As we enter 2025, we forged off the outdated and welcome the brand new. Cyclicality suffuses LA’s artwork choices this month, starting with a profession retrospective of Pippa Garner, that fearless artist who handed away on December 30 and leaves behind a legacy of fixed change and evolution. Honor Fraser hosts a two-week exhibition of latest work by Nadya Tolokonnikova, co-founder Pussy Riot, whose artwork is intertwined along with her activism. In his photographic updates to monuments, Iván Argote challenges histories of colonialism, whereas Elizabeth Tremante’s blood-drenched canvases supply comedian rejoinders to established artwork historic narratives. At Regen Initiatives, Doug Aitken juxtaposes California’s deep ecological time with its modern identities, providing glimpses of the longer term with a becoming recognition of what has come earlier than.
Misc. Pippa: Pippa Garner
Stars, 3116 North El Centro Avenue, Hollywood, Los AngelesThrough January 18
Pippa Garner, “Kar-mann” (1969/2024), classic metal pedal automobile, fiberglass, hand sculpted foam and 3D printed plastic components, automotive paint, 18 x 37 x 52 inches (~45.7 x 94 x 132.1 cm) (photograph by Paul Salveson, courtesy the artist and STARS, Los Angeles)
Transformation was a continuing theme in Pippa Garner’s artwork and life, from her cheeky hybrid cars and furnishings to her personal gender evolution, which she started within the Eighties. Misc. Pippa is a two-venue survey of her boundary-breaking profession, held at Stars in Los Angeles and Matthew Brown in New York. The LA iteration consists of her first intentional art work “Kar-mann” (1969), a meticulously crafted half-man, half-car sculpture full with a dangling scrotum like a set of proto-truck nuts, alongside drawings, images, and different objects showcasing Garner’s subversive wit, whimsy, and materials gusto. Garner sadly handed away on December 30 on the age of 82, making this bi-coastal exhibition a becoming tribute to her life and legacy.
Power Fields: Vibrations of The Pacific
Guggenheim Gallery, Moulton Corridor, One College Drive & Packing Plant at Chapman College, 350 Cypress Road, Orange, CaliforniaThrough January 19 (reopens January 6)
David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, “Telepathy” (2008–ongoing), customized anechoic acoustic tiles, 16 mm plasterboard, acoustic blanket, plywood, timber body (photograph by Michael Myers, courtesy the artists)
The Pacific Rim is among the most risky and dynamic areas on the planet, a hotbed of volcanic, tectonic, and tragically, nuclear exercise. Power Fields options artists from Japan, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, and america who discover how phenomena equivalent to gravitational waves, the electromagnetic spectrum, geological vibrations, and sound inform our notion of the world. The exhibition, a part of the Getty-organized initiative PST Artwork: Artwork & Science Collide, consists of sculpture, two-dimensional work, sonic environments, and installations by Steve Roden, Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio, Alba Triana, Channing Hansen, Minoru Sato, and others.
Nadya Tolokonnikova – Pussy Riot: Punk’s Not Useless
Honor Fraser, 2622 South La Cienega Boulevard, Culver Metropolis, Los AngelesJanuary 10–25
Honor Fraser Gallery (photograph courtesy Honor Fraser)
Punk’s Not Useless is a solo present of latest work by Nadya Tolokonnikova, co-founder of the Russian feminist artwork collective Pussy Riot. Coinciding along with her residency at Honor Fraser, the exhibition options installations that replicate Tolokonnikova’s experiences of resistance and incarceration, alongside masked self-portraits by which her balaclava is rendered by means of calligraphic textual content. All through its two-week run, the present will host performances and musical occasions, reimagining itself as a web site for communal protest and solidarity.
Iván Argote: Impermanent
Perrotin, 5036 West Pico Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los AngelesThrough January 25
Iván Argote, “Wild Flowers, Augustus: A Hip” (2024), bronze, vegetation, and soil, 23 5/8 x 39 3/8 x 33 7/16 inches (~60 x 100 x 84.9 cm) (picture courtesy the artist and Perrotin)
Bogotá-born artist Iván Argote challenges colonial legacies by means of shrewd, placing interventions with monuments that champion these histories. Impermanent facilities photographic and sculptural works made between 2012 and 2024, together with his 2013 photograph of a statue of King Charles III of Spain in downtown LA sporting an Indigenous poncho, a recognition of the communities who already lived within the space when the town was based throughout his reign in 1781. Argote’s Etcetera sequence (2012–18), depicts a monument to Francisco de Orellana, the so-called “discoverer” of the Amazon, that Argote coated in mirrors to functionally exchange him with the encircling panorama. The exhibition additionally options his Wildflowers, Augustus sequence (2024), which repurposes sections of a duplicate bronze statue of the Roman Emperor Augustus as planters for native foliage.
Elizabeth Tremante: Last Ladies
Critical Subjects, 1207 North La Brea Avenue, Suite 300, Inglewood, CaliforniaJanuary 4–February 8
Elizabeth Tremante, “One Day After School” (2023), oil on canvas, 23 x 27 inches (~58.4 x 68.6 cm) (photograph by Ok. Calabrese, courtesy Critical Subjects)
In Elizabeth Tremante’s irreverent canvases, artwork historic depictions of femininity are confronted by real-world ladies, yielding comically violent outcomes. Inside serene museum galleries hung along with her variations of Western masterworks, Tremante depicts ladies, ladies, and households who bleed, vomit, cry, and in any other case defile these hallowed cultural establishments. Named for the horror movie trope of the lone feminine survivor, Last Ladies portrays a visit to the museum as a hysterically ferocious battle between illustration and actuality.
Emily Marchand: The Slumber of a Prince
Ochi, 3301 West Washington Boulevard, Arlington Heights, Los AngelesJanuary 11–February 15
Emily Marchand, “Ozzy in the garden” (2023), stoneware, glaze, underglaze, 14 x 10 x 22 inches (35.6 x 25.4 x 55.9 cm) (photograph by Deen Babakhyi, courtesy the artist and Ochi)
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Emily Marchand handled the isolation and grief of lockdown by specializing in two issues that represented hope and connection: her backyard and her canine, Ozzy. The Slumber of a Prince is replete with life-size ceramic sculptures of Ozzy in numerous states of pleasure and repose, his physique coated in a cornucopia of colourful flowers, vegetation, and fried eggs. Accompanying glazed-tile wallworks depict canine types floating by means of verdant vistas of wildlife. Created earlier than Ozzy’s loss of life final summer season, these anticipatory memorials, although tinged with the ache of loss, have fun a life nicely lived.
Marcus Leslie Singleton: Winter Atlantic Summer season
The Journal Gallery, 9055 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaThrough February 15
Marcus Leslie Singleton, “Medley” (2024), oil, spray paint, and glitter on panel, 48 x 60 inches (121.9 x 152.4 cm) (picture courtesy Journal Gallery)
Marcus Leslie Singleton attracts on his personal life and private experiences for the subject material of his figurative work, which additionally supply insights into bigger societal and cultural themes round race, gender, and sexual orientation. His first main solo present in LA options casual, candid scenes of Black life painted with free brushwork and flat areas of colours, recalling the work of Jacob Lawrence, whom he cites as an early affect. Singleton’s work, nonetheless, channel an intimate specificity that sparks our curiosity, inviting us to ponder the narrative behind photographs of two younger males on horseback, a goggled swimmer placing an Odalisque pose poolside, and a reclining artist portray a portrait of a seated mannequin, each of them nude.
Doug Aitken: Psychic Particles Discipline
Regen Initiatives, 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, Los AngelesJanuary 11–February 22
Doug Aitken, “Woman’s Profile with Desert Formations” (2024), blended materials, 56 3/8 x 82 x 2 1/8 inches (143.2 x 208.3 x 5.4 cm), distinctive variation of three (© Doug Aitken; picture courtesy 303 Gallery, New York, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, and Regen Initiatives, Los Angeles)
By means of his movies, sculptures, images, and audio works, Doug Aitken presents a dynamic, fragmented imaginative and prescient of latest life, particularly because it performs out amidst the contradictions of Southern California. Psychic Particles Discipline, his sixth present with Regen Initiatives, juxtaposes the area’s geological and ecological historical past with its veneer of artifice, obsolescence, and countless chance. Notable works embody a sculpture of the late, beloved mountain lion P-22 produced from ocean particles, freeway rubber, natural matter, and seeds; a desert set up with metal cacti, bus cease, ice machine, and two stags locked in fight, their horns glowing; and tapestries depicting a mid-century home and pool that Aitken made whereas filming Lightscape, his cinematic and musical collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Grasp Chorale, at the moment on view on the Marciano Artwork Basis.
Odd Individuals: Photorealism and the Work of Artwork since 1968
Museum of Modern Artwork, 250 South Grand Avenue, Downtown, Los AngelesThrough Might 4
Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., “American Pawn Shop” (2024), oil, enamel, latex, filth, gel medium, and lightbox on wooden panel, 23 x 22.7 toes (4.5 x 6.9 m) (© BFA 2024; photograph by Jenna Burke/BFA.com for MOCA)
Difficult the notion that Photorealism marked a representational lifeless finish, Odd Individuals options 40 artists working within the motion between the Nineteen Sixties and as we speak. Early practitioners within the exhibition embody Vija Celmins, Audrey Flack, and Barkley L. Hendricks, alongside modern artists who proceed their legacy, equivalent to Michael Alvarez, Sayre Gomez, and Vincent Valdez. The present highlights Photorealism’s technical proficiency and meticulous verisimilitude, in addition to its political and aesthetic position in depicting individuals and locations traditionally omitted from inventive illustration.
Imagining Black Diasporas: Twenty first-Century Artwork and Poetics
Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los AngelesThrough August 3
Nonetheless from Grace Ndiritu, “Still Life/White Textiles” (2005–7), single-channel video, colour, no sound, 5 minutes (© Grace Ndiritu; picture courtesy LACMA)
Imagining Black Diasporas takes an expansive view of latest Black artwork, that includes work by 60 artists from Africa, Europe, and the Americas, with a particular concentrate on these based mostly on the West Coast. The exhibition consists of portray, sculpture, images, and video created over roughly the previous 25 years, curated by Dhyandra Lawson and pulled primarily from the museum’s assortment. Bringing collectively established artists together with Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, El Anatsui, Mark Bradford, Nick Cave, and Glenn Ligon with rising artists and people probably lesser identified to American audiences equivalent to Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Ibrahim Mahama, and Grace Ndiritu, Imagining Black Diasporas showcases the breadth of Pan-African expressions of displacement, resilience, fusion, and reinvention.