LACMA Hits Two Out of the Art Ballpark: The Day Tomorrow Began and Grounded Are Home Runs

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LACMA Hits Two Out of the Art Ballpark –  Genie Davis

Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began, is an impressive, immersive series of installations which connect the viewer with the subject of the Black diaspora through resonant, experiential settings. Spread through seven galleries, the exhibition begins with the Encyclopedia Room, a wall to wall, 2,000-page Encyclopedia of Invisibility that riffs on the Encyclopedia Britannica. Illustrating information that has been rendered either invisible or obscured, it covers subjects as diverse as mechanical devices and the music of Billie Holiday. With over 17,000 entries, the information is eye-openeing, both overwhelming and exciting.

The Barbershop, a startlingly monochrome installation depicting a Black barber shop, is bold and involving. Here the viewer enters a complete world, both informational and personal. The installation has black walls,  black furniture, black implements, with the occasional pop of color. Even the barber pole is black and white rather than the traditional red and white. The room references  cultural icons, styling elements, and the importance of Black hair both culturally and personally.  The limited color palette somehow manages to sing with an internal burst of color.

Then, as if feeding off this energy, the viewer next observes a wall of rainbow-colored neon, with paired quotes from James Baldwin and Mark Twain as mirror images. Mounted on a floating wall, behind this singular, stand-on-your-head to read it all image, is The Monument Hall. Here monolithic works capture images such as Henri Christophe, a figurehead of the Haitian Revolution, positioned on top of Napoleon Bonaparte, while a powerful Nina Simone stands over Queen Victoria. Each of these works is a part of the artist’s series In Praise of Midnight, acknowledging and subverting colonialism and repression.

In the next gallery, the alluring odor of sweet grass rises from Rice Grass Meadow, in which actual growing rice grass surrounds beautiful ceramic sculptures and oval plates of renowned Black women, including diver Andrea Crabtree.

The final room revels in a different monochrome immersion than the sleek black contours of The Barbershop —The Wash House is all gray. This laundromat installation, fitted out with moving washers and dryers, and signs admonishing, advising, and exposing common idioms, is a cocoon of sorts, from which one might emerge with new information, new friendships and alliances formed while the laundry tumbles. Here the viewer also sees direct reference to what was witnessed in The Encyclopedia Room, the removal/whitewashing of history. A bleach bottle label reads “Kills 99.9% of truths, archives, and inconvenient voices.”

This is powerful, even thrilling work,  a fierce and fresh tomorrow created entirely by Strachen. Adding even more depth to the work are periodic performances throughout the exhibition by costumed characters inhabiting each room, performing in both spoken word and song. Riveting.

Also now open at LACMA, Grounded is a group show of 35 artists that look at the ground we inhabit as an exploration of memories, homelands, exploration, and purpose. There are so many terrific artists here, and their work dovetails to some extent with that of Strachen in regard to an exploration of colonialism and imperialism and it’s attempt to compromise or control indigenous cultures.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the absolutely mesmerizing 90-minute video installation In Pursuit of Venus by Maori artist Lisa Reihana, a mindblowing series of perfectly realized, 180-degree images that dazzle and define the impact of colonialism.

Touching upon just about any medium you can think of, from photography to painting to sculpture, the exhibiting artists offer passionate, insightful portrayal of their own experiences and a universal truth about homecoming and one’s place in the world. Along with Reihana, artists include Laura Aguilar, Clarissa Tossin, Ana Mendieta, Eamon Ore-Girón, Courtney M. Leonard, Rose B. Simpson, Leslie Martinez, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Siah Armajani, Patrick Martinez, Jackie Amézquita, Narsiso Martinez, Michael Alvarez, Nery Gabriel Lemus, Guadalupe Rosales, Guillermo Bert, Mercedes Dorame, Connie Samaras, Beatriz Cortez, and Carmen Argote.

The Day Tomorrow Began runs through March 29, 2026; Grounded through June 21th.  Both are must-sees, and highly pertinent to this moment in time.

  • Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis

Monica Marks Considers Abandonment

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Monica Marks Considers Abandonment – Genie Davis

What does it mean to be abandonded? A state of loss, adrift, free? To quote Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

It is with that in mind that viewing Monica Mark‘s compelling installation and individual, but linked works in Abandonded, now at LAAA through the 21st,  echoes with an eternal sense of wanderlust and loss, the aching state of the deserted jackrabbit homesteads with which the artist became fascinated traveling through the Mojave’s Wonder Valley, just a few miles past 29 Palms.

Marks says “I’m struck by how these small, weather-beaten cabins seem to hold both the weight of forgotten dreams and a quiet beauty born of survival. Originally built under the 1950s and 1960s Small Tract Act, these structures once represented possibility—a promise of new beginnings in an untamable landscape. Today, they stand as fragile monuments to ambition, disappointment, and endurance.” There’s nothing left to lose, but plenty to be gained in taking in Marks’ conception of these structures.

Shaped around her own beliefs about the history of the sites, her own personal feelings, and the “human condition– the ways we build, collapse, and sometimes rebuild again,” her exhibition is a truly beautiful work that includes the construction of a partial homestead contained within the gallery walls, as well as photography, painting, and found-object assemblage, Marks takes viewers into an immersive world that revolves around memories and loss, the fleeting nature of both human civilization and our secular beings, as well as our resilience and capacity for dreams to come true, or to fail and reincarnate.

Marks states that in these works “The desert itself becomes both subject and collaborator—a place of haunting stillness that contains stories of hope, failure, and transformation…At its core, ABANDONED asks what we leave behind—physically, emotionally, environmentally—and how those remnants shape our sense of self. ”

For the viewer, the installation lifts us beyond the gallery walls and into the realm of great loss, great dreams, and the tattered but still quite present beauty that inhabit each of our hearts.

Into the lonely desert sands we blow, and where the soul stops, only an artist truly knows. Certainly Marks has found this knowledge, felt it, and transmits it here deeply. She believes and beautifully expresses that “To rebuild something that was left behind is to insist that meaning still exists in the fragments.”

For Marks and the viewer, these fragments are both tragic and terrific, a meaningful walk through abandonment, and the hopes, dreams, refuse, and reimagining that remains no matter how far away from our own creations we walk.

Don’t miss the event’s closing on the 21st. LAAA is located at 825 S. La Cienega in West Hollywood.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Echoes of the Self Resonates at Durden and Ray

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Echoes of the Self Resonates at Durden and Ray – Genie Davis

Echoes of the Self: Contemporary Explorations in Self-Representation is an exciting, even revolutionary exhibition currently on tap at Durden and Ray. Curated by Valerie Wilcox and Jenny Hager, who each have lovely pieces in the show, the full artist roster also includes
Nina Alvarez, Nicole T. Belle, Rory Devine, Ayin Es, Mark Steven Greenfield, Nichol Marsch, Randi Matushevitz, Dakota Noot, Mei Xian Qiu, Vojislav Radovanović, Jennifer Strings, Chidi Ukwuoma, and Eden Yono.

Working in wide range of mediums from stunning stand-up paper dolls to wildly creative mixed media video, paintings, drawings,  and sculpture, the artists present an array of talent as vastly diverse as their visions of self.

Curators Wilcox and Hager describe the show as representing “contemporary human experience through modes of self-representation and the intersection of personal narratives.” As important and weighty as that description may be, and as potent as the issues the show addresses are, from mental health to identity and gender politics, don’t be fooled. The show is also pure fun, inventive, and beautiful art, and a necessary and sharp commentary on our personal lives and the world in which we live.

Roughly based on the conceptions of self-portraiture, the exhibition swells beyond that, creating the kind of narrative that engages the senses and feelings of viewers, inviting us into the hearts and minds of others as well as encouraging us to examine our own.

There are also nods to the significance of digital technology in our lives, and how it both melds and divides us, and shapes our own perceptions. We may be looking at a world, and an inner self, that is shaped by social and digital interactions – frankly, such as this one.

But this is an exhibition you truly must take in live: there are so many moving parts, both emotionally and literally, from the fascinating video work presented within a 60s era television cabinet to the motion blurred twirl of a hanging sculpture, these works reach out to the viewer, begging an immediate sense of reaction and illuminating the soul and spirit of each depicted identity.

It would be hard to ignore the absolute standout that is Jennifer Strings’ “The Doll Chronicles-Welcome to the Doll Realm,” a mixed-media stop-motion and animation 12-minutes video featuring a variety of ball joined dolls created by artists Elizaveta Fastovets/ Holy.a.Nora; Dolls/ Eli Effenberger, Marmite Sue/ Doll Menagerie with mohair doll wigs by Anna Zolotuhina. Such a wild, imaginative, deeply involving ride this work is. Shaun Sisco provided Strings’ retro cabinet and television.

On the shelf below the television cabinet, Strings has included props from the video work that give the viewer insight into the complex thoroughly alive project she has created. So, what does it all mean? For this viewer, it was about entering a realm in which we see the real as surreal yet recognizable, delightful yet incongruent, fascinatingly detailed and immediately familiar. In short, these are dolls, and they could be you.

Randi Matushevitz, “Psychedelic Journey 1” is a very different sort of video, a painting of the artist’s that morphs and changes from its interface with video, creating a highly mutable, strangely transcendent view of shifting self, and redolent with the sense that life is always shifting, even if it is imperceptible to the naked eye until the passage of time and thought reveals it.

Nina Alvarez’ video, “The Honesty Protocol,” is also riven by change, presenting shifts both subtle and exhilarating.

Dakota Noot’s “Children of the Corn-fed,” are wonderful, richly poignant stand-up “paper dolls” made from colored pencil, crayon, and marker drawings on paper and foam core. Reaching up to 66” in height, the work charms and reimagines self. We are where we came from, growing up with kernels of self-perception and wisdom, as well as distortions and fears (yes, pun intended). But we are more than that. We can change, grow, represent ourselves and the world we came from while reimagining it. These are as delightful as they look, an entire living diorama of perception.

Vojislav Radovanović’s gorgeous, delicate hanging sculpture, “Everyday Balancing Acts,” is delicate and ethereal, constructed from found gloves, wooden sticks, branches, expanding foam, bungee cords, metal hooks, and acrylic on wood. It is a painted mobile that evokes something spiritual, the balancing act we perform by simply existing in a complicated world, always shifting to meet the moment and the winds of change.

Co-curator Jenny Hager’s lustrous and enveloping “Embonpoints,” an acrylic on canvas, is aglow with color, line, and a dream-like sense of possibility; her curatorial partner, Valerie Wilcox, offers an incredibly rich, dimensional wall sculpture made from acrylic, foam board, and plaster.

The pale pink and soft teale blue of “It’s Good to be Seen” evokes gender identities and the hidden gaze. Who are we looking at? And who might we be if we looked within.  Wilcox notes that the piece is about invisibility, the effort to be seen, and the feeling of being unseen.

Conceptualizing her vision about self was a curatorial idea that Wilcox was long passionate about for a show. The result  is an exhibition that offers lustrous diversity and seamlessly “unseen” curation from the curatorial team.

Nichol Marsch’s “Self Portrait 29 (Broken),” is a different sort of wall sculpture constructed of stuffed nylon pantyhose, with thread, hair, wire, eyeshadow, and nail polish. This bisected body is a puzzle we have constructed for ourselves; the gaps between body parts may be interpreted as the soul, or what society has removed away from us.

Ayin Es’s oil on canvas, “Sucker” gives us a weeping human with blackened eyes. It is a dark night of the soul personified with grace; Mark Steven Greenfield’s pen and ink drawing is a complex, interwoven tapestry,  a “Selfie” indeed.

Each of six colored pencil drawings by Eden Yono, “Iniaon/Clone/Right of Femme” feel poignant,  entirely askew, yet alive.

Nicole Belle’s ink jet print “Untitled (with ball of yarn)” startles with its alien-invasion-like black ball of yarn emanating from the model’s nostrils; Jennifer Strings presents a piece quite different from her stop-motion animation, a ballpoint pen on Bristol self-portrait, also “Untitled;” while Rory Devine takes us into the comic realm with his untitled “Self-portrait as Towlie, ” with bloodshot eyes and wistful gaze.

Also impactful: Mei Xian Qiu, “Selfie Friends,” a photographic installation depicting many moods and locations; and Chidi Ukwuoma’s “Liminal Space,” is richly onyx colored Earthenware clay with ceramic glaze, a bold eclipse of a sculpture. That latter work is brilliantly different from each perspective in which it is viewed.

This is a provocative showcase that asks the viewer to enjoy, connect, and consider their own nature while experiencing these artists’ own.

The closing reception is from 5 to 7 p.m. next Saturday, November 22nd. Don’t miss exploring.

Durden and Ray is located at 1206 Maple Ave. in DTLA in the Bendix Building, Suite 832.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and by Valerie Wilcox

Enjoy Some Blooms in Winter Garden

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Winter Garden, opening December 6th in Hermosa Beach at Not Shockboxx Gallery, is an immersive group exhibition featuring multiple works in mixed media, oil and acrylic painting, lenticular, collage, neon, and sculpture by artists including Beth Elliott, Amy Thornberry, Nancy Curan, Nancy Kay Turner, Eileen Oda, Susan Ossman, Jeanne Dunn, Dani Dodge, Snezana Petrovic, Angelica Sotiriou, Heather Lowe, Linda Sue Price, Linda Stelling, Skye Amber Sweet, Debbie Giese, Frederika Broeder, Michael Batchelor, and Suhail Noor. The show is curated by myself.

The exhibition explores each artist’s own unique vision of a garden in winter – not a floral wonderland, but rather a seasonal exploration of a world where beauty and decay coexist. Some works bloom with the promise of spring; others speak to the raw stillness of winter, where the light feels rare enough that it’s up to us to light the darkness with our own resilience, celebrating what persists, what mutates, what refuses to stay hidden, and what serves to remind us that even in the coldest season, something unexpected is always growing and giving.

As Rumi said “And don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.” Because it’s the season of giving, of lighting our personal candles to shine through the longest nights, this Winter Garden includes some seasonal radiant pieces that could make for perfet holiday gifts.

Conceived as a group exhibition, the artwork grows together in a wide range of mediums, examining amid deceptive dormancy and hidden potential, the beautiful promise of new growth is in every wintery garden, and is a balm to the spirit during hectic holiday time. You may see the colors of spring flowers easily, but in winter, the color is most vibrant through the imagination of an artist. Join us to experience each artist’s own unique vision of what grows and blossoms even when unseen.

The exhibition opening is December 6th from 6-9 p.m. and the show will run through January 3rd, when a closing artist’s talk will be held 3-5 p.m.. On December 14th, there will be a curatorial walk through and modeling of unique bespoke clothing by Kate Kelton 4-6 p.m. Not Shockboxx is located at 636 Cypress in Hermosa Beach.

 

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis