Curate LA™️

This biggest takeaway from this past week/end was: COMMUNITY Thank you everyone who joined us at @murmurs.la this past Saturday for the #CurateLA10 x @kickstarter conversation about artistic funding models with @digitaldannybaez , @maeamaria , @ozziejuarez , and @lhyatt moderated by @shelleyhol After the panel was the after party with drinks by @mezcalamaras and a set by the one and only @brownskinhazel to celebrate 10 years of Curate LA 🎂 Looking forward to seeing y’all at the next one 💋 📸 @kobewagstaff

☀️🌴 For 10 years, Curate LA has been at the forefront of championing and cultivating the profound ecosystem of L.A.’s creative landscape. And through it all, we are most proud of the friends we've made along the way and the beautiful art community of L.A. that we are so lucky to call home. A decade strong, we are more committed than ever to being the essential art platform in L.A. Follow along at #curatela10 or download the Curate LA app for happenings across our electric city ⚡️ 2014 Los Angeles's own @shelleyhol and @alexbenzer identify a gap to navigate the burgeoning art community in L.A. Curate LA is founded as an artist-run initiative to connect and promote artists and art spaces 2015 The Curate LA App revolutionized the way L.A.’s artistic ecosystem engaged with wider audiences. The FREE interactive map serves as an accessible tool to discover art 2016 Curate LA Goes Large: Cementing its mission to promote art beyond traditional white cube spaces, the platform collaborated on several public art projects, including immersive art during Grand Ave Arts at @moca and a curated digital billboard exhibition of works by women artists, in collab with @standardvision in DTLA 2018 #CurateLAMemberships are launched offering exclusive experiences with artists, curators, collectors + more. Member events have become hot tickets alongside art fairs and highlights in the cultural calendar. Memorable nights include parties with @jerrygogosian , @sohohouse , and @foreignerrrrr ’s Roadblock™ Rally, celebrating artist @AlvaroBarrington 2019 Next Stop: Curate LA has always been in its own lane, and “Ceci n'est pas un Bus Tour” with @naobustamante , @estitties , and @jenstark was no different. In partnership with @theicala 2020 Curate LA responded to the global movement for equity and justice with its report, “Unmask The Top.” In collab with @thefutureleft , the report investigated the directive makeup of 12 L.A. arts organizations, calling for transformative operational transparency 2021-2022 Following Curate LA’s public list of Black-owned galleries and art spaces in L.A., a comprehensive report on Latinx and AAPI-owned spaces followed More to come in 2024 💋

⁠Los Angeles County sits on Chumash, Tongva, and Kizh land and when we consider Pacific Islander and Latin American Indigenous Diasporas, Los Angeles has the largest indigenous population of any city in the US. If you live in what's now known as the Los Angeles Basin, you're living on what its Indigenous residents call Tovaangar, which means "the world." Tovaangar is home to the Gabrielino Tongva people (“people of the world”).⁠ ⁠ As members of this community, we wanted take a moment to recognize their presence and heritage that we as residents of Los Angeles County owe so much to. We want to introduce a Land Acknowledge into the practices of Curate LA that recognizes the Indigenous peoples who have been dispossessed from the homelands and territories upon which all of our cultural institutions were built and currently occupy and operate in. We hope this will encourage you all to do so as well.⁠ ⁠ Image text: We acknowledge that the virtual platform of Curate LA and the communities we work within is taking place throughout the unceded territory of California home to nearly 200 tribal nations. We acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of our various regions, specifically the traditional unceded territory of the Chumash, Tongva, and Kizh people who reside in Los Angeles County.

Acacia Marable's 'Mixed Feelings Color Pains' takes its title from two bodies of work, both of which are painted onto used dartboards, a continuation of his preference for working with functional objects. ⁠ ⁠ "Mixed Feelings" is the more sculptural series, incorporating wire forms and other materials onto the painting. These ornamentations point towards the racialized experience at the center of the series, which draws its name from Marable’s own position as a mixed-race person. "Color Pains" operates differently- quieter, more abstract, and minimal- concerned with color as both perception and feeling. Together, the two series ask to be read against each other, their surface differences gradually revealing a shared preoccupation.⁠ ⁠ In this exhibition, the dartboard is the instrument through which Marable’s complex color investigations take form. His homage to the circle. The repetitive paintings’ geometry not only echoes targets to aim at, but also pie charts of statistical breakdowns. Their exploded sections, blurred lines, ornamentation, and painted beauty make them a dizzying landscape in which to play the game of darts. And that is what Marable wants, to make the player contemplate what they are taking aim at. A painting? A person? An idea? Which colors spark their memory, pull their desire, or trouble their aversion? The game, under this new lens, becomes more charged- a quiet rupture from the innocent fun it usually provides.⁠ ⁠ @stonerboyfriend on view at @nightgallery through May 23

"At a certain point, in recent years, I was at a crossroads: stop painting, or find another way to understand what painting actually is—what it can actually do. I decided to turn fully toward painting and away from Art. The art world likes to talk about power—resistance, critique, progress—but it is an economy first, a social sorting mechanism second, and only sometimes a meaning-making structure. I didn’t understand at first that my paintings would be structurally inseparable from that world. Whatever I thought they could be collapsed under the weight of transaction. They became possessions circulating inside an unregulated market. I learned that attention without ethics is extraction, and that the art world can reward extraction while calling it insight. The first works from this shift were religious and mythological paintings. These figures are already cemented in the mind’s eye of the world. The paintings were not attempts at critique or impersonation; they were genuine attempts to reach out, or up. Myth survives because it describes something structurally true about being alive. It is what certain kinds of truth look like once they’ve passed through the human brain. In the studio, painting became the primary site of meaning. I stopped moving toward an image. There was no final picture waiting to be achieved. A mark was made. The painting answered, and I answered back. The work proceeded as a conversation rather than a construction. Painting became a functional technology guiding me toward a depth otherwise inaccessible—not toward personality or intention, but toward something older and quieter. The figures that arrive do not behave like symbols. They interrupt. They demand translation. I do not command them or aestheticize them. I listen, or I fail to listen and pay for it. That is the relationship. Painting, for me, is participation in the aliveness of life. It is communication as recognition, not explanation. Meaning emerges only through encounter—when a viewer and a painting agree to stand in the same place and face the same uncertainty. The task is contact." —Celeste Dupuy-Spencer "Self Portrait in the Dark" in 'Burning in the Eyes of the Maker'

'Instant Theatre: Rachel Rosenthal and King Moody' explores the experimental theatre movement founded by Rachel Rosenthal in 1955 and continued with her husband, King Moody, from 1956 to 1966. Featuring archival material and design elements that invoke the setting and atmosphere of these ephemeral events, the exhibition reconstitutes Instant Theatre for the present while situating it historically as a precursor to the performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. While highlighting the movement's importance, the exhibition also spotlights Rosenthal as a powerful artistic force in her own right—one whose influence and contributions continue to be felt today.⁠ ⁠ Instant Theatre was created from a combination of opportunity and accident. After settling in Los Angeles in 1955, after living in New York City and Paris, where she was part of an artistic community that included Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage, Rosenthal began hosting workshops with studio and theatrical actors alike, asking them to bring prepared material that the group could experiment with and develop. Rosenthal had to pivot when actors arrived unprepared, which gave her the opportunity to draw on her own ideas and artistic sensibilities to create material and structure on the spot. This original group, which included painter Lee Mullican, worked together for nearly a year before disbanding.⁠ ⁠ Inspired by the spirit of the original performances, 'Instant Theatre' reimagines one of the gallery spaces as a theatre set. An assortment of original and inspired props—from fans and ladders to costumes and mannequins—is arranged to suggest the presence of performers, while lighting will create shadows and dimension. In the adjacent gallery, the exhibition will bring together a wealth of archival materials, including photographs, paintings, postcards, invitations, and posters, alongside ephemera from Rosenthal's studio that likely served as props during performances.⁠ ⁠ On view at @robertsprojects through May 23 #rachelrosenthal #kingmoody

'eⁱKENGA' is an exhibition of bronze sculptures by Nigerian-American artist Victor Nwankwo. ⁠ ⁠ The work is built around Ikenga, a shrine figure central to Igbo cosmology and documented since the ninth century CE. Shrines in communal settings as well as in private homes articulated a belief system that places individual agency at its center rather than submission to divine will. Each Ikenga was carved to hold a person to account: a physical reminder of the behavioural and moral attributes a person need embody in order to achieve their aspirations and become a valuable contributor to the community.⁠ ⁠ Nwankwo translates this ancestral cosmology into a system of contemporary forms. Rather than reproducing traditional carvings, the artist reframes Ikenga as a conceptual language responsive to contemporary conditions. Drawing from the aesthetics of collectable consumer culture, he redirects familiar modes of desire, accumulation, and attention toward introspection, self-governance, and ethical clarity. In a world increasingly shaped by distraction and extraction, the work proposes Ikenga as a living framework for intentional action.⁠ ⁠ The series addresses a striking absence: while the global collectibles market has produced iconic figures rooted in Japanese, American, and East Asian visual cultures, from KAWS to Kasing Lung’s Labubu, no equivalent object exists from Africa or the African diaspora. For Nwankwo, this gap is symptomatic and a question of representation. eⁱKENGA proposes that the Igbo sculptural tradition, with its millennia-long entanglement of art, commerce, and personal aspiration, is not only equipped to fill that void but may be its most natural occupant.⁠ ⁠ On view at @charlottecallgallery through May 16 #victornwankwo

Building the next chapter of L.A. culture together, one beam at a time 🏗️ Today, our @jonathanvelardi signed the final, highest beam for @thebroadmuseum expansion before it was lifted into the skyline above DTLA. A love letter to the city, signed in steel 💌 See you at the opening in 2028! #toppingout #losangeles

Shilla Shakoori "The Land Of My Poem is Green" in 'Imagined Realities and Unreal Fantasies' curated by Alaia Parhizi at @houseofcohit ⁠ ⁠ The exhibition proposes a focused look at how artists use figurative work to explore personal mythology and experience, bringing together six contemporary voices whose practices engage with the dialogue between intimate narratives and the imaginative.⁠ ⁠ Imagined Realities and Unreal Fantasies traces the boundary between the internal and external world, balancing tangible truths with the subconscious. Inspired in part by the gallery's domestic architecture, the artworks are selected to interact with and reflect on this intimate setting, considering how the figure serves as a vessel for both private observation and fantastical construction. Through various figurative approaches, the show invites viewers to move between parallel streams of reality, asking: where do our personal histories end and our fantasies begin?⁠ ⁠ On view through May 15 @shilla_shakoori

'Strata' brings together two female artists, Bea Ladrón de Guevara and Meagan Cignoli, whose practices center on material exploration and intimate making.⁠ ⁠ @ladron.de.guevara.studio creates her own pigments through slow, ritual processes, while @meagancignoli works with fragile, tactile materials that embrace change and imperfection. Both artists share a personal, intuitive approach that values softness and presence.⁠ ⁠ On view at @twofaced.gallery through June 24

Drawing on the influence of Japanese prints, architecture, and the graphic symbolism and movement of manga, Sarah Amos has developed a body of work that pushes printmaking into a richer, more expansive terrain. Her process begins with 50 to 60 drawings in a sketchbook, then choosing a small number to translate into large-scale textiles, each selected for its resonance and ability to hold the weight of that transformation. The final iteration is a unique mixed media hybrid textile ‘painting’, requiring a one-thousand-pound press. Amos drives acrylic ink deep into the tooth of the material surface, creating a soft, velvety ground that she layers with yarn and stitching. In these hybrid works, thread does not simply sit on top of the printed image; it extends and activates it, intensifying the relationship between color, background, surface, and sculptural form. With more than 30 years of experience in printmaking, she’s developed a multivariant approach that brings together an understanding of fine art printing, stitching, appliqué, and collage in singular compositions that are at once unconventional, tactile, and painterly. @artistsarahamos ‘Tipping Point’ on view at @patriciasweetowgallery through May 16

The body of work left by the late artist Franne Davids makes itself only partially available to vision. This is because Davids, who spent most, if not all, of her days in a self-fashioned basement studio for nearly four decades, added countless layers of oil paint to the forty-two canvases and several hundred works on paper she left behind when she died in 2022. ⁠ ⁠ It seems that her consistent efforts toward painting were inaugurated by a diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic in the late 1970s. The irresolute dating of Davids’ output implies decades of labor. We cannot be sure at what point any work was started, in what years she added paint to their surfaces, nor will we ever know when she designated anything as finished. Davids worked until 2018, when her physical health deteriorated to the extent that she could no longer descend the stairs to her studio. But the individual weight of the works left in the artist’s wake speak to her resourcefulness, her tendencies toward reuse, and her intent to paint images anew from the phantoms of her paintings’ past lives. Davids’ canvases contain within them layers of paint that can no longer be seen, but that embody the conditions of her status as an artist removed from the worlds of exhibition and display that she imagined for herself and her art. This occlusion is the typical fate of artists marked by mental illness, and Davids was no exception.⁠ ⁠ -Aram Moshayedi⁠ ⁠ Franne Davids "Figures without Names" on view at @sebastiangladstone through May 16