1. Kenny Scharf at Honor Fraser Gallery

A line of broken-down kiddie cars leads you into the main gallery at Honor Fraser — plastic trikes and My Little Pony Jeeps. A painting of a hot dog, radiant, glowing, and doused with mustard, hangs above them. These are just glimpses into Kenny Scharf’s iconography, which by the time you step into the gallery space has all but consumed you. More trikes are jammed into the rafters, and garlands of plastic recyclables loop in long strands across the gallery. Gigantic concrete planters each with a jeering cartoon face, hold an array of plants; the walls drenched with exuberant murals. Spray-painted couches line the space. The installation, dubbed SUNSHINE CAVERN, is Sharf’s maximalist aesthetic on steroids. The other main gallery shoves this aesthetic into more contained paintings — Jetsons characters floating above galactic abstractions, Scharf’s signature cartoon characters spread across the abyss. 

Scharf was a key figure of the 1980s Street Art movement and has continued to utilize a playful, street-inspired aesthetic across his career. You’ve likely seen his murals dotting buildings across LA. The final gallery space highlights Scharf’s KARBOMBZ! series — the artist has been spray painting his signature characters on cars across the Southland for years. If you’ve ever seen a Corolla zipping past you on the 10, goofy spray-painted characters donning each panel, you’ve seen a Scharf painting in action.

On view: Jun 29th–Aug 24th, 2024 | Open map

2. Hiroka Yamashita at BLUM

In Hiroka Yamashita’s exhibitions of paintings at BLUM, looming figures emerge out of washy fields of oil paint — sensuous pools of color wash together and pour down the canvases. Just where you least expect it, errand limbs, tails, or eyes emerge. Some, like the crimson gloved hand in the painting《ウズメ》UZUME, have a graphic quality to them, a disjunction with the poetic paint washes that dominate the works. Yet, this is a productive disruption that keeps you on your toes as a viewer, searching Yamashita’s canvases for signs of life. 

The artist often turns to Japanese mythology (specifically the story of Amano-Iwato) and Shinto dance rituals to inform her dream-like compositions. Many of these stories and traditions have been lost post-WWII, and Yamashita is motivated to resurface them, saying, “I wanted to create works that touch upon forgotten deities and the hidden history that has vanished from the center stage.” Through her seductive paintings, Yamashita breathes new life into historical stories, hoping to reenergize them for today’s audiences.

On view: July 13th–August 30th, 2024 | Open map

3. Wendy Red Star at Roberts Projects

Wendy Red Star’s exhibition at Roberts Projects explores the Indigenous Apsáalooke craft of the bishkisché, a rawhide functional case that was often used to transport goods on horseback. “Each bishkisché features two painted panels with a mirrored pattern — a unique visual symbology invented by their maker,” describes the gallery’s press release. In this way, the geometric patterns on each one create a unique lexicon that tracks the tribes’ forebearers, most of which were historically women. 

Red Star has a robust collection of nearly 1000 photographs of these unique objects and has created 226 devoted painted depictions of them, intricate studies of the unique dyed markings on each. These paintings on paper hang in a dense grid around the Roberts Projects, a vibrant lexicon of red, yellow, blue, and green patterns. Through this process, Red Star not only connects to her heritage but is also creating an archive of the women who participated in this historical craft tradition. 

On view: July 13th–August 24th, 2024 | Open map

Cover them with glitter!

In a series at Honor Fraser, Kenny Scharf reimagines the cell towers that populate our city, wondering if there might be a way to aesthetically enhance them. “Every time I see these cellular phone tower ‘trees’ I just can’t believe that anyone thinks that it’s a real tree,” Scharf explains cheekily in a gallery label. “Who do they think they’re fooling?.. Let’s just take those trees and cover them with glitter. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?” His CELL TOWER pieces do just that, applying rainbow-colored diamond dust to photographic prints of LA’s cell towers. He does the same with oil drills in a painted series called OIL RIG in which he paints his iconic characters in bright colors over photographs of the metal rigs. “Just for the cost of paint, how inexpensive to create a giant sculpture park!” he writes.