I feel like people tend to look at a painting and think, “OK, one artist paints a painting.” As if the condition remains the same ten years ago, three years ago, and now. But . . . the way I create the work constantly evolves. Especially in the past few years, we’ve been able to use a lot of the 3-D modeling programs, so the way I can grasp and understand forms has drastically changed and evolved. . . . Artistic expression really has to do with technique, and how you can actually realize ideas.
—Takashi Murakami

Gagosian is pleased to present GYATEI², new works by Takashi Murakami, as the 2019 “Oscars show,” a much-anticipated annual fixture on the Los Angeles cultural calendar.

Drawing from traditional Japanese painting, sci-fi, anime, and pop culture, Murakami’s oeuvre comprises paintings, sculptures, films, and a stream of commercial products populated by mutating characters of his own creation. His iconoclastic individualism continues the nonconformist legacy of the Edo Eccentrics, a group of eighteenth-century Japanese artists who constructed a powerfully imaginative world filled with bizarre and emotive imagery.

The exhibition title comes from the Buddhist Hannya Shingyo (Heart Sutra), a popular sutra in Mahayana Buddhism. The incantation is often chanted by Zen groups before or after a meditation. At the conclusion of the sutra, the Avalokiteshvara, a popular and recognizable bodhisattva, turns and recites a mysterious mantra to one of the disciples. The mantra is often roughly translated as “gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, svāhā.” This articulation has been diversely interpreted as a call to “go” attain enlightenment, as the cry of a baby reborn into an eternal true world, and as a curse.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

The inaugural edition of Frieze Los Angeles brought together 70 of the most significant and forward-thinking contemporary galleries from across the city and around the world, alongside a curated program of talks, site-specific artists’ projects and film.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

People

February 9–April 6, 2019925 North Orange Drive

More than fifty standing, sitting and hanging figurative sculptures will fill Jeffrey Deitch’s new Los Angeles gallery. The artists in the show span several generations from the 1980s to the present, with an emphasis on emerging talent.

All of the works in the exhibition reflect a contemporary approach to sculpture inspired by the innovations of Dada, Surrealism, Assemblage and by the influence of non- or meta- art sources like department store mannequins.

Only one work in the show is carved or modeled in the traditional way. Some are made from body casts, others are constructed with found objects and only a few use conventional sculptural materials like bronze.

The works in the exhibition reflect the diversity of the artists who created them and the diversity of the people who the sculptures represent. The styles range from hyperrealism to allegory. The subjects range from ordinary individuals to creatures of fantasy. The works explore the uncanny confrontation of the artificial and the real while simultaneously responding to the multiple approaches to human identity in the contemporary world.

Many of the works in the show have a performative quality and one of the featured works, Narcissister’s Totem, will be activated with live performance during the opening week. In keeping with the aesthetic direction of the show, it is unclear which of the figures in her Totem are live and which are not.

People is an expansion of an exhibition presented in Jeffrey Deitch’s New York gallery in May 2018. The show also extends the theme of the Metropolitan Museum’s 2018 Like Life exhibition to encompass a younger generation of artists. People is especially inspired by Mike Kelley’s influential exhibition and book project, The Uncanny from 1993. The show also builds on Deitch’s 1992 book and exhibition, Post Human.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is pleased to announce the opening of our new exhibition space in downtown Los Angeles. Spanning the entire length of 1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, the 11,000 sf warehouse will host some of the gallery’s most ambitiously scaled exhibitions to date and provides additional space for both a screening and reading room. It will be used as a second exhibition space in addition to our Culver City gallery. The gallery design was developed in collaboration with TOLO Architecture and Anderson Studio.

The gallery will open during Frieze LA with a preview on Friday, February 15, 2019, and will open to the public on Saturday, February 16. The inaugural exhibition will feature new and historic works by artists from the gallery’s roster: Edgar Arceneaux, Sadie Benning, Andrea Bowers, Kim Dingle, Sean Duffy, Nicole Eisenman, Charles Gaines, Karl Haendel, Stanya Kahn, Mary Kelly, Rodney McMillian, Wangechi Mutu, Ruben Ochoa, Pope.L, Amy Sillman, and Nicola Tyson. The inaugural exhibition will be followed by solo exhibitions of new work by Arlene Shechet, Deborah Roberts, Sam Levi Jones, Genevieve Gaignard, Andrea Bowers, Shana Lutker, and Liz Glynn.

The downtown gallery is located at 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, just south of the 10 freeway. Limited parking is available on the north parking lot adjacent to the building. Visitors to the opening are encouraged to use ride sharing services.

1700 Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90021 phone 310.837-2117 www.vielmetter.com

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

SPRING/BREAK Art Show Los Angeles premiered during Frieze Week LA in February, featuring 40+ projects of near-exclusively Los Angeles-based artists, curators, and artist-run spaces. For press responses to the event, go to our NEWS section.

February 15 – 17, 2019  //  The Stalls at Skylight ROW DLTA  //  1925 East 8th Street, Los Angeles 

SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical and historic New York City exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, typically but not exclusively during Armory Arts Week. The eighth annual exhibition will be held from March 5th  – March 11th, 2019. 

By first inhabiting St. Patrick’s Old School, and then the former James A. Farley Post Office, the initiative offers independent curators free space within New York City landmarks, past and future. In exchange for no-cost exhibition space, visionary perspectives both established and unknown are charged with engaging these areas under a unifying theme and pushed to extend the boundries of typical market week practices, low overhead and shifting curatorial themes their assets to this end. 

All artworks in the show are displayed and available for purchase online, giving artists unknown, emerging, mid-career, and beyond a virtual compliment to their tactile exhibition.

Low-cost exhibition space and low-cost entry for art patrons, public, and practioners alike aims to widen the arts audience in New York and broaden the dialog of what constitutes value and economy in a 21st Century city.

In March 2019, over 100 curators will premiere new artworks created by over 400 artists, all selected around this year’s central art theme, FACT AND FICTION. 

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

The fair will take place within the private suites and bungalows of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel from February 14-17, 2019. Felix LA will showcase a diverse selection of 38 forward-thinking exhibitors from across the globe, including galleries located in Europe, North America, China, South Africa and Australia.

Felix LA’s mission is to create an intimate fair experience that prioritizes connoisseurship, collaboration, and community. A return to the hotel fair format, in the spirit of the storied Gramercy International Los Angeles at the Chateau Marmont, Felix LA grants galleries an efficient exhibition opportunity while offering the city’s burgeoning collector-base intimate access and maximum flexibility. The informal setting will allow for more extended conversations among collectors, dealers, and artists alike.

Felix LA was co-founded by Dean Valentine along with brothers Al Moran and Mills Moran. The trio have been longtime members of the cultural landscape at large and look forward to bringing their community-driven approach to their homegrown, hometown fair.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

Art Los Angeles Contemporary, the International Contemporary Art fair of the West Coast, will be held February 13–17, 2019.

The tenth edition of the fair will feature top established and emerging galleries from around the world, with a strong focus on Los Angeles galleries. Participants will present some of the most dynamic recent works from their roster of represented artists, offering an informed view on contemporary art making.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

Desert X is a site-specific, contemporary art exhibition that is held in the Coachella Valley in Southern California. The inaugural Desert X was held from February 25 to April 30, 2017; Desert X 2019, February 9 to April 21.

The artists included in the 2019 edition include Iván Argote, Nancy Baker Cahill, Cecilia Bengolea, Pia Camil, John Gerrard, Julian Hoeber, Jenny Holzer, Iman Issa, Mary Kelly, Armando Lerma, Eric N. Mack, Cinthia Marcelle, Postcommodity, Cara Romero, Sterling Ruby, Kathleen Ryan, Gary Simmons, Superflex, Chris Taylor & Steve Badgett.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

Autre Magazine Party kicking off Freize Week LA in Silverlake, Los Angeles.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

Pontormo

Miraculous Encounters

February 5–April 28, 2019, GETTY CENTERP

Featuring one of Jacopo da Pontormo’s most renowned works, the Visitation, this exhibition presents this innovative altarpiece along with two exceptional portraits and preparatory drawings that reveal his creative process. Completed during Florence’s political upheaval at the end of the 1520s, the artist’s paintings from this period resonate with acute psychological intensity. Recent conservation of the Visitation reveals its stunning range of colors and exquisite details, which led to its first-time travel from Italy to the United States.

Generously supported by Janine and J. Tomilson Hill. Additional support provided by the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture (FIAC).

Organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Morgan Library & Museum, New York; and the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence.

The exhibition has been organized to raise support for the conservation of the Parish Church and the former Franciscan convent of San Michele Arcangelo in Carmignano.