February 18, 2022 • View in browser

Good morning. ☁️ Today, LA’s Spring/Break Art Show offers a warehouse of fantasy, the failure of some MFA design programs, and reviews of Oliver Lee Jackson, Byron Kim, Caio Fernando Abreu, and an exhibition of Indigenous art in LA.

— Hrag Vartanian, editor-in-chief 

The Spring/Break Art Show Fills Up an LA Warehouse With Eccentric Visions

This year’s theme, Hearsay/Heresy, allowed curators and artists to play with dissent, nonconformity, and truth versus fact. | Samanta Helou Hernandez

LATEST IN ART

Byron Kim Plumbs the Depths of Nature and the Imagination

Despite all we know about the environment and what we are doing to it, Kim arrives at another, less palatable realization: As much as we call the Earth our home, we are strangers here. | John Yau

Connection, Contemplation, and Contested Histories in Contemporary Native American and Indigenous Art

Snake whisky still life and other stories tackles the stereotyping, misrepresentation, and appropriation of Indigenous cultures. | Caroline Ellen Liou

The Figural Ghosts of Oliver Lee Jackson’s Expressive Abstraction

Jackson's two-dimensional surfaces lead us into a maze of shapes and visual gestures, yet tease us into recognizing the figures hidden within. | Eileen G’Sell

The Mystique of Chiloé Reflected in its Art

Instead of believing I’m helping local artists by bringing international art to Chiloé, the best contribution I can make may be to help provide a venue where local artists and artisans can show their art for the benefit of each other. | Dan Cameron

MORE FROM HYPERALLERGIC

Like Elizabeth Holmes, Design Students are Being Taught to Present Optimism over Reality

Many of these MFA design programs are teaching fraud at scale. | Jennifer Rittner

Caio Fernando Abreu's Short Stories Charm with Questions of Life and Love

Moldy Strawberries is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, vaulting existential questions across the page while poking fun at the urge to ask them in the first place. | Rosa Boshier

500 Years of Drawing the Human Body

A show opening next week at the Getty Research Center plumbs the visual power of anatomical aesthetics. | Valentina Di Liscia

Required Reading

This week, the world’s largest black diamond, Francis Ford Coppola is spending $120M of his own money to make a film, post-colonialism in the post-Soviet space, Ikea’s quest for the last of Europe’s old growth forests, and more. |  Hrag Vartanian

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TRANSITIONS

Tamsin Dillon was apponited executive director of Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York.

Also in Long Island City, the SculptureCenter appointed Sohrab Mohebbi as director, and Kyle Dancewicz, who has acted as the center's interim director since September 2020, as deputy director.

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, has appointed Ann Brusky as its new deputy director of programming and Jodi Throckmorton as chief curator.

Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez were named curators of the 2023 Made in L.A. Biennial.

AWARDS & ACCOLADES

In conjunction with Frieze Los Angeles, Mary Baxter, Maria Gaspar, and Dread Scott were awarded the inaugural Frieze Impact Prize in partnership with the Art for Justice Fund and Endeavor Impact. Each will receive $25,000 for an art project relating to the movement to end mass incarceration.

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