When it comes to Los Angeles exhibitions, the scene is undergoing something of a gold rush. Drawn to the city's light, space and multifarious identifies, a flurry of East Coast-anchored and European galleries have announced new outposts in Los Angeles, including Pace, Lisson, Sean Kelly, The Hole and Hauser & Wirth, which anchor the city during events like the relatively nascent (but monumental in scope) Frieze Los Angeles fair.
Nowhere does art quite like Los Angeles. Explore the top Los Angeles exhibitions to visit under the California sun
Los Angeles exhibitions: current
Thomas Albdorf: ‘Body Double’
Until 29 July 2023
Webber LA
Four Letters, Part Two, 2022
Open now at Webber’s new LA outpost, Thomas Albdorfs ‘Body Double’ explores visual myth-building. It’s a practice common to Los Angeles, the setting to which Albdorf alludes, with its associations of Hollywood and sun-soaked concrete; and also to AI imaging processes, a tool of the artist’s, which invent the unreal through reference to the real. Talking about the future of photography, the Austrian artist tells us, ‘I am concerned about losing our connection with reality, our way of looking at and engaging with the world through a camera, but I am also curious about where artificial images can lead us too.’ With this concern and curiosity existing simultaneously, Albdorf’s ‘Body Double’ asks us to reflect upon the assumptions we make of our visual languages and the consequential narratives.
Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: ‘In Dialogue’
Getty Center
Until 9 July 2023
Untitled (Woman and daughter with children), 1990, Carrie Mae Weems.) Gelatin silver print
After meeting each other both aged just 23, Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems individually grew influential practices across the past five decades while sharing a dialogue of creativity, identity, and social consciousness. Now, in this Los Angeles exhibition at the Getty Center, audiences are for the first time fully let in on the dynamic connections and contrasts between these artist friends as they explore the everyday realities of Black Americans across changing years, while also speaking to the broader human condition.
Christine Sun Kim: ‘Bounce Back’
ICA LA
Until 10 September 2023
Christine Sun Kim, preparatory drawing for Bounce Back, 2023 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Berlin-based American artist Christine Sun Kim will soon adorn the façade of the ICA in a new large-scale mural that engages with the limits and possibilities of language (spoken, signed, or scripted). Bounce Back (2022) takes debt as its subject, signed in American Sign Language (ASL) by one index finger tapping the open palm of the other. The piece explores how one sign can carry a number of nuanced meanings in ASL, as well as layered issues of systemic inequity and the experience of those in debt.
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Aesop’s Salone del Mobile 2024 installations in Milan are multisensory experiencesAesop has partnered with Salone del Mobile to launch a series of installations across Milan, tapping into sight, touch, taste, and scent
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Dial into the Boring Phone and more smartphone alternativesFrom the deliberately dull new Boring Phone to Honor’s latest hook-up with Porsche, a host of new devices that do the phone thing slightly differently
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Berlinde De Bruyckere’s angels without faces touch down in Venice churchBelgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere’s recent archangel sculptures occupy the 16th-century white marble Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore for the Venice Biennale 2024
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The Met’s ‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’ dissects the avant-garde in early advertisingA new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York explores the role of product photography and advertising in shaping the visual language of modernism
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Detroit Institute of Arts celebrates Black cinema‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) brings lost or forgotten films, filmmakers and performers to a contemporary audience
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Jean-Michel Basquiat’s LA-made work goes on show at Gagosian‘Made on Market Street’ at Gagosian in Beverly Hills is the first show to present works made by the young artist between 1982 and 1984
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BLUM marks 30 years of Japanese contemporary art in AmericaBLUM will take ‘Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood’ to its New York space in September 2024, continuing its celebration of Japanese contemporary art in America
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Todd Gray’s sculptural photography collages defy dimension, linearity and narrativeIn Todd Gray’s New York exhibition, he revisits his 40-year archive, fragmented into elaborated frames that open doors for new readings
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Frieze LA 2024 guide: the art, gossip and buzzOur Frieze LA 2024 guide includes everything you need to know and see in and around the fair
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Andrea Bowers’ sculptural chandelier for Ruinart reflects a shared commitment to environmental conservationAndrea Bowers has partnered with Ruinart to create a work to be unveiled at Frieze LA, before it finds a permanent home at Maison Ruinart’s HQ in Reims
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What happened when Spike Jonze met BjörkSpike Jonze’s ‘The Day I Met Björk’, curated by Humberto Leon, is at Arroz & Fun in Los Angeles and accompanied by a free, downloadable zine from WeTransfer
