) No. 9 CD TX,” 2021, pigmented porcelain, underglaze, 14 x 48 x 10”. Photo: Hector Tednoir. Sasa Aakil’s two works present both conditions. “Joy is a Revolution,” a wall installation of 16 unglazed cup and bowl shapes in half-relief, emphasizes both pan-African firing methods and village shapes. The more politically explicit “Memory” consists of 15 small rectangular medallions impressed with the names of African-Americans attacked or killed by law enforcement officers, including Trayvon Martin and Breonna Taylor. With their darkened background and varied color overlays, the lettering on the memorials is difficult to read, but gradually the meaning becomes clear; they are mini-tombstones. Esther Ervin deals with the history of slavery. Her “Enslaved Trades People” drapes a golden chain around a vase with figurative imagery of slaves as wrap-around decoration. The work reminds us of the origins of African-American ceramics, as curator Hassan Kirkland points out in his statement. Slave potters were long unidentified but were able, like David Drake (once known simply as “Big Dave” by the way he signed his pots), to defy bans on literacy by writing directly on each pot. Del Bey, “Twisted Galaxy Portal #$529,” 2025, hi fire stoneware/glaze, 9” diameter x 2”. Photo: Del Bey. Similarly, Darius Scott’s “Wayfinder||North Star,” a wall-hanging male face, alludes to “Ghanaian artisanal masks,” according to the artist, with its closed eyes and facial expression of resting, ”acknowledging the inherited trauma of enslavement.” Over one foot high, it has a brooding presence that, mounted high as it is, oversees the entire exhibition. Two portraits offer contrasting visions of Black femininity. “Weeping Willow/Tangled Dreams,” a large bust by Willow Vergara-Agyakwa has a powerful, if pleading, facial expression. Dreadlocks are reinforced by the darker color of clay and glaze. In a remarkable amplification of the female face, two other busts by Ebony Watts — one glazed, one painted — express joy and radiant humor in their drenched, painterly surfaces. In “Gae Yah,” Watts inserts golden earrings. They join the colorful appearance of other figurative works, such as the smaller statuettes of Lea Cook. The animal heads of Sierra Bundy, “Shadow Work” and “Guide #2,” may allude to human-animal relationships assigned to enslaved peoples on plantations. These are among the most materially virtuosic works on view, with complicated firing techniques that emulate animal skin color and exposed flesh. Angel Ohome, “Blood-Stained Paths,” 2025, porcelain clay, wire, thread, yarn, newsprint, 16 x 16”. “Mirror, Mirror” (2024) by Myla Crawford of Memphis uses melted marbles for its interior to great effect. Also hung high, it casts an unusual aura on the entire display. Nearby on the same wall, “Twisted Galaxy Portal” (2025) by Del Bey inserts metal chains around its squashed oval shape, symbolizing the confines of enslavement, but with greater restraint and less ideological explicitness. These subtle, abstract sculptures are the most powerful and appealing works of “Black Clay.” Willow Vergara-Agyakwa, “Tangled Roots Weeping Willow / Tangled Roots,” 2023, mixed media, portraiture, 18 x 12 x 24”. Tammie Rubin and Angel Ohome push the limits of ceramic expectations the farthest of all. In the former’s “Always & Forever” series, conical blue porcelain shapes are lined up on a single shelf. They operate on two levels: one in which they are simple, beautifully speckled forms, the other in which they ominously allude to the headdresses of Ku Klux Klan members. Rubin cancels out the violent presence of the KKK with her exquisite treatment of the blue porcelain. In a highly formal grid format in the tradition of Minimalism and the Bauhaus, Ohome’s “Blood Stained Paths” and “In Search of River and Sun” are given titles that refer to painful racial histories. But seen on the wall, they present architectural decoration and substantial formal issues such as color relationships and complex compositions which extend beyond the initial impulse of their titles. So it is with much of the other work in “Black Clay:” the material strengths and fashioning reinforce substantial resistance and outrage, but such executions and handling guarantee repeated viewing and endurance. The medium carries the message regardless of urgent sincerity. Matthew Kangas  writes regularly for Visual Art Source eNewsletter; Ceramics: Art & Perception (Australia); and Preview (Canada). Besides reviewin https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Matthew+Kangas&ref=nb_sb_noss g 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 Liz Goldner Hilbert Museum of California Art , Orange, California Continuing through May 30, 2026 Emigdio Vasquez, “John the Prophet,” 1985, oil on canvas 24 x 36”. All images courtesy of the Hilbert Museum of California Art, Orange, CA. This largest ever retrospective of 50 paintings by Emigdio Vasquez (1939-2014) is long past due. The Orange County artist’s works from 1967 to 2007 feature compassionate portraits of OC barrio residents and their neighborhoods. These day laborers, fellow residents, and his own family and friends reveal the artist’s empathy and admiration for his subjects. These are social realist paintings are infused with intimacy. Many of his subjects look out intensely from their canvasses, as though engaging us in conversation. Historically, Vasquez began his storytelling oeuvre before a new generation of now better-known Chicano artists, such as Frank Romero and Gilbert Luhan, blazed an artistic path during the later 20th century. These artists, employing bright colors and energetic brushstrokes to evoke the sweep of East Los Angeles with its lowrider cars and freeways, usurped the limelight from their older peers. Vasquez saw people and landscapes that tell stories of dignity and humility within congenial neighborhoods. “John the Prophet” (1985), for example, captures a homeless man leaning against a trailer and expressing his religious beliefs to the barrio locals. Three shadows on the trailer’s side establish the presence of neighborhood men listening to John’s prophecies. “El Viejito Del Barrio” (The Old Guy from the Neighborhood) (1975) depicts an old man with the weathered face of someone who picked oranges under the sun for decades, and is living out his later years with quiet, respectful modesty. Emigdio Vasquez, “Pachucos on 4th Street,” 2000, oil on canvas, 15 x 12”. “Pachucos on 4th Street” (2000) presents five audacious zoot suited men, all decked out wearing long jackets with wide lapels, patterned ties, baggy trousers tapered at the ankles and long watch chains. These proud Chicano men from decades ago, with their ducktail hairdos and mustaches, were effecting an early version of performance art. Of particular note is “La Bolucha” (1965), the oldest piece here. The title translates loosely as “The Harvest.” Four day laborers on their lunch breaks are telling stories of life in Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Vasquez had accompanied his father to these “harvests,” and became fascinated by the men’s’ stories. The day laborer remained as subject and symbol in many paintings throughout his career. Vasquez’s several urbanscapes of run-down barrio buildings and scenes are equally compelling. In the book “The Boy Who Painted the Barrio,” by his daughter, Rosemary Vasquez Tuthill, he is quoted: “As a young artist, I was groping with the problem of finding meaningful subject matter to paint. His [mentor, Mr. Robert Braden] advice to me was that I need not look any further than my immediate environment. He felt that the area contained a wealth of subject matter which could provide me with the material to work for years.” Emigdio Vasquez, “The Shack,” 1974, oil on canvas, 30 x 24”. With this inspiration, the highly motivated artist carried his paints and canvasses all over the barrio, elevating dilapidated sites into compelling landscapes. “The Shack” (1974) shows a rough-hewn shed in the backyard of his mother-in-law’s Anaheim home. “La Carucha De Johnny” (1972) is a humorous illustration of a broken-down 1950 Chevrolet parked alongside a decaying house. Vasquez wrote, ”The physical element of this blight and decay which captivated my eye were the corroded, weather-beaten wood, the jungle-like vegetation, the rusted metal, chipped paint, dust and shattered glass windows of old cars, and the variety of discarded objects.” Vasquez turned piles of junk into fascinating, harmonious works of art. “Junque de Barrio” (“Neighborhood Junk”) (1978) jams together an orange crate, a box that held Budweiser beer, discarded paper plates, and soda cans, mere garbage that for the artist recalled and was inspired by a large joyous family celebration. “Backyard Junk Still-Life” (1981) illustrates a different aspect of the artist’s life. His father Santiago was a miner and carpenter who was often working on a house project. Here he has left tools, shoes, pieces of wood and other clutter against an old fence. Vasquez saw harmony in the setting, presenting all of it as a reminiscent slice of life. Emigdio Vasquez, “Revolutionaries,” 2009, oil on canvas, 36 x 24”. The youngster who grew up hearing stories of the Mexican Revolution from his elders painted several scenes from those events out of his imagination. “Los Revolucionarios” (1967) depicts three Mexican soldiers playing music, singing and drinking as a respite from the battles of the Revolution. “Revolutionaries” (2009) shows four fierce key figures from the Revolution, 1910 to 1920, dressed with a casual elegance that makes them appear as movie characters. They are Felipe Angels, General Pancho Villa, General Emiliano Zapato, his brother Eufemio and an unknown kneeling soldier. “Villists” (2007), features four stalwart fighters with Pancho Villa leading the troupe on horseback. The artist did not limit himself to depicting the people inhabiting his neighborhood or the historical narratives he picked up from elders. Several detailed still lifes and the elegantly attired bullfighter “El Pundohonor” (1972) demonstrate Vasquez’s versatility. Emigdio Vasquez, “Packing House, Circa 1948,” 2015, oil on canvas. The most recent painting here is “Packing House, Circa 1948” (2015), a diagonal composition of a row of orange packers. The painting was begun by Vasquez and completed after he died by his daughter Rosemary. The portraits of six ladies include two who were Vasquez’s sisters and Rosemary’s aunts. Vasquez, who has been referred to as the "Godfather of Hispanic artists," visually documented the Chicano barrio experience in a manner that has aged well. His many thoughtful portraits, landscapes of gritty street scenes, slice of life illustrations, and Mexican Revolution scenes add up to an exhibition that celebrates the dignity, heritage, and humanity of the Orange County Barrio and its people during a time that must be recognized and recalled. 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 David S. Rubin The Broad , Los Angeles, California Continuing through April 5, 2026 Robert Therrien, “This Is a Story,” installation view showing late 1970s/early 1980s keystone and coffin-shaped sculptures. Courtesy of The Broad Foundation, Los Angeles. All photos: David S. Rubin. Although the early paintings and sculptures by Robert Therrien (1947-2019) are simple and elemental in form and have at times been associated with Minimalism, this forty-year retrospective reveals that reductive art was influential primarily on Therrien’s formal vocabulary but was not his primary source of inspiration at all. Rather, his ideas were generated mostly by personal memories, often from childhood. Robert Therrien, “No title (stacked plates, white),” 1993, ceramic epoxy on fiberglass, 94 x 60 x 60”. Courtesy of The Broad Foundation, Los Angeles. While monochromatic sculptures like “No title (keystone)” and “No title (bent cone relief)” (both 1982) share a block-like structure that was common to Minimalist works by Donald Judd and others, Therrien’s surfaces are modulated with gestural markings and subtle color gradations comparable to similar treatment in paintings by Color Field artists such as Robert Ryman (1930-2019) and Brice Marden (1938-2023).  Additionally, Therrien’s works are referential — a taboo for Minimalists — with the keystone shape representing an element of architecture and the bent cone whimsically evocative of a wizard’s hat that is partially folded over. In this regard, his works of the 1970s and 80s are closer in spirit to Joel Shapiro’s (1941-2025) geometric sculptures based on human figures, or the semi-abstract figurative forms by 1970s “New Image” painters such as Susan Rothenberg (1945-2020) and Robert Moskowitz (1935-2024). In terms of process, Therrien could be aligned with Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) in that both would investigate a particular shape and explore its many variations. Yet, whereas LeWitt worked according to rule-based systems that were conceptually restrictive and mathematically precise, Therrien approached the metamorphosis of his visual lexicon more intuitively, as if responding to a Rorschach personality test, welcoming ambiguity and multiple interpretive possibilities. His keystones, for example, evolved from slicing laterally through an image of a coffin, while the bent cone is closely connected to similarly shaped Therrien objects such as a tea kettle or a bird’s head. Broad curator Ed Schad deserves credit for directing attention to these relationships by installing many of the early sculptures and paintings in illuminating groupings. Robert Therrien, “No title (room, pots and pans I),” 2008-15, metal and plastic, 106 x 66 x 80”. Courtesy Artwork Holdings. While Therrien’s earlier works may be contextualized in terms of various art movements of the time, the artist found his unique voice in the 1990s, when working with a fabricator led him to considerations of scale. This shift resulted in works that address the space or architecture of a room and the viewer’s physical relationship to the object, factors that increase the potential for narrative and metaphoric content. Robert Therrien, “No title, black Dutch door,” 1993-2013, mixed media on wood, 114 ¼ x 45 x 49”. Courtesy of the Robert Therrien Estate. With larger-than-life-sized sculptures such as “No title (stacked plates white)” (1993) and “No title (room, pots and pans I)” (2008-15), Therrien sparks a sense of wild adventure down Alice’s rabbit hole while emphasizing the ubiquity of banal kitchen objects in our daily lives. The former sculpture, which stands almost 8 feet tall, has a somewhat dizzying effect as the stack of dishes seems to be spinning and about to topple. As for narrative implications, the unstable dish pile brings to mind scenarios from vintage cartoons wherein a waiter attempts to balance an overly tall stack of plates. The pots and pans in the latter work, by contrast, can only be peered at from outside a closet-sized room into which they are stuffed, with the incongruity of their oversized scale leaving us pleasantly befuddled: Do they belong to an alternate universe of giants? Such scale distortions are especially effective in Therrien’s installations of mammoth-sized furniture, which dwarf us such that we seem to have become inhabitants of microscopic civilizations like those in a couple of episodes of “The Twilight Zone.”   Examples of works that we can physically stand under include “No title (folding table and chairs, dark brown)” (2007) and “No title (table leg)” (2010), as well as “Under the Table” (1994). One of the points articulated in the exhibition’s helpful didactic panels is that Therrien’s studios were routinely evolving installations in their own right. His fascination with architecture is strongly apparent in two of the most elegant and provocative works. One is abstract, the other decidedly representational. Sleek and sumptuous in form, the all black wooden structure “No title (black Dutch door)” (1993-2013) is based on actual doors from the artist’s childhood home. But he has removed all details such as knobs, hinges, or keyholes, and affixed it directly to the wall, with the upper and lower sections positioned at different angles in a way that makes us want to view it from multiple vantage points. While superficially resembling a Richard Serra (1938-2024) steel work, it is much more approachable in the sense that it supplants Serra’s cold industrial aesthetic with one that feels soft and poetic. By comparison, “No title (room, panic doors)” (2013-14) elicits a more cerebral reaction. A large rectangular structure that resembles the freight compartment of a moving van and houses a replica of a brightly lit hallway and doors, the installation resembles a movie set that fills us with anticipation. We could easily imagine the doors busting open and an emergency care team racing towards us with a patient on a gurney. Robert Therrien, “No title (large telephone cloud),” 1998, steel, enamel, telephones, 68 x 124 x 47”. Courtesy of the Robert Therrien Estate. Therrien’s versatility is also expressed in the subtle humor that shows through in a scattering of works, such as the charming collage “No title (devil wallpaper)” (1983), where he cleverly undermines the lyrical tone of patterned wallpaper by silk-screening the devil logo from Underwood deviled ham onto the preexisting floral motifs. Also noteworthy for its whimsy is “No title (large telephone cloud)” (1998), a monumental cartoon bubble/cloud formation constructed from old telephones and wires that evoke the millions of connections and talking voices that permeate the world’s telephone lines. Although serious in vision and intentions, Therrien was an avid fan of vintage comic books and was himself quite adept at making art that leaves us smiling. 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 John Zotos Nasher Sculpture Center , Dallas Continuing through January 4, 2026 Antony Gormley, “Quantum Cloud XX (tornado),” 2000, stainless steel, 91 3/4 x 58 5/8 x 47 1/4”. All images courtesy of Antony Gormley and the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. Photos: Kevin Todora. Over the last forty-five years British sculptor Antony Gormley (b. 1950) has remained a consistently major figure on an international level. His work centers on a critical investigation of bodies in space and how we, as human beings, seek to share and expand our perception beyond the confines of our own bodies.  “SURVEY:  Antony Gormley” brings together sixteen sculptures on loan with two pieces from the collection, along with models from the artist’s studio that represent sixty projects, some unrealized. These, in turn, are augmented by his workbooks, a collection of drawings and ideas going back to the 70’s that together form a kind of Gormley “codex.” Antony Gormley, “Three Places,” 1983, lead, fiberglass and air. Lying: 12 1/4 x 81 1/2 x 19 5/8”; Sitting: 39 3/8 × 22 1/2 × 52”; Standing: 74 3/4 × 19 5/8 × 13 3/4”. The earliest works find Gormley trailing on the heels of the “new figuration” movement. Both “Three Places” (1983) and “Field” (1984) are examples of his fully recognizable male, free-standing figures based on casts of his own body, from a period when his career first took off. Using a meditative technique learned during his time in India, Gormley would stay still for hours inside the plaster until it was cut away and used to create these lead-coated figures.  On the outside they are anonymous, everyman likenesses without the slightest hint of portraiture. On a conceptual level, their inside is an exact replica of their maker at that time, so the pieces speak to an interior identity that interacts with the space of the world surrounding them through an exterior barrier that acts as a translation device. The space around Gormley’s sculptures and how people interact with them is his main concern. In “Three Places” three figures, one lying down, one supine, and one standing, each face the same direction and look toward the sky. They beckon us to ponder a place beyond the space they occupy.  Antony Gormley, “Shift,” 2023, concrete, 22 5/8 x 24 5/8 x 82 1/2”. In the balancing act titled “Field” the arms of a standing figure become an eighteen-foot wingspan. The elongated arms reach for either end of the gallery. The hands are raised upward like fins, sustaining the figures’ position with a strong sense of precarity that amplifies the anxious feeling of reduced stability. As his career progressed Gormley always held to the figure. When it seems to disappear one can find it hidden within an abstracted, fractal-induced set of wires as in “Drift VI” (2010), or in the fascinating “Quantum Cloud XX (Tornado)” (2000). Stainless steel “T”-shaped bars read like a whirlwind of pins through which a human form is just discernible. Antony Gormley, “Field,” 1984-1985, lead, fiberglass, plaster, and air, 77 1/4 x 217 x 16 1/2”. In “Shift” (2023) the figure lies on the ground, only this time Gormley used blocks of concrete mixed with fibers to create a cuboidal body, perhaps a modern version of Cubism. It looks like it’s trying to do a stomach crunch; the head and feet sections are off the ground as it balances on its central backside. In a compelling piece done specifically for this exhibition, “Implicate IV” (2024), Gormley uses Cor-ten steel bands that radiate from a central axis. They proceed on a ninety-degree register to circumscribe an elaborate geometry that conceals a figure in the center. The artist refers to the steel strips as “ribbons” that extend the figure outward into the space of the gallery. This newest piece aesthetically ties the exhibition back to the earliest works. As throughout the exhibition, the work reveals Gormley’s consistent concern with our physical bodies and the spaces we occupy within the social sphere, where relationships are formed and meaning is established.  John Zotos  is an art critic and essayist based in Dallas.

by Matthew Kangas Foster/White Gallery , Seattle, Washington Continuing through December 20, 2025 Julie Himel, “Glitch,” 2025, oil on board, 12 x 12”. All images courtesy of the artist and Foster/White Gallery. Canadian artist Julie Himel presents four paintings measuring at around 4 feet in tandem with nine small oil and mixed-media paintings in her current show, “Awe Struck.” The works obliquely tackle the current issues of climate change, but from the safe, time-honored Canadian tradition of landscape, a heritage dating back at least to the Group of Seven painters of the 1920s and 30s who addressed specific regional locales from all across the dominion. Himel confronts and challenges her predecessors’ devotion to pastoral themes and fetching geographical identity. Julie Himel, “Your Heart Was a Goldmine,” 2025, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 30”. By tightly focusing on specific vistas in the tiny canvases, the artist draws us into an intimate encounter with the image, executed with vigorous i mpasto and palette knives, slashing color and emphasis on diagonal trails and riverbeds or, as she puts it, “experiences of rupture.” That rupture is cosseted by bright colors, often within one hue per painting, such as the pink in “Glitch” (all works are 2025). Downplaying the variety of colors in nature, each image — from a sunset to a swooshing pond — could be the product of a polluted chemical after-spill of mining. Once one grants the vivid colors a sinister register, the pictures take on a deeper content beyond their masterful decorative and soothing qualities. For instance, “Your Heart Was a Goldmine” posits a poisonous sky above a ravaged ravine with tall trees that appear shorn of leaves and branches, and in “The Future is a Moment” red lightning streaks through a darkened sky. These paintings convey the exhibition title of “Awe Struck” to the extent that they jolt us simultaneously into a conventional appreciation of landscape painting and the discomfiting state of nature gone wrong. Julie Himel, “The Future is a Moment,” 2025, mixed media on canvas, 12 x 12”. Himel’s vigorous gestural brushwork is evident throughout, and provides a large part of the exhibit’s appeal. Going beyond the harmonious celebrations of nature associated with the Group of Seven, she annexes the current moment of planetary decay and the battles between natural wonder and industrial harvesting of nature through mining and timber, an even bigger national issue in Canada than in the U.S. Julie Himel, “She Remembered Blue,” 2025, mixed media on canvas, 48 x 48”. All of this is perhaps too heavy a rhetorical load for Himel’s elegant slabs of paint with their contrasting grounds and skies. However, the urgency of the artist’s brushwork could symbolize the clock ticking on public access to underfunded national parks and provincial land preserves encroached upon by mega-corporate landowners eager to expand their purview. In this sense, Himel’s claim that she “seeks to capture that collision — where perception is pierced and the veil of apathy is torn” is the quiet revelation of the exhibition. That said, the four larger works are overshadowed by the memory of somewhat larger works from Himel’s prior exhibition. These expanded the sense of grandeur and vista through aggressively expressive paint-handling and abbreviated compositions. In “She Remembered Blue,” a rising mountain in the background is lost in a blue afternoon shade with a yellow and green foreground of shrubbery and stubble. That vista is flipped in the forlorn grandeur of “Edges Sweetly,” with its high vertical drama of sunset in all shades of pink and smudged black and blue foreground at its base, like a glistening oil slick or muddy pond. Julie Himel, “Edges Sweetly,” 2025, mixed media on canvas, 48 x 40”. With these two works, Himel convincingly joins a global cohort of artists re-inventing landscape in light of global warming. The artist’s challenge now is to emphasize such real-world dangers while retaining her brilliant powers of assertive execution and chromatic experimentation. 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 Bill Lasarow December 24, 2025 Doris Salcedo, “Installation at 8th International Istanbul Biennial,” 2003, 1,550 wooden chairs. Courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York. The Art World is by its very nature unstable, and in that lies much of its value and strength. It thrives on its dual handmaidens, individuality and freedom. If creative originality is a simple ideal, novelty and eccentricity mark its charming failure. It is not consistent with democratic governance, which is better left to lawyers and bean counters. In a sense it is a closer sibling to the Fascist Party of America and its family-driven racketeering because they both are driven by an impulse to transcend convention and law. It pretty much ends there, as art is in good part a search for ethos despite the knowledge that final answers are not forthcoming. The power of art comes from the liberation fostered by free expression and the exercise of imagination. The power of fascism (and crime in general) is a small-minded pursuit of advantage and the false (not to mention fleeting) comfort of material gain. Sarah Sze, “Slice,” 2023, multimedia installation, 15’ 5” x 21’ 2” x 27’. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Photo: David Heald. In typical mafia family, yes such as that of Trump34, you extract an oath of loyalty that is not returned. To such people that is real power. In the moral universe that is mere corruption, and it is small no matter the façade, the brittle shell of power or wealth. In the aesthetic realm it is even worse: the absence of integrity. That doesn’t mean that we, as artists, turn to progressive political leaders because they know the right answers to managing a mass society. In fact, that is not the reason for the near universal liberalism of artists (the few exceptions tend to be more extreme in their ideologies). It’s that conservatism in its common form is simply too restrictive of individual conduct. When the old Republican Party conservatism transforms into fascism, controlling social norms are enforced by increasing coercion and violence. What we think of as First Amendment rights suddenly come only with a pledge of loyalty that utterly negates the necessary condition of creativity. When only one form of speech is permitted, no speech is free. Alan Rath, “Vanity,” 1992, vintage medicine cabinet, aluminum, custom electronics, CRT, 48 x 44 x 25”. Courtesy of Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco. Progressive leaders must be fired up by public service and self-sacrifice. There is an obvious satisfaction in the social amplification that this implies, and it is a far more wholesome exercise of power, the exercise of public benefit and honest collaboration within a sprawling organization. Politicians, be they progressive of fascist, must necessarily deal with the real world of many interests, of lots of individuals coming and going, of change as a constant. The art world deals with a unique commodity — namely creativity, as distinct from the artwork or performance per se. God forbid when any organization should get it claws into that commodity, as so frequently happens. This is a great argument to keep the art world small. The freedom is more likely to be unencumbered by the lack of material reward. For many, perhaps most, and maybe nearly all real artists that will be met with a sigh of relief. In progressive politics the goal is to establish a solid floor of stability and affluence, and that provides enough space for creativity to thrive. In post-war America and much of the rest of the modern world it has thrived for the last century in a way that it never has before, the long history of elite art notwithstanding. Louise Bourgoise, “Janus Fleuri,” 1968, bronze and gold patina, 10 1/8 × 12 1/2 × 8 3/8”. Courtesy Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. Photo: Christopher Burke. © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York. I’m personally a born liberal because I reject the racist, xenophobic wing of any political party precisely because it is exclusionary by intent, by emotion, and by policy. My creed is that the continuing growth of inclusion, I might say the relentless expansion of middle-class confidence, is the correct aspiration. The validity of that aspiration strikes me as plain as day when you read America’s founding documents in their plain language. That the last several generations bear this truth is made evident by the many thousands of professional creatives alive today. Only a few depended on the kind of privilege that enabled dedicated creativity, or the exposure to suffering and deprivation that those who were creative by their nature were usually forced to endure. When the Founders rejected the millennias-long model of a monarch enthroned by God, which Washington then certified in practice when he rejected the title, they only had the vaguest of intuitions as to where that would lead. If the Civil War and the current ownership of the federal government by a mafia operation represents the two lowest points in our still young 250-year-old experiment, we have also enjoyed long periods of advancement. Christian Boltanski, “It’s a jumble out there,” 2010, multimedia installation. Courtesy of the Grand Palais, Paris. Photo: Didier Plowy. With the conclusion of 30 years of war during the first half of the 20th-century, and the needless loss of over 130 million live and the disruption of hundreds of millions of others, much of the 19th century’s most durable infrastructure lay in ruins. A gleaming new America fortuitously, but not accidentally, stood very tall for the balance of the 20th century and into the 21st. It was a formula that had worked, was working, and with seriousness of purpose on both sides it would have continued to steer us toward that better future that most of us wish for. Looking back of the last century, the expansion of art, of all creative culture, of its sheer breadth of creative product, along with an economic infrastructure to support it, is unsurprising. And yet it is a new thing in the tale of civilization. Ori Gersht, “Flower 02 (Rijiksmuseum),” 2021, photographs, archival pigment print, 46 1/2 x 35”. Courtesy of Yancey Richardson, New York. Suddenly, in 2025, we are supposed to forget about the Founder’s ideas about personal liberty and freedom and be “nice” to a fascist mafia boss? I ain’t doin’ it, and I do not know anyone in the art world that I have worked in for five decades who does. Yet here we all are, by virtue of this product of deceit and the worst kind of self-aggrandizing greed. Our own votes put us here, we were not forced. Now that we are here, the best we can do is bend the destruction towards another new renaissance. Many previous generations have borne the same burden, we are only unique in terms of what has been given up in relative terms. There will come a future that regards our miracles as in fact quite modest. You can’t script history, it writes itself. You can script after history and noodle around it as much as you like. Enter the creativity of art and all of its related discourse and conversation. If you choose the best tasting among ten brands of mustard, you are more likely to truly enjoy your choice than if you just accept the basic yellow stuff as good enough to reach no further. I deal, and have dealt with a large number of creative people as a tenet of my art and publishing career. To people like me, the question of which among ten landscape paintings or sculptural figures are the best, rather than the first one you see that is competently painted, carved, or assembled is vital. Inclusion in a field free of distraction, let along catastrophe, itself is not the answer but a necessary condition to raise important questions and to speculate. Paula Rego, “The Family,” 1988, acrylic on paper on canvas, 84 x 84”. Courtesy of the Tate, London. The question was once raised, and widespread discussion resulted from the question: Why are there no great women artists? The answer was in effect: well, have at it. The conditions existed for women to seize opportunities that have grown exponentially, and the talent pool just naturally enlarged to fill many exhibition halls. Today the late Linda Nochlin’s question, half-a-century ago so impertinent and so bold, has been obliterated. Thank goodness, due to women’s inclusion, and that of so many others, it is the freedom of creativity that won. And so, like the Republic itself, now that we have it … can we keep it? Bill Lasarow , Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the  Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles  (1987); and  Visual Art Source  (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain . In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder  with co-publishers Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.

by Matthew Kangas Blackfish Gallery , Portland, Oregon Continuing through December 27, 2025 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 . What is the difference between self-taught artists, folk artists and outsider artists? In his current exhibition Mae Al-Jiboori provides some answers — and further questions — about the increasingly complicated status of all three categories. While the exhibit is titled, “Settling In,” one wonders exactly into what the 28-year-old Tulsa native is settling: American culture? The Pacific Northwest? Urban society? Regardless, the nine works on view readily defy such categorizations. They appear to be rehabilitated figurative Abstract Expressionist paintings with debts to Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, but the latter is an artist with Al-Jiboori poses no familiarity. Similarly, having only begun painting four years ago, Al-Jiboori’s growth is that of an emerging unknown. However, he lived in London for a considerable period of time and visited numerous galleries there and elsewhere during his travels, Al-Jiboori agreed in an interview that an artist who makes more sense as an influence is Francis Bacon. Al-Jiboori’s sophisticated international sojourns preclude folk artist or outsider art status, but expose the artist’s slow and exacting development. He has not yet found his own distinctive artistic style or voice. All the same, the pictures on view are compelling, even magnetic. Their assertive brushwork, advancing and receding spatial compositions, and close-value colors show promise, however derivative of prior art-historical movements they may be. It’s tempting to put Al-Jiboori into that catch-all silo of “global modernism,” which characterizes so many postwar artists in South Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Artists such as Tyeb Mehta and Etal Adnan have only recently received critical and curatorial attention for their affinities to abstract painting in the West, engaged with their own unique cultural expressions. Al-Jiboori, whose paternal grandfather is Iraqi, is a distant cousin to the movement. Mae Al-Jiboori, “Alone together,” 2025, acrylic, oil pastel, 53 x 42”. In this sense, the painting “Staring into the fireplace” serves as an example of the artist shifting in and out of identifiable imagery. With its penetrating gaze and see-through skull, the four-foot-tall canvas introduces the rest of the series. Mae Al-Jiboori, “Full of Disdain,” 2025, acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel, 39 x 47”. “In between breaths” repeats the single-figure motif but isolates it in one plane and posits a bald circular head indebted to Paul Klee, among others. It lacks the interesting compositional shifts of the other paintings here, but presents the unavoidable gaze seen in “Staring into the fireplace.” “Dolor” is more anguished, a stooping figure about to wretch or submit to pain. At first it seems alone, with its references to political torture or submission and surrender. If Al-Jiboori were to intensify this direction, his work could take on greater power and contemporary relevance. “Alone together” doubles the figures, entwining them in an erotic hold with broad diagonal slashes of blue against a bright yellow background. Their embrace is locked in by the confining blues and lifted up from the base of oranges as if fleeing a fiery fate below. Mae Al-Jiboori, “spectators who don’t intervene,” 2025, acrylic, oil pastel, 48 x 48”. A parallel vision, “Full of Disdain,” could be a wrestling scene. Two interlocked figures, legs spread apart, battle on a pale white background with little indication of victory or outcome. Gradually, the artist’s consciousness of his own past or heritage home-country issues emerge. Elsewhere they appear in appealing bright colors against ominous dark backgrounds. Seen in this context of turbulent aggression and human interchange, the rest of the paintings underscore multiple figures in increasingly complex compositions. For instance, “spectators who don’t intervene” doesn’t literally reflect its title but functions as the most successful among his abstract paintings. Splayed diagonals burst out of a combustible center of reds, greens, and blues. “Slow descent of closing time” comes closest to a dismembered version of Bacon, with heads and limbs dangling, bloodied in the possible aftermath of an interrogation or torture scene. Mae Al-Jiboori, “Greed around our necks,” 2025, acrylic, oil pastel on wood, 48 x 96”. Calmer colors and splashy brushwork provide a coda to the sequence in “Greed around our necks,” the largest work here at 4 by 8 feet. More dependent upon black outlining than any of the other paintings, it sacrifices modernist color affinities for stretched-out subliminal drawings of elongated figures in an angry pastoral scene, the closest thing to a landscape within the series. Seen alongside the other works, the artist’s world is expanded beyond his interior psychological visions to the outer world where such scenarios play out in real time. Al-Jiboori’s work displays promise and challenge; culmination and conclusion are yet to come. 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 Liz Goldner GW Contemporary , Laguna Beach, California Continuing through January 4, 2026 Salomón Huerta, “Night Pool,” 2025, oil on canvas, 54 x 36 x 1 1/2”. All images courtesy of GW Contemporary, Laguna Beach. Genevieve Williams, owner/curator of this five-month-old gallery, is enchanted by art that reveals abstract aspects of our atmosphere. As curator at the Laguna Beach based Honarkar Art Foundation (now closed), she mounted “Luminaries of Light,” displaying several translucent paintings and sculptures from California’s 1960s Light and Space movement. Jeff Peters, “Monday Misses Sunday,” oil on canvas, 18 x 20”. “ The Space Between: First Light, Last Light,”  with work by several artists from California and around the country, “explores the threshold between night and day.”  Paintings, lithographs and photos bring to light our environment in darkness, shadow, light and reflection. The exhibition invites meditation and what Williams calls “quiet illumination.” Williams began putting this exhibition together after viewing two lithographs by the late, multi-talented Peter Alexander. “Gardena” and “Palmdale” (both 1990) from his “LAX Series” were created from his nighttime helicopter flights over Los Angeles, particularly over airports, when he perceived the city’s grids as geometric abstractions. He photographed the airfields to capture the lit-up grids, then painted the scenes and created lithographs. The resulting images with their tilted horizons capture the feeling of suspension above a luminous night-time city. Sandrine Jacobson, “The Rose of the Morning,” 2025, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 x 1 1/2”. Salomón Huerta’s “Pool Paintings” are inspired by his youthful experiences assisting his gardener father as they manicured the grounds of luxurious Southern California homes. Mining those memories and adding elements of surrealism, Huerta creates paintings that transform the private pools and their surroundings into enigmatic settings against darkened backgrounds. These are psychologically charged paintings that explore atmosphere, restraint and memory. “Night Pool” (2025) is an interminable body of dark bluish-grayish water, bordered by speckled lights peering from buildings in the distance and a shimmering night-time sky. Jeff Peters contributes two large canvases, “Waiting For You To Pick Up,” and “The Line That Outlives Empires,” plus the smaller “Monday Misses Sunday,” (all 2025). They all play to the artist’s ability to capture dreamy scenes of radiant night skies and afternoon vistas. Using numerous layers of paint to achieve luminous surfaces, Peters constructs ephemeral scenes with slight images of figures gazing languidly into space, towards the horizon. Peters explains that his guiding interest is to, “explore the slippage between memory and invention, image and ideal.” Katie Shapiro, “Blue Moon,” 2025, inkjet on glass, Amazonite, 5 1/2 x 4 x 3”. Sandrine Jacobson’s “The Rose of Morning” (2025) is a luxurious rose-colored, non-figurative meditative exercise that captures the essence of a glorious morning. Her heavily layered oil painting connects and traverses the mysteries and reflections of the human experience with the natural world. The artist’s “She Is The Storm Rising” (2025) is a menacing image, depicting a burgeoning evening storm with clouds and rainfall descending on an ominous landscape. The contrast between these two paintings expresses the artist’s embrace of how the evolving state of humanity is mirrored by the ever-changing weather. Tessa Greene O’Brien, “Blue Moon, Addison,” 2024, oil, bleach, dye wax resist on dyed canvas, 60 x 48”. Katie Shapiro contributes six small sculptural works, each composed of inkjet photos of moons on small pieces of dark glass, all embedded into swirling abstract jet-black obsidian glass. Titles such as “Wedged Moon,” “Three Moons,” and “Moon in Rock” (2024-25) heighten the evocation of the beauty and mystery of the nighttime sky. Tessa Greene O’Brien’s “Blue Moon, Addison” (2024), despite the “moon” of the title, comprises an entirely different artistic technique and environmental aspect. Her large canvas, colored and textured with oil, bleach, dye and wax resist, abstractly illustrates a moon during a time of weather-related turmoil. She deftly combines figuration with abstraction. By contrast, “Dusk Skies” (2021) by Mara De Luca is nearly as pitch black as a moonless night sky. The artist brings together in her work elements of illusionism, romanticism and modernism. Depicting dawn to dusk to night-time as it does, “First Light, Last Light” demonstrates how each passing hour brings a new atmosphere, new aesthetic possibilities, and a new opportunity to open our eyes and start afresh. 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 Jody Zellen USC Fisher Museum , Los Angeles Continuing through March 14, 2026 Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles California Continuing through December 20, 2025 Ken Gonzales-Day, “Ramonacita at the Cantina” from the “Bone-Grass Boy : The Secret Banks of the Conejos River ” series, 1996, C-print, 22 1/2 x 34 1/4”. All images courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. Ken Gonzales-Day's mid-career survey “History’s “Nevermade"” moves us through three decades of work. While the investigation of race and queer identity is core to Gonzales-Day's pursuits, he also looks deeply into history and politics from a theoretical perspective, which is not surprising given his role as an educator and writer. Seen together, the works speak to cultural memory and how we see the present in relation to the past. Ken Gonzales-Day, “The Wonder Gaze, St. James Park (Lynching of Thomas Thurmond & John Holmes, Santa Rosa, 1933 ),” 2006, from the “Erased Lynching” series, inkjet print on vinyl, 8 x 19 feet. While still in high school and later as an undergraduate, Gonzales-Day made representational figurative paintings and drawings. Many of these pieces are installed salon style to the left of the entry room. These early works illustrate both a trajectory and a continuum of his interests in the male figure and his skills in eliciting trust and compassion between artist and model. Ken Gonzales-Day, “Tadareious Johnson,” 2020, from the series “Pandemic Portraits,” archival ink on rag paper, 40 x 30”. Continuing chronologically through the exhibition, the installation includes a significant early series, “The Bone Grass Boy” (1993-1996) This work consists of both a suite of photographs and a historical fiction written by Gonzales-Day set in the 1800s illustrating and describing the life of Ramoncita, a transgendered, two-spirited figure who is purported to be an ancestor of the artist. In the photographs created between 1994 and 1997, Gonzales-Day dresses up to play the various characters in the fictitious narrative, clearly delighting in rewriting and reinterpreting history.  In his haunting “Erased Lynching” series begun in 2006, Gonzales-Day researched the history of lynching in the America West, specifically focusing on vigilante violence against Latinos, Chinese, and Native Americans in California. Printing on both a small and mural scale, Gonzales-Day digitally removed the victims and seamlessly filled in the background trees to highlight the white spectators while creating an eerie absence. An abiding interest in landscape and memory led to another series, “California Hang Trees.” Gonzales-Day traveled around California documenting the trees used for hangings and their locations. The black and white photographic mural “The Wonder Gaze, St. James Park (Lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes, Santa Rosa, 1933)” (2006), here spans nearly 20 feet. A crowd lingers, illuminated in front of a deep black background. A single barren tree extends from the ground toward the sky, the two hanged men erased from the image but left to our imagination. Twenty-one postcard size images from the “Erased Lynching” series are presented in a grid emphasizing the enormity of these injustices against men of color. Ken Gonzales-Day, “Afterlife (Digital composition with Mexico, Effigy of Death, National Museum of Anthropology (MNA), Mexico City; Leonard Wells Volk, Abraham Lincoln, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (NPG); Mexico, Aztec, Figure of Xipe Totec, LACMA; Jean-Antoine Houdon, George Washington, NPG;  Houdon, Benjamin Franklin, NPG; Adelaide Johnson, Susan B. Anthony, NPG; Mexico,Scull Mask, MNA; Jean-Antoine Houdon, Flayed Man; Sculls, Museum of Criminal Anthropology, Turin; Rosenborg Tapestries, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen),” 2025, archival ink on rag paper, 40 x 80”. In addition to using found imagery as a point of departure, Gonzales-Day also makes photographs of friends and acquaintances. These are often shot in a studio against neutral backgrounds. In “Anthony” (2007), from the “Memento Mori” series, and “Tadareius Johnson” (2020), from the “Pandemic Portrait” series, he celebrates queer bodies. Among the most interesting images are examples from the “Dysmorphologies” and “Profiled” series. In “Dysmorphologies #94” (1999), Gonzales-Day compares and contrasts different skin types by digitally assembling grids of fragmented body parts evocatively arranged by tones and shapes. For the images in his “Profiled” series, he photographs antique statues from museum collections and represents them en masse  against black backgrounds. This series examines race and racial profiling within museum collections. “41 Objects Arranged by Color” (2016), is an impressive mural covering an entire wall in which Gonzales-Day digitally juxtaposes statues that vary in tone from back to white. He removes their settings, isolating the individual shapes against a black background. He standardizes the size of the statues to allow us to compare and contrast these representations as a way to understand historical bigotry. Ken Gonzales-Day, “Guardian I (Digital composition with Mexico, Jalisco, Seated Male Figure; Mexico, Colima, Figural Vessel of Hunchbacked Male Drinker; Colombia, Middle Cauca, Caldas, Figure with Ligatures; Mexico, Nayarit, Seated Female Figure; Mexico, Jalisco;  Standing Male Figure; Mexico, Colima, Seated Male Figure; Mexico, Nayarit, Standing Female Figure; Mexico, Tlatilco, Seated Figure; Mexico, Guanajuato, Acámbaro Valley, Chupícuaro, Standing Female Figure; Mexico, Colima, Standing Dog; Mexico, Colima Dog with Human Mask, All LACMA),” 2025, archival ink on rag paper, 40 x 30”. In conjunction with the USC Fisher Museum show, Gonzales-Day also exhibits new works at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. “Afterlife” includes more than twenty-five digitally composited photographs, many depicting groups of statues from LACMA's collection. “Guardian I (Digital composition with Mexico, Jalisco, Seated Male Figure; Mexico, Colima, Figural Vessel of Hunchbacked Male Drinker; Colombia, Middle Cauca, Caldas, Figure with Ligatures; Mexico, Nayarit, Seated Female Figure; Mexico, Jalisco; Standing Male Figure; Mexico, Colima, Seated Male Figure; Mexico, Nayarit, Standing Female Figure; Mexico, Tlatilco, Seated Figure; Mexico, Guanajuato, Acámbaro Valley, Chupícuaro, Standing Female Figure; Mexico, Colima, Standing Dog; Mexico, Colima Dog with Human Mask, All LACMA)” (2025) is a carefully composed arrangement of gray-toned Pre-Columbian figures combined with a single statue that retains its original color. In many of these images Gonzales-Day creates a colorful halo around individual figures and sets the composition against a colored background, frequently blue, mustard yellow or green. The addition of these colors reinforces the idea that the photographs are fabrications and not museified displays.  “Afterlife’s” highlight is the enormous collage “Afterlife (Digital composition with Mexico, Effigy of Death, National Museum of Anthropology (MNA), Mexico City; Leonard Wells Volk, Abraham Lincoln, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (NPG); Mexico, Aztec, Figure of Xipe Totec, LACMA; Jean-Antoine Houdon, George Washington, NPG; Houdon, Benjamin Franklin, NPG; Adelaide Johnson, Susan B. Anthony, NPG; Mexico, Scull Mask, MNA; Jean-Antoine Houdon, Flayed Man; Sculls, Museum of Criminal Anthropology, Turin; Rosenborg Tapestries, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen)” (2025). In this work, Gonzales-Day arranged busts of famous figures including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and Susan B. Anthony with skulls and Mesoamerican artifacts. They sit in a long triangular jumble in front of a brown-hued composited illustration appropriated from a tapestry in the Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen that celebrated the brave deeds of European monarchs. The effect is chilling and speaks directly to Gonzales-Day's commitment to reveal the misdeeds of colonialism and to expose the ways museums have created and maintained racial hierarchies within their collections. Gonzales-Day's simultaneous presentations showcase his impressive achievements and illustrate the myriad ways — be it through photographs, drawing, painting, public art or writing — he has communicated and refined his ideas for more than three decades. 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 .