This month, we advocate reveals by a number of artists who present singular, visionary, and radical methods of viewing the world — and imagining new ones. Madam X’s enigmatic diagrams on view on the Philosophical Analysis Society draw on myriad religious traditions to wrestle with the burden of existence, whereas Ramekon O’Arwisters’s tangled and knotted constructions mirror the complexities of his lived expertise as a queer Black man in America. Carole Caroompas reworks a beloved Nineteenth-century novel as an exuberantly subversive collection of work. A present of seminal work from Robert Irwin captures the second he turned away from object-making in favor of the perceptual and experiential. Lastly, a Robert Colescott present curated by Umar Rashid units up a dialogue between the 2 artists who, in their very own methods, reconfigure dense webs of historic and cultural sources in service of alternate variations of actuality.
Madam X: The Spiral Universe
The Philosophical Analysis Society, 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Feliz, Los AngelesThrough April 19
Madam X, “Eternal Culture” (c. 1980), acrylic, graphite, and ink on paper (photograph by Carlotta Guerra, courtesy Philosophical Analysis Society)
For 50 years, the mysterious artist often known as Madam X has been exploring and developing her personal religious and philosophical universe, made manifest by way of enigmatic work and sculptures. These typically take the type of detailed diagrams or charts that draw on an online of esoteric or religious sources, together with Hinduism, Rosicrucianism, and Kabbalah. The Spiral Universe gathers early picket sculptures alongside more moderen intricate mandala-like works on paper, charting the artist’s career-long investigations into the secrets and techniques of existence and transcendence.
The Universe Stops Present Once I Shut My Eyes
Spy Tasks, 3709 West Jefferson Boulevard, West Adams, Los AngelesThrough April 28
Nehemiah Cisneros, “Poseidon” (2025), acrylic on canvas (photograph by Jonah Ifcher, courtesy Spy Tasks)
On a Sunday afternoon in early March, a gaggle of 14 artists gathered at Spy Tasks for a two-hour life drawing session with Jonathan, an older mannequin with a lanky body and lengthy, white beard. They then returned to their studios and had two weeks to finish their artworks, which at the moment are on view at Spy on this group present curated by Leslie Fram. From this fundamental, shared inventive train, the ultimate outcomes diverge spectacularly, reflecting a breadth of media, fashion, and course of, starting from Ever Velasquez’s photograph collage, Vita Kari’s woven tapestry, Chris Johst’s 3D-printed sculpture, and a charcoal drawing by Lita Albuquerque, a uncommon figurative work from an artist finest identified for her environmental installations.
Nick Taggart: From Camden City to Tinseltown: 1976 – 1983
Megan Mulrooney, 7313 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaApril 5–Could 1
Nick Taggart, “The Largest Drug Store in the World” (1978), watercolor, colour pencil, and acyclic on board (© Nick Taggart; photograph by Paul Salveson, courtesy the artist and Megan Mulrooney Gallery)
Nick Taggart moved from England to Los Angeles within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, and his meticulous work and drawings mirror an outsider’s fascination with the dual poles of sunshine and smog that outline town. Curated by Michael Slenske, From Camden City to Tinseltown options watercolors and pencil drawings created within the years following his arrival, capturing a private perspective of this messy, dynamic metropolis. From portraits of associates, musicians, and artists to bucolic landscapes and scenes of city sprawl, Taggart’s work mixes a way of intimate domesticity with LA’s delirious anxiousness situated on the nexus of nature and tradition.
Ramekon O’Arwisters: HOUSE OF
Craft Modern, 5814 Wilshire Boulevard, Miracle Mile, Los AngelesThrough Could 4
Ramekon O’Arwisters, “Bitten #8” (2022), ceramic shards, ber, zip ties, and beads (photograph by David Schmitz, courtesy the artist and Patricia Sweetow Gallery)
In his knotted and wrapped sculptures, Ramekon O’Arwisters incorporates ceramic shards, zip ties, leather-based, and clamps, questioning the meanings we mission onto particular supplies. His follow is grounded in his id and expertise as a Black and queer man, and his artworks mirror a spectrum of intertwined perseverance, resistance, spirituality, and eroticism. Home Of encompasses 5 our bodies of labor created between 2016 and 2024, every targeted on a separate theme from the familial custom of quilting to the pleasure and ache of BDSM practices, in addition to three new, large-scale tapestry-like wall works.
The Anansean World of Robert Colescott
Blum, 2727 South La Cienega Boulevard, Culver Metropolis, CaliforniaApril 5–Could 17
Robert Colescott, “Untitled” (1970), acrylic on canvas (© The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Belief/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph by Evan Walsh, courtesy The Belief and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York)
Late painter Robert Colescott remixed and mashed up historic scenes with photographs from popular culture and artwork historical past, excavating unsettling truths about race in America in ways in which have been “preposterous, slippery, tactless, vulgar, rude, badly behaved, funny, unexpectedly tender” as Hyperallergic critic John Yau notes. Curated by Umar Rashid, whose personal work conjure fantastical speculative histories, The Anansean World of Robert Colescott spans 5 a long time of the artist’s work, portraying him as a trickster who disrupts the established order to check an alternate actuality.
Step and Repeat
Los Angeles Municipal Artwork Gallery, Barnsdall Artwork Park, 4800 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, Los AngelesThrough Could 18
Linda Besemer, “Swoop Wavy Bulge” (2013), acrylic on canvas (photograph by Brica Wilcox, courtesy the artist)
In Step and Repeat, 46 up to date Southern California artists interact in dialogue with the Nineteen Seventies Sample and Ornament motion, which sought to reclaim parts of non-Western artwork and craft (typically dismissed as “feminine”) that have been extensively marginalized by the positive artwork institution. Like their predecessors, the artists on this group present draw on numerous sources of ornament and decoration, whereas extending their aesthetic and materials explorations in a number of new instructions. Highlights embody Zach Harris’s intricately carved and painted picket reliefs, Mark Dean Veca’s unsettlingly corporeal transom portray, Raghvi Bhatia’s dazzling ceramic and glass “Stigmatic Fountain” (2023), and Ishi Glinsky’s (Tohono O’odham) outsized, woven wire basket, reinterpreting the unique motion’s knotty appropriations by way of an Indigenous lens.
Robert Irwin in Los Angeles
Tempo, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Mid-Wilshire, Los AngelesApril 5–June 7
Robert Irwin, “Untitled” (1967), sprayed lacquer on aluminum disc (© Robert Irwin/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; picture courtesy Tempo)
Robert Irwin in Los Angeles brings collectively work created between 1960 and 1971 — an important period for this late, seminal determine within the Gentle and Area motion when he was transferring from object-based artwork towards work centered round notion. The exhibition showcases early minimal work of strains and dots that performed with optics, and his Discs collection of the late Sixties, consisting of painted aluminum kinds whose edges blurred into the shadows solid on the wall. Additionally on view might be a 12-foot-tall acrylic column, one of many final bodily works Irwin created earlier than turning to set up and experiential artwork.
L.A. Louver Celebrates 50 Years
L.A. Louver, 45 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, CaliforniaThrough June 14
Tony Berlant, “The Journey” (1985), discovered metallic collage on board (picture courtesy L.A. Louver)
When L.A. Louver opened in bohemian Venice Seashore in 1975, it was one in every of solely a handful of galleries within the metropolis’s a lot smaller artwork world. Half a century later, the native artwork scene has grown exponentially, and L.A. Louver has cemented its legacy as one of many longest-running galleries on the West Coast, one which continues to mount participating reveals from established and rising artists, from LA and past. This 50-year retrospective includes a numerous collection of over 50 artists whom the gallery has labored with, from late legends like Ed Moses, Joe Goode, and Edward and Nancy Kienholz, to these from subsequent generations similar to Gajin Fujita, Enrique Martínez Celaya, and Alison Saar.
Carole Caroompas: Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour
Laguna Artwork Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Seashore, CaliforniaThrough July 13
Carole Caroompas, “Heathcliff and The Femme Fatale Go on Tour: The Honeysuckle Embraces The Thorn” (1999), acrylic and located embroidery on canvas over panel (photograph by Eric Stoner, courtesy Laguna Artwork Museum)
Carole Caroompas (who died in 2022) pulled liberally from literature, popular culture, mass media, and historical past in her exuberant, layered canvases, delightfully subverting gender, energy, and aesthetic hierarchies. For her collection Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour, created between 1997 and 2001, she recast the principle character from Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights as a rock star who joins with the titular “Femme Fatale” for an explosive anti-hero’s journey. Characterised by deep analysis, technical mastery, and an abrasive punk sensibility, Caroompas’s work didn’t match neatly into artwork historic classes, and she or he is just now receiving deserved recognition.
Don Bachardy: A Life in Portraits
The Huntington Library, Artwork Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Street, San Marino, CaliforniaApril 12–August 4
Don Bachardy, “Self-portrait 08-08-18” (2018), acrylic on paper (© Don Bachardy; picture courtesy The Huntington)
A Life in Portraits presents over 100 graphite and acrylic works on paper by Don Bachardy spanning the nonagenarian artist’s 70-year (and counting) profession. The Santa Monica dwelling that Bachardy shared along with his longtime associate, author Christopher Isherwood, who died in 1986, was a social hub. Bachardy documented their circle by way of 17,000 portraits, together with these of Truman Capote, Bette Davis, David Hockney, and different luminaries, capturing his sitters’ essences in two-to-three-hour classes. The exhibition may also function images, letters, and paperwork from Bachardy’s and Isherwood’s archives, each of that are housed on the Huntington, chronicling their artistic partnership that lasted over three a long time.
