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

An International Exhibition Pairs Work with Artists from Los Angeles and Belgrade

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An international exchange of art may or may not work as anything more than an interesting premise, or a way to open dialog between two disparate locations.  But with Translocal Conclave Amid the Market, an exhibition pairing Los Angeles-based Durden and Ray with Blok Gallery, located in Belgrade, Serbia, both artist-run spaces have hit the collaborative mark and then some.

The group exhibition was presented in Belgrade, and viscerally examines both the connections and disparities between the two art collectives. Each is an innovative gallery space that offers provocative, unique work reflecting on the nature of social and political societies and the heart and soul of the very human artists who live within them.

Paired, there are immediate differenes in color palette and patterns between the Serbian and American artists. Durden and Ray artists dive into deep color and bold shapes; the Serbian artists rely more on a graceful minimalism in both palette and form.

The differences coalesce into a woven dialog of abundant beauty and precise tradition.  Exhibiting artists include artists:

Djordje Arnaut, Lore AKA Lortek , Željka Momirov, Miodrag Perić, Tanja Strugar, Carlos Beltran Arechiga, Snezana Saraswati Petrović, Joe Davidson, Alexandra Wiesenfeld, Max Presneill, Regina Herod, Ismael De Anda III & Eugene Ahn, and Arezoo Bharthania.

Petrovic straddles both Serbian and U.S. based artist groups. Originally from the Belgrade area, she is now a member of Durden and Ray, and was the catalyst in creating this exhibition.

The exhibition’s wide range includes work rooted in vibrant street art, sculptural forms that transcend the traditional, and transcendent work rooted in memory. There is also that soars beyond the typically temporal, as in the VR installation of Ahn and De Anda. Regardless of medium or the location of the originating artists, these images sing with humor as well as grace.

Smart, sophisticated, and using a wide range of materials, the exhibition not only spans art around the globe but within the heart and soul. So what happens when two art collectives collide and conjoin? Universal art magic.

May there be more such, which given Petrovic’s prediliction for engaging in international. boundry crossing wonder, it’s extremely likely there will be. Stay tuned.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the gallery and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic

 

Donna Isham Offers The Power of Presence

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Energetic brush strokes and a swirling mix of the abstract with figurative iterations make artist Donna Isham‘s new exhibtion, The Power of Presence, rivetingly strong and bright.

Opening this Saturday, November 8th at Walstory Gallery in Manhattan Beach, Isham’s exhibition vibrates with color and fascinates with its layers of visceral feeling. Combining a mix of new figurative and abstract works with a large-scale installation that plunges viewers into her world of color and motion-filled form, Isham’s images dance with sheer energy, light, and motion.

The exhibition’s heart is the artist’s collaborative installation, “Glass Between Us.” Isham describes the massive 84 x 64 acrylic and charcoal work as “both painting and environment…animated by sound and light.” The installation’s multi-faceted meaning is reflected by the layers that comprise its surface, a substantive and mesmerizing meditation on “human intimacy and separation, its layered surface reflecting the emotional terrain of modern communication.”

The sound portion of the piece is an original score created by Isham’s husband Mark, using ambient synthesizers and melodic instrumentation. Isham says this sound track “amplifies the tension and tenderness of the paintings’ visual rhythm, creating a sensory duet between sight and sound.”

And, to extend the experience of the installation further, viewers will see lush animated of the artwork, creating the sensation that viewer may also be a part of the art work itself, as if one had walked into an entirely new and highly cinematic world.

Along with this vibrant installation, Isham offers a wide range of abstract and figurative iterations of her art. In some works, she uses layered materials such as acrylic, graphite, paper, oil stick and wax; in others, she is working solely with acrylic on canvas. The commonality between each diverse work is a sense of motion, of lustrous and powerful energy, or in some cases, the opposite in terms of motion: the soft, held-breath sensation of tranquility and stillness.

There is an inner glow to these works, which seem to vibrate with emotion and self-contained memory. Using bright colors or inky black, Isham’s art resonates with a sense of bold expression and the movements, rituals, and passions of life itself.

Isham describes both her work and life experience as riven with the ” fragility and strength of being in relation to another.” Emotions, feelings, and the pulse of existence are all present in images that sing with light, shadow,  and shifting colors as well as with a raw and delicate balance of feeling and seeing.

In “Green Block,” above, acrylic paint, collaged paper elements, and graphite merge to create an emotional history, a charteuse and rose explosion of memory, the passage of time, and what is too deeply personal to transcribe in literal terms. It is a poetic piece, one that allows the viewer to impart one’s own memories, while feeling the magic infused by Isham’s own.

The artist’s figurative work, such as her acrylic on canvas potratit “She,” often expresses the sensation of an immediate moment caught in time.  The beautiful heavy-lidded figure here seems poised on the verge of recognition, about to speak or cry out, or perhaps she is temporarily unable to move, awed or surprised into stillness. The pale blue-grey that runs liquid shadows behind her and along her cheeks and neck creates an atmosphere that is charged with both sadness and grace.

Similarly, Isham’s “Flight in Black and Taupe,” a seamless blend of the abstract and figurative, also blends a feeling of staying caught in a singular moment in time with a rush of imminent motion. Working in acrylic, graphite and oil stick on canvas, Isham gives us what appears to be a woman with her back turned,  dancing with, or holding onto another person with bent head and encircling arms. It is a moment both tender and fraught, with the abstract blacks and beiges and grays around her potentially the twirl of other figures in motion, or ghost-memories of them.

“Poetry in Motion” blends graphite, acrylic, and paper on panel for a layered effect throbbing with color, combining images of roses with orange sunlight, perhaps the curled tail of a cat, the square of a phone about to snap a photo, or a picture frame, waiting to hold sunlight and flowers, and preserve them for all time.

“Blue Swirl” uses similar mediums to evoke the floral, capture a haunting smile on a partially obscured female image, and offer up what appear to be bubbles floating with light and air in a cluster of inchoate beauty.

Viewers can themselves float in to Walstory Gallery this Saturday from 6-8 p.m. for The Power of Presence. Walstory is located at 919 Manhattan Avenue in Manhattan Beach, CA.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist and gallery