Ellen C. Caldwell | ECLAIRE.me

When discussing such works, he said, “I don’t want to hit people so hard that they don’t respond.” So he doles out kernels of truth, wild imaginings, and pieces of fact and fiction laced with humor, expletives, and explosives, all in order to pull people in to look closer, to do their own research, to grapple with history’s gaping holes, and to make them laugh.

In the end, “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving” helps to construct — or perhaps helps us to see — yet another view of Kahlo and her many lives, incarnations, and selves.

The exhibit’s brochure described the maps in the show as bearing witness and “testifying to the criminal regimes that force people into dangerous journeys and that seek to curtail, control and interrupt their crossings.” Through a variety of maps and media, It is obvious from the map succeeds at challenging viewers to see a multiplicity of realities and that in fact “nothing is obvious” when it comes to how society deals with migration, migrant rights, monitoring migrant vessels, and movements of a people.

Inspired by a book of photos from 1911 when Niagara Falls actually froze over, Rebecca Bird’s exhibit explores this natural wonder beautifully. Some of her works seemed totally abstract at first glance. Just glancing from painting to painting, I could see a myriad of crystals forming, with stalactite-like formations, dark purple and blue ice caves shrouded in mist, stunted waterfalls, and scenic hints of humanity on the landscape’s horizon in the distance.

In “Sweet Broken Now,” Rebecca Farr’s third solo show at Klowden-Mann, Farr made Manifest Destiny her subject of inquiry and aimed to capture the complex history arising from the ideology and religious fervor that justified white westward expansion during the early 1900s.

An interview with artist Edgar Arceneaux about sci fi, incongruities, serendipity, MLK, iconicity, Tupac, and Kermit. Arceneaux’s “A Book and a Medal: Disentanglement Equals Homogenous Abstractions” opened at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects earlier this month. Challenging and compelling, the show is a triple threat of musts (must-see, -feel, and -experience) all in one.

In his examination of self, Rashid presents a rich body of work and an enticing series of questions about the same topics that haunt the Frenglish Empire – the role of influential and pejorative stereotypes, racism, capitalism, and imperialism. Here, we see Two Feathers as Rashid and the reverse – something Rashid described as a “trompe-l’œil effect of Two Feathers without the long extensive narrative story.” In that sense, Rashid replaces the epic historical narrative with a more personal, contemporary American narrative – though I would argue that the Frenglish and American worlds and messages are far more similar than they are different.

Gluibizzi’s style is really unique too. He pairs like groups together: friends, pornographic scenes, swinger couples, or proud stoner owners with their bongs. His light watercolor pastels feel more playful than pornographic even when poses are super-suggestive and provocative. And although his figures are missing any kind of intricate facial details that might render them more personality and uniqueness, all of his works still feel warm and intimate. Perhaps there is something in their universality that is appealing and more friendly than Google searches or Tumblr streams of stranger after stranger.

Painters and paint-lovers should flock to Evan Nesbit’s (NAP #99) current show /ˈkaɪˑæzəm/. Entering Roberts & Tilton, visitors are met by a group of large and brightly colored burlap canvases. The combination of acrylic paints and dye on brown burlap and of Nesbit’s painting on the opposite side of the burlap than the one facing outward has a contradictory effect on the colors: they are muted bolds and conversely, they are bright pastels.

Ben Weiner’s (NAP #56, 68, 80, 98) solo show “MaximumStrengthAgeDefy” at Mark Moore Gallery is eye candy for the soul and soulful drugs for your eyes. The gallery space greets you with bright and tasty looking colors, alluring and welcoming you in.