1.

Nick Taggart at Odd Ark LA

At Odd Ark in Highland Park, Nick Taggart’s “LA Stories: Paintings and Drawings from 1980s” is just that. The artist moved to LA from London in 1977, and became immersed in a small but vibrant scene of artists and musicians that Taggart documented through his paintings and sketches. Working from source images that he would snap of friends and acquaintances, the paintings on view, being shown here for the first time since they were made 40 years ago, document the ethos of a budding Angeleno counter culture in 1980. 

Some of the paintings feel more staged, like “Gregory and Giselle,” in which a woman lays poolside, nude save for a plastic jacket, which was designed by Gregory Poe (a fashion designer and brother to Blum & Poe’s Jeff Poe). Other paintings feel like casual snapshots, Like the brooding girls in “Rochelle and Sandy” who sport ‘80s garb and lean against a graffitied wall outside of Brave Dog, a post-punk club in Little Tokyo. A series of prints produced for the exhibition feature celebs that Taggart would loosely sketch from fashion spreads in French Vogue. Together the exhibition charts a vibrant time in LA’s history and points to a moment of reburgeoning energy in our city’s experimental cultural landscape. 

On view: June 26 – August 1, 2021 | Open map

2. Sarah Ann Weber at Anat Ebgi

In Sarah Ann Weber’s “Strong Blossoming Thing Forever,” florals become a maximalist patina that engulf the artworks. The female figures set into these edge-to-edge tropical motifs are lithe and stoic, like classical sculptures pulled out of art history texts (and some are—one references Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”).

Some frolic among the blooms, enjoying their splendor, while in others, like “Long leaved flowers weep,” a darker, more apocalyptic scene unfolds, with the natural environment overtaking its subject, consuming her like a foggy vapor. Similarly, Weber’s renderings flip from densely layered colored pencils and oils to flat and illustrative perennials that almost feel like stickers floating on the surface of her swarming worlds. These works take on Romanticism’s excess, while maintaining nature herself as the protagonist—a poignant acknowledgment of the natural world that can be a life-giving ally or an unrelenting force.

On view: June 18 – July 31, 2021 | Open map

3.

C.O.L.A. 2021 at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (online)

The C.O.L.A. grant is a long standing annual art grant supported by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs that is given to individual LA-based, mid-career artists to produce and exhibit a new body of work. Due to the pandemic, the C.O.L.A. exhibition is on view online (rather than its typical home at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park) for the second year in a row.

This year, ten visual artists and four literary/performing artists have created dynamic new projects. Artist Ruben Ochoa has converted his family’s 1975 Chevy van (from which Ochoa’s family sold tortillas in his youth) into a mobile art gallery, and exhibited a sculpture of cast bronze tortilla stacks. Nao Bustamante went about designing a “better speculum,” describing her design as a flower that blooms. Phung Huynh created a body of work confronting anti-Asian racism and exploring her family’s experience immigrating to the US after the Vietnam War. While her work confronts violent inequities, she says, “it can’t just be about the oppression, but how we transform the oppression... and that there are stories of resilience.” Each artist’s project is thoughtful and incisive, and together the artists on view present a compelling look at current art production in Los Angeles. 

On view online: May 27 – July 22, 2021

MOCA reopens after year-long shutdown, introduces Jennifer Packer’s ‘Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep’

On July 1, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) finally opened a new show to the public. While many LA museums have been up and running again since April, MOCA only reopened half of their building in June. Last week, I spoke with KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis about why MOCA’s reopening lagged behind other LA museums, and discussed its new exhibition, a solo show by NY-based painter Jennifer Packer.

Largely made within the last year, Packer’s figurative works picture Black subjects confined to their homes, using her artwork (much of which was painted from memory) as a way to remember and connect with friends and loved ones. As such, her washy paint application goes in and out of focus, her subjects fading into their backgrounds like ghostly memories that can’t quite materialize. Other works in the show honor Black lives lost to police violence, with gorgeous floral paintings that feel bountiful and dense.

Documenting life in technicolor

When Nick Taggart first moved to LA from London in 1977, he was blown away by the city’s vibrant energy.

“I suppose I was just recording the look of what was around me, which was so different than what was going on in London… when I came here, everything was all technicolor,” Taggart told Los Angeles Magazine. The artist went about capturing this energy in whatever form it might take. Sometimes, his work would veer more commercial, to the dismay of his peers.

“It was this small scene of people and everyone was hanging out together, but the other artists sneered at me a bit because I did record covers, and the paintings were slicker than what everyone else was doing and it didn’t really fit what was going on, so I didn’t feel my work related stylistically,” he said. “People were making things that looked more degraded, and I was going in the opposite direction, making things look more glamorous. Maybe, at that time, it wasn’t the right time to show them, but now it’s more about this moment that disappeared.”