L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley We had just left Marc Foxx gallery, where Annette Kelm’s delicate C-prints look like illustrations from the most deadpan Children’s book ever, as if everything but tufts of grass had been excised from, say, Make Way For Ducklings. We were still in the little enclave of galleries off Wilshire Boulevard when a[.....]

As part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, approaches to translate the subjective experience into the artistic process were explored in In the Shadow of the Hand and Back to the Things Themselves. Questions were raised on the nuances and distinctions between notions of the subjective, personal and self-indulgent. These borders disintegrate in the exhibition Paul Thek – ‘If you don’t like this[.....]

Today’s feature is brought to you by our friends at Beautiful/Decay. Read below to find a recently released artist interview with Los Angeles-based painter Justin John Greene. Los Angeles has always held a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans, but for most it exists in an almost fictional capacity.  Hollywood isn’t a real place – it’s a postcard, a huge sign on the side[.....]

I used to have a secret garden. Even though it was technically communal (which slightly undermines the essence of secrecy) it was rarely visited by anyone and wildly overgrown. Especially in summer you could get lost between the ancient trees and unkept rosebushes and safely hide from the perils of the outside world. I occasionally invited someone around for a midnight picnic, and often spent lazy[.....]

What makes a tale “twice told”? For Nathaniel Hawthorne, who published a collection called Twice Told Tales, these were stories that had already lived one life by having been previously printed.  And for William Shakespeare, who coined the phrase, a “twice-told tale” was the most tedious tale of the lot, borrowed and uninspired. Shakespeare, however, had not met Stephanie Washburn. In the case of Washburn’s[.....]

Looking at Zachary Buchner’s one-man show of mixed media plaster paintings at Andrew Rafacz Gallery entitled, Just Say Yes, I couldn’t help but think of Julian Schnabel’s sculptural plate paintings from the 80’s. In both cases, the dense treatment of the surface straddles the line between sculpture and image while exploring painting as an idiomatic language. Unlike Schnabel, Buchner doesn’t go in for representation or introduce[.....]

Kim Dingle’s exhibition entitled still lives at Sperone Westwater portrays a series of calamities played out by children sitting at tables, whirling off of chairs and clinking wine glasses in roistering merriment. Clown-like in depiction with disproportionally large feet and nondescript faces, the toddlers she presents are more so dolls than human children. Dingle’s newest works are less crowded than older works and by virtue[.....]