Ellen Gallagher, Whale Falls (2017) © Ellen Gallagher, Courtesy the Artist and Hauser & Wirth

Accidental Records, now showing at Hauser & Wirth LA, is Ellen Gallagher’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. The collection of paintings, drawings and collage on view includes both new and recent works, which tread familiar conceptual territory while expanding upon themes from her rich and evolving oeuvre. The show’s title reflects the breadth of referential material that substantiates Gallagher’s work—from the literary to the musical, the psycho-theoretical to the culinary. In this erudite exploration of the Middle Passage—the deadly intercontinental journeys of slave ships—Gallagher excavates the depths of black history as well as the oceanic context in which so many slaves died. Known for her minimalist, pop-inflected collages that meditate on the African American body in history and culture, Gallagher focuses her lens upon the Black Atlantic.

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Wangechi Mutu, Throw (2016), via Art Observed

Blackness in Abstraction is Pace Gallery’s museum level survey of a candid, simple concept—the use of the color black in art since the 1940’s—stemming from the visual impact of its subject color and spreading toward its various pertinent connotations.  Curated by Adrienne Edwards, the selection, featuring twenty-nine intergenerational artists, puts a particular emphasis on monochromes, yet a broad array of media, including video, sculpture and photography, is available in an exhibition that joins in on the highly populated list of conceptually potent summer group shows.   (more…)

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Exhibition view, “The Female Gaze: Woman Look at Women,” at Cheim & Read. Pictured works include Victoria Civera’s Searcher (far left) and Vanessa Beecroft’s Blonde Figure Lying (floor).

Through September 19, 2009, Cheim & Read will show “The Female Gaze: Women Look At Women.”  Featured are works by women of women, with aim to reorient the typically-male framing of women in art.  Works range in medium from the paintings of Alice Neel and Lisa Yuskavage to the sculptures of Kara Walker, the text poems of Jenny Holzer and the photographs by Diane Arbus, the installations by Louise Bourgeois and even collage work by Ellen Gallagher.

Related links:
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Cheim & Read – Exhibition – The Female Gaze [Cheim and Read]
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Now Hanging: Girlie Show [The Moment Blog, New York Times]
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The Female Gaze, The Cheim and Read Gallery, New York [Financial Times]
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The Female Gaze: Women look at Women [Artforum]
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“The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women” at Cheim & Reid [Contemporary Art Daily]

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Cindy Sherman, Untitled, at Cheim & Read.

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