Los Angeles art exhibitions: the best shows to see in August

It’s the perfect time to dive into Los Angeles art exhibitions. For the last month of summer, sports fans and artists collide in Los Angeles over an $11-million-dollar public art collection connected to a new sports arena for a legacy basketball team. Elsewhere in the city, MOCA examines climate change through the lens of Josh Kline, while The Huntington in Pasadena explores the fragility of the earth’s ecosystem with a sculptural exhibit. Honor Fraser delves into the world of Kenny Scharf, Pace honours Gordon Parks and Fahey/Klein takes us on a photographic tour of rock heroes. Here are the best new and continuing art shows to see in Los Angeles this August.

Los Angeles art exhibitions: what to see in August 2024

Gordon Parks

Pace Gallery, Mid-City, until 30 August 2024

The first solo show of photographer, filmmaker, composer, and writer, Gordon Parks was conceived by Curatorial Director Kimberly Drew as ongoing partnership with the Gordon Parks Foundation. While never receiving formal photographic training, Parks is regarded as was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and would create a body of work documenting American society and culture from the 1940s to the 2000s, focusing in on race, poverty, civil rights, and urban life. “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs,” Parks once said. “I knew at that point I had to have a camera.” 

The Legacy of Music Photography

Fahey/Klein Gallery, Hancock Park, until 7 September 2024

Take an intimate, historical look at iconic music figures from Cher to Dylan, Amy Winehouse, Harry Styles, and a young Mick Jagger, from artists such as Herb Ritts, Bruce Webber, Norman Seeff, and David Bailey among others. This exhibit is a rock, rap, pop, and punk tour de force for any music lover.

Raphael Navot: Reverberations

Friedman Benda, Hollywood, until 25 September 2024

The location for the largest solo show (and first in Los Angeles) by Paris-based Israeli designer Raphael Navot could not be more fitting than at Friedman Benda located at a modern home in the hills behind the iconic Chateau Marmont hotel. With the West Coast debut of Navot’s acclaimed Acrostic seating, each piece is conceived in response to the human need for connection with one’s body, using materials such as fine upholstery, wood, eco-resin, and concrete in surprising new contexts. 

Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight

The Huntington, Pasadena, until Nov. 30, 2025

Also, at The Huntington in The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art building, where you can also find several Warhol works including “Brillo Box,” renowned American artist Betye Saar’s large-scale work of a 17-foot-long vintage wooden canoe, “Drifting Toward Twilight.” takes up an entire room. This site-specific installation was commissioned by The Huntington and adorned with found objects, including birdcages, antlers, and natural materials harvested by the artist from The Huntington’s grounds. This work explores themes of racial oppression and ‘caged freedom.’

A small side room shows a short documentary film on Saar’s six-decade career as a pioneer of assemblage art, an important artistic voice during the feminist and Civil Rights movements, and as part of the foundational generation of Black artists in Los Angeles.

A convenient nearby glass door leads to the historic rose garden and tea room, which was refurbished and reopened earlier this year. Beyond that lies the Shakespeare Garden and the Japanese botanical gardens dotted with artifacts and sculptures.

Intuit Dome

Inglewood, permanent

One of the most exciting art collections to hit Los Angeles can be found at the new home for the LA Clippers in Inglewood. The cutting-edge sports venue recently unveiled the monumental, site-specific, outdoor artworks commissioned for the Intuit Dome which opens to the public this August. The $11 million public art collection features a collection of globally recognised artists, selected by Ruth Berson, former deputy director of curatorial affairs at SFMOMA, who have deep ties to Los Angeles and intertwine their artistic talents with sports.

Glenn Kaino’s massive sculpture Sails, made of painted steel and wood looms in the form of the clipper ships that connected the world via the ocean’s trade routes. In this ship, basketball is the cultural wind that can connect us all.

Michael Massenburg’s mural of printed porcelain enamel on steel panel features figures of basketball, tennis, and soccer players, singers, musicians, and dancers, titled Cultural Playground expresses the artist’s belief that 'the two most profound things that unite people are the arts and sports.'

Jennifer Steinkamp’s digital artwork Swoosh, uses the entire surface of the Intuit Dome, designed by the architectural firm AECOM, with five animations will transform the surface of the dome and light up the sky with geometric panels.

Patrick Martinez’s sculpture Same Boat uses a neon sign to create an image that reproduces a statement by the late Civil Rights leader Whitney M. Young: “We may have all come on different ships but we’re in the same boat now.”

On a wall adjacent to Same Boat, you will find Kyungmi Shin’s stained-glass mosaic with stainless steel tracery, Spring to Life. For this work, Shin drew inspiration from Centinela Springs, the now-vanished water source in South Los Angeles that once supported the Tongva people and the land they cultivated. (If you would like to see more of Shin’s work, the artist has a solo exhibition at Craft Contemporary until 8, September 2024.)

The Dome opening features an exhibition of photographs by Catherine Opie (on loan from MOCA) evoking the experience of community. “We designed Intuit Dome to be a place that brings people together,” said Gillian Zucker, CEO of Halo Sports & Entertainment. “When it came to our public art, we wanted to deliver a collection that is as compelling to people well versed in art as it is to a novice viewer. We are eager to make these unique works, from these amazing artists, available to everyone.”

PUBLIC FIGURES

Band of Vices, DTLA, until 17 August 2024

This Black-owned art gallery quickly became an anchor in the West Adams area, and has recently relocated to downtown LA in the heart of the arts district on Sante Fe Ave. They are starting out strong at the new location with the first major gallery exhibition since 2017 by Philly-born, Seattle-based, former recording artist (who worked with Pharrell Williams), Al-Baseer Holly and his first show with Band of Vices. His works have been collected by Beyoncé, Damien Hirst, Michael Jordan, Tommy Hilfiger, Tommy Mottola, Jorge Perez (Pérez Art Museum Miami), among others. The acrylic and loose canvas collage effects of his subjects offer a rare glimpse into their humanity and world.

Andrew Cranston

Karma, West Hollywood, until 14, September

Scottish-born and based artist Andrew Cranston taps into emotional resonance of place and memory in his paintings with oils, distemper, and collage. Expect beautiful expressions with still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and interiors suspended between the realms of imagination and the everyday. Of his approach to art-making, Cranston explains: “Painting is an act of remembering and forgetting, covering and uncovering, tracing and retracing, getting lost and finding a way.”

Josh Kline: Climate Change

MOCA, downtown Los Angeles, until 5 January 2025

Josh Kline’s dystopian science fiction installations took five years to fully produce but they could not be more on target with the current political and environmental climate concerns in America. This exhibition transforms the galleries at MOCA Grand Avenue with photography, moving image work, and ephemeral materials.

Also at Grand Ave., NTS Radio is in residency, in the museum’s newly opened cultureLAB space offers a summer-long collaboration of live broadcasts and music programming located on the Sculpture Plaza at MOCA, or tune in at nts.live

Mineo Mizuno: Homage to Nature

The Huntington, Pasadena, until 25 May 2029

The Huntington holds a library with British medieval manuscripts, including the 15th-century Ellesmere tome of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; 16 themed gardens with more than 83,000 living plants; an art museum and more.

In the main garden area on the vast grounds, Mineo Mizuno’s sculpture celebrates the beauty of wood in its natural state and emphasises its potential as a reusable and renewable resource. This site-specific work explores the fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem, as well as the destruction of the forest and its potential for regeneration.

GO WILD!

Honor Fraser, Mid-City, until 24 August 2024

Fans of Kenny Scharf should not miss this solo exhibition celebrating his decades long engagement with the City of Angels. For his 10th show with the gallery, guests will be enveloped into a sunlit installation that blurs the boundaries between Scharf’s studio, and the natural world which includes palm trees, concrete, carwashes, and other city infrastructures. Reminiscent of the artist’s legendary Cosmic Caverns ( the first one was installed in the New York apartment he shared with Keith Haring in 1982), the garden-like installation leads to murals, assemblages of upcycled plastic, and finally, a new series of tondo paintings. Scharf’s circular canvases of bombastic figures, expressive faces, and jungle-like landscapes are where pop art and street art meet.

'All About Love'

The Broad, downtown LA, until 29 September 2024

It seems that all eyes in the artworld are currently fixed on this dynamic Black creative voice and she wants you to think about love in new and profound ways. ‘Mickalene Thomas: All About Love’ is the artists’ first major international tour and is focused on celebrating Black feminist creative practices and critical perspectives, while offering frameworks for communal care. Spanning two decades, over 80 works from the New York-based artist, including her trademark use of rhinestones, mixed-media painting, collage, installation and photography, are on view now until 29 September 2024.

Co-organised by the Hayward Gallery, London, and in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, the exhibition shares its title and several of its themes with the vital text by feminist author bell hooks, in which love is an active process rooted in healing, carving a path away from domination and towards collective liberation.

In conjunction – and including live music, such as by popular rapper Flo Milli, therapeutic workshops, comedy, concerts, and a night of films by LGBTQIA+ directors – The Broad will showcase women, Black, and queer creative voices within the context of Mickalene Thomas’ international exhibition. The best part, admission is free on Thursday evenings.

thebroad.org

'Social Abstraction'

Gagosian Beverly Hills, 19 July – 30 August 2024

Gallery director Antwaun Sargent has put together a two-part group show, ‘Social Abstractions’. Sargent’s first engagement with this idea of social abstraction, which will address the interconnections between artmaking and social consciousness, was born at Frieze LA 2024. Antwaun is hoping this exhibition will shine a light on a new generation's perspective on the topic of abstraction.

Featuring an intergenerational group of Black artists including Kevin Beasley, Allana Clarke, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Alteronce Gumby, Lauren Halsey, Kahlil Robert Irving, Devin B Johnson, Rick Lowe, Eric Mack, Andy Robert, Cameron Welch, and Amanda Williams. The day after opening, on July 19, a special performance by renowned choreographer and dancer Kyle Abraham will take place inside the exhibition. The Beverly Hills gallery exhibit will be followed this fall with a ‘sister’ exhibition of other works by these artists in Hong Kong.

gagosian.com

‘Winfred Rembert: Hard Times’

Hauser & Wirth, DTLA, Arts District, until 25 August 2024

At the original complex in the DTLA arts district, late American artist Winfred Rembert (1945 – 2021), dedicated the last 30 years of his life to creating a striking visual memoir, working in his signature medium of carved and painted leather. In the artist’s Pulitzer Prize-winning author memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave, he describes the cotton fields as his very first memory. Hard Times (2003) is one of many paintings that depict the workers bent over endless rows of white tufts that dot the landscape. The sculpturally carved and painted leather here bear painstaking detail – each worker’s clothing is adorned with carefully crafted seams, featuring intricate bevelling that adds unexpected depth.

hauserwirth.com

'Daniel Turner'

Hauser & Wirth DTLA, Arts District, until 25 August 2024

Also downtown, New York-based artist Daniel Turner, in his first solo exhibit with the gallery, created a series of paintings, drawings, sculptures and film by salvaging, transforming and recontextualizing materials extracted from the Mandalay Generating Station, a decommissioned power plant located 60 miles northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Established in themid-20th century, the Southern California Edison-operated facility supplied the region’s electricity needs through natural gas-powered thermoelectric generation until its closure in 2017. Turner’s transformation of remnants from the electrical echoes a calibrated process of material distillation and site-responsive reflection.

hauserwirth.com

'Angel Otero. That First Rain in May'

Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, until 25 August 2024

At the West Hollywood gallery location, Puerto Rican artist Angel Otero, in his first exhibit with the gallery, That First Rain in May, converges magical realism and abstraction through personal recollections of his upbringing. Woven through new paintings and sculptures in which technical innovation becomes the means for conveying memory through materiality, Otero mines his own history to make sense of the current moment, animating everyday objects and environments that are loosely based on the domestic spaces of his youth.

hauserwirth.com

‘ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN’

LACMA, mid-city, until 6 Oct 2024

Continuing through the fall, ‘ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN’ is the first comprehensive, cross-media retrospective of the artist in over 20 years. The exhibit traces the iconic artists’ methods and familiar subjects throughout his career. In 1956, Ruscha left Oklahoma City to study commercial art in Los Angeles, where he drew inspiration from the city’s architectural landscape including parking lots, urban streets, and apartment buildings. The artist holds a mirror to American society by transforming some of its defining attributes, including consumer culture and entertainment to the ever-changing urban landscape.

lacma.org

‘To live and dine in LA / You taste like home'

Anat Ebgi Gallery, mid-city, until 17 August 2024

Inspired by the unparalleled diversity of LA’s dining scene and the power of cuisine to convey and transcend politics, culture and identity, Kate Pincus Whitney’s new show, ‘To live and dine in LA / You taste like home’ is a love poem to the city’s diverse and gastronomic treasures. Each painting represents a different neighbourhood, and the tables hold the depth of variety found in each corner of the city. Covering both sacred shrine and intimate celebration, she offers gratitude to a childhood raised in the kitchen by her mother and grandmother, and she invites the audience to take part in this history.

anatebgi.com

‘Bruts’

David Kordansky Gallery, mid-city, 2 July – 24 August 2024

‘Bruts’, curated by Rashid Johnson, brings together an eclectic selection of works by artists spanning eras and cultures – from Jean Dubuffet and Aloïse Corbaz, major figures of Art Brut, a term invented by Dubuffet to describe ‘raw art’ made outside of fine art traditions; to 20th-century modernist and expressionist artists including Herbert Gentry, William Hawkins, Bill Traylor, and Peter Voulkos; to contemporary artists such as Huma Bhabha, Mark Grotjahn, Thomas Houseago, and Dana Schutz – to explore the ways in which artists have resisted and challenged accessible modes of representation and to interrogate ideas of artistic value. Johnson is questioning artistic training and skill – how do we value skill? What is skill? And how do we determine who’s an ‘outsider’ artist and who is not.

davidkordanskygallery.com

‘Flight Paths’

Lisson Gallery, mid-city, until 17 August 2024

British artist Sarah Cunningham presents a new body of work entitled Flight Paths for her first solo show with the gallery. Named after a diptych that seemingly defies gravity, this presentation captures the painter’s soaring, spontaneous gestures in full flow. In the two panels of Flight Path (all works 2024) and throughout this exhibition, Cunningham explores aerial and bodily movements, flipping directions and orientations.

lissongallery.com

‘Frontman’

Gallery 33, Santa Monica, until 31 July 2024

This in-the-know contemporary gallery is tucked away inside the recently refurbished The Georgian hotel, dating back to 1933. For the current exhibit, American artist (and former actor) Billy Zane presents a series of dynamic abstract expressionist paintings in his latest show, ‘Frontman’. The show will include ten works emphasising his long-standing theme of upcycling and transformation, incorporating found objects and used materials to highlight his commitment to sustainability. Zane’s ‘empathy as alchemy’ philosophy bleeds throughout all areas of his practice, from art to film, and beyond.

gallery33sm.com

‘Accidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition’

Santa Monica Art Museum, until 3 August 2024

‘Accidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition’ is a photo exhibition featuring over 100 photographs that recreate the iconic Wes Anderson aesthetic using points of interest from all over the world. After being widely received in Seoul, Tokyo, and London, you can now view this best-selling book and famous Instagram account brought to life in Santa Monica through an IRL exploration of real-life locations from all seven continents, through the lens of Wes Anderson.

santamonicaartmuseum.com

‘Yves Saint Laurent: Line and Expression’

Orange County Museum of Art, 3 July – 27 October 2024

Fashion buffs will want to travel 30 miles south from Los Angeles, for ‘Yves Saint Laurent: Line and Expression’, which recently launched at OCMA. Travelling from the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech and Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, on loan from the collection of the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, ‘Line and Expression’ marks the first presentation in Southern California of Yves Saint Laurent’s stunning and legendary practice.

ocma.art