Laguna Art Museum surveys the pop world according to ‘Juxtapoz’

AJ FOSKI’S ‘GOODBYE HORSES’
It’s okay to feel a huge swell of patriotic pride rise in your chest as you walk through “In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor,” Laguna Art Museum’s new show surveying the immeasurable impact Juxtapoz magazine has had on the world [...]

Andy Carey wonders what music  looks like

PHOTO by shea M gauer
If you like color and dots, or if Colorforms influenced your early work, then you’ll love Andy Carey’s current show at {open}. “Sound!” has color and dots (and sound, naturally); it’s a new notion about what art is—and a new language with which to talk [...]

Carlos Luna and Wifredo Lam paint a sprawling and intimate picture of Cuba

WIFREDO LAM’S ‘FEMME ASSISE’
There’s no real reason why Wifredo Lam and Carlos Luna have dueling exhibitions up now at the Museum of Latin American Art, but their two shows work well together. Both men are Cuban—though Lam is 67 years older—and both use [...]

Bob Barry’s subjects are focused on playing jazz, and that’s how he photographed them

Los Angeles photographer Bob Barry apparently leads a very interesting life.
Most recently, Barry (whose real last name is Horowitz) has brought us “The Brotherhood: Performance Portraits,” a series of photos of jazz greats up now at Flazh!Alley Studio in San Pedro—and we’ll [...]

Get lost with William Livingston’s pinhole port photographs

WILLIAM LIVINGSTON’S SSAT CONTAINER TERMINAL II
If the time of day and weather outside are just so, there is a moment  as you view William Livingston’s pinhole pictures of the Port of Long Beach when, standing before California United Terminals—two side-by-side photos of what appears to be a dark [...]

Dan Fenelon’s sunny folky paintings are giving way to a darker, more mature style

Dan Fenelon’s sunny mixed-media paintings, with influences varying from Keith Haring to Oaxacan folk art, seem like they’re painted with summer in mind. Simple, two-dimensional, somehow tribal: Almost everyone understands them and can agree they’re art, the kind that would look great [...]

Packed with variety and energy, ‘Insights’ makes art look simple

MATTHEW OHM’S ‘UNTITLED’
Pity the folks tasked with installing “Insights 2008,” the Cal State Long Beach Art Department’s annual juried exhibition at University Art Museum (UAM). This show seems to grow every year.
When I visited, the installers were still hard at work atop fiberglass ladders, and everywhere [...]

Painter Aaron Kraten remembers fixing Vespas, fooling pay phones and feeling out of place

AARON KRATEN’S ‘CALIBRATION’
Everyone knows Santa Ana multimedia painter Aaron Kraten for his signature sad-girl image. But Kraten, 34, has led a variegated life, doing everything from fixing motor scooters to running a thrift store to designing video games before becoming a full-time [...]

Gabriela Martinez puts her life on display

EL CALDO DE PATO by GABRIELA MARTINEZ
On average, Gabriela Martinez’s linocuts each take 30 hours of work, but “The World Never Let Us Down,” her MFA thesis exhibition that incorporates them, was a life in the making.
“I always wrote stories when I was young, in journals,” Martinez says. “I [...]

Gord Peteran redefines what it means to be a chair

GORD PETERAN’S “MUSICAL BOX”
Gord Peteran’s furniture sort of explains a lot of things, possibly even why Wickes just went bankrupt. The 34 creations in “Furniture Meets Its Maker,” now wrapping up a two-year traveling show at the Long Beach Museum of Art, include tables of junk [...]