LOS ANGELES — In earlier generations, just a few key painters and photographers had been primarily related to Los Angeles’s inventive output: Ed Ruscha and David Hockney, for instance, typified the town’s sun-bathed, midcentury trendy look. With time, although, it has turn out to be increasingly troublesome to pin down the town’s inventive manufacturing — now, there’s a cottage business of cocktail hour critics (myself included, generally) who try and sum up what precisely is occurring right here. Nowhere is the futility of this guesswork extra outstanding than in makes an attempt to critique the area’s MFA reveals — particularly on the College of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the place graduate college students discover an irreducible vary of supplies and concepts throughout two latest exhibitions.
UCLA’s debut MFA thesis exhibition options three artists who every mine the supplies and processes of economic manufacturing. Yezi Lou’s standout work depict disarmingly expressive shopper objects staged in seemingly empty environments: In “Yachts” (all works 2025), a wide-eyed plastic duck affixed to a paddleboat looms over the canvas, its bubbly affectation abruptly eerie. Elsewhere, Sheng Lor’s sculptures reinvigorate a well-known object: the stitching loom. Swathed in impenetrable layers of yarn, these hulking monuments turn out to be practically unrecognizable, as if consumed by the identical cloth they sometimes make the most of. In the meantime, M. O’D-L’s large-scale, assemblage wallhangings make use of industrial refuse to painterly impact, uniting particles to type summary, coolly emotive canvases — like if Anselm Kiefer abruptly developed a love of tarps and discarded cloth swatches.
Left: Yezi Lou, “Yachts” (2025), oil on canvas; proper: Yezi Lou, “We Reached a Consensus” (2025), oil on canvas
A second exhibition of graduate college students reveals paintings with a extra violent edge, by which susceptible our bodies — human and never — are imperiled. Alma Alvarado’s movies “between the body and the eternal” and “salt is the main ingredient in conservation” movie the butchering and curing of an animal in gory, exact element. The latter paintings is projected on sinewy, hanging mulberry paper harking back to this course of’s ultimate meat product. Loss of life lingers: Within the subsequent room, ricardo nagaoka’s “Shroud” set up features a metal coffin affixed to a respiratory equipment. The artist’s adjoining brief movie, “Shave,” stars a determine coating himself with shaving cream, spliced by clips of a shiny, sharp knife.
Risk feels omnipresent however elusive at UCLA’s New Wight Gallery, imbuing the second exhibition with a ghostly really feel. Adam Thompson’s “Waxen Collage (Unabomber Cabin)” renders Ted Kaczynski’s notorious dwelling utilizing colourful wax, a fragmentary, pastoral composition that belies its occupant’s historical past. Jory Drew’s room-size set up, “Miracle Baby,” is equally haunting: Purple and black materials drape throughout metallic armatures harking back to a home’s infrastructure, the encompassing flooring stuffed with ceramic collectible figurines and a cop automotive on one far aspect whereas a sound recording particulars, amongst different issues, a fireplace’s aftermath.
UCLA’s MFA program has turn out to be formidable lately: Its Studio Artwork graduates, working throughout a variety of mediums, frequently present at worldwide galleries, and this system counts trailblazers like Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Analia Saban, and Mungo Thomson amongst its alumni. The present graduates are not any exception. These artists reveal a vibrant spectrum of aesthetic inquiry — variety that, like LA’s artwork scene, resists straightforward categorization.
Jory Drew, “Allegory of Fortune” (2025), combined media assemblage
Element of Adam Thompson, “Three Birds” (2025), european starlings, wire, raffia, electronics
Sheng Lor, “Loom 3” (2025), loom, yarns
M. O’D-L, “Untitled (Pinstripes 1)” (2024), charcoal, graphite, housepaint, acrylic, studio particles, and masking tape on paper withduct tape backing
2025 MFA Exhibition #2: Alma Alvarado, Jory Drew, ricardo nagaoka, & Adam Thompson continues at New Wight Gallery (Broad Artwork Heart, Suite 1100, Los Angeles, California) by way of April 11.
Exhibition #1: Sheng Lor, Yezi Lou, & M. O’D-L ended on March 14.
Exhibition #3: D.A. Gonzales, Maren Karlson, Zenobia, & Harrison Kinnane Smith will likely be on view April 17–25.
Exhibition #4: Samar Al Abstract, Misty EunJoo Choi, & Ayla Gizlice will likely be on view Could 1–9.
