THE REVIEW

Ana Serrano’s Urban Oases Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects So charming and evocative are Ana Serrano’s creations that you want to knock on their little doors, then peer inside – curious at what they may contain. Serrano terms them sculpture. You [...]

Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects Johnny Taylor’s paintings reiterate a lifetime of travel and study, meditation and movement. There is a Japanese aesthetic, a classical Chinese modality, and an overlay of pure nature, such as suffuses both Japan and his home base [...]

Topsy Transmuted Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects “Oh Lord, Miss Eva, I is tryin’!” said Topsy, wiping the tears from her eyes. “But Lor’ it is so hard to be good! `Pears like I ain‘t used to it, no ways.” “Jesus knows it, Topsy; he [...]

James Turrell’s Light Reignfall at LACMA Words by Katrina Mohn, Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects Seeing is seeing. There is no place where that is more apparent than in James Turrell’s Light Reignfall. The piece, which pulls directly from the artist’s investigations into sensory deprivation from the 1970s, situates the viewer [...]

Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects Eleven years after his death at 41, legendary installation artist Jason Rhoades finally has his first big retrospective in his adopted home town of Los Angeles. Covering two-thirds of an acre at Hauser, Wirth & Schimmel’s sprawling DTLA showplace, it will [...]

Dreamland: A Frank Romero Retrospective at MOLAA Words by Katrina Mohn, Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects Frank Romero is defined by a multitude of identities throughout his retrospective at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach (up now through May 21, 2017). He is a painter, an activist, a [...]

 The London School Continues Rattling the Cage Words by Katrina Mohn, Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects A criticism that has been leveled at the London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj exhibit, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum through November 14, 2016, is a lack of standardized [...]

Kellan Shanahan Illustrates How Nature is Still the Greatest Teacher Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects Kellan Shanahan tells us that “Nature itself is the greatest teacher.” He is an astronaut of the universe within us. His ink-on-paper renderings – both in color and black and white [...]

Artists Assemble at the Museum of Latin American Art Words by Chris Greenspon, Features Writer, Bermudez Projects “There’s a certain Mexican way of telling a joke, a really dramatic kind of irony,” said Felipe Flores, founder of Trabajo Press. “There’s this kind of ‘the world’s against me’ type thing, like [...]

Bermudez Projects Steps in with a Razor-Sharp Biennial Exhibit Words by Katrina Mohn, Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects In a moment of loosely outlined biennials, Bermudez Projects steps in with a razor-sharp focus on what a biannual group exhibition can be. Not only does SPACELAND, now on its third chapter, coalesce [...]

Words by Chris Greenspon, Features Writer, Bermudez Projects "Tonight is really about play,” says Caledonia Curry, the artist known as Swoon. “Vanity was kind of a playful reference, because we wanted to use human beings as canvas.” Vanity is the theme of Swoon’s collaborative exhibit at Superchief Gallery L.A., Pearly’s [...]

Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects "Telling artists that you do collage is like an insult – like saying you do scrap-booking,” asserts Long Island-based collagist Amanda Beckmann. “They feel it is crafts-fair stuff.” But to Beckmann, collage is great art – just as it was to [...]

Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects In an interview not long ago, Los Angeles painter Alison Saar said of African American artists that “there is some tendency toward their taking the real heavy stuff and adding some levity to it.” Certainly this has been true of her [...]

Made In L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only @ The Hammer Museum Through August 28, 2016 Don’t let its esoteric subtitle fool you. This third iteration of the Hammer Museum’s biennial exhibit highlights the methodologies of artists working throughout Los Angeles. Extending beyond traditional visual culture, the exhibit includes other [...]

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium @ The Getty Center Through July 31, 2016 One of the most influential visual artists of the 20th century, Robert Mapplethorpe’s retrospective is so huge, it requires two museums to show it (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the other)! This show [...]

Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects Emmanuel Crespo’s broad-spectrum personal iconography includes whales, paper boats, grasshoppers, goldfish, umbrellas and other images drawn from the bottomless depths of his imagination and memory. It is the juxtaposition of these immaculately rendered creatures and objects, sometimes conjoined and sometimes [...]

Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects Wave your hand at a bright object like a small desklamp and out pours a generous stream into the greenish crystal sink of the master bathroom of the Sheats-Lautner-Goldstein house. If you remove the long glass prism that serves as [...]