Featured Events in Los Angeles in January 2025 (August Updated)

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard is the first museum exhibition of L.A.-based and Venezuelan-born artist Magdalena Suarez Frimkess (b. 1929). Trained in painting, print-making, and sculpture in Venezuela, Chile, and New York, Suarez Frimkess’s most recognized works are made in clay. Spanning over five decades, The Finest Disregard features ceramics, paintings, and drawings, including an important selection of works made collaboratively with her husband, Michael Frimkess. Although her work is usually considered to stand outside the California ceramic tradition, this exhibition demonstrates otherwise. With many works shown in public for the first time, The Finest Disregard offers insights into the artist's fascination with art history books, popular media, cartoons, animation, autobiography, and the humor found in the folds between the layers of everyday life.

This immersive exhibition tells the story of a unique mid-20th-century collaboration between artists and engineers. It explores the beginnings of the organization Experiments in Art and Technology, or E.A.T., as well as two of its most pivotal projects: 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering and the iconic Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan, both of which pursued groundbreaking integrations of theater, dance, technology, and interactive, multimedia art.

‘And Then Came the Environment’ presents a range of Gustav Metzger’s scientific works merging art and science from 1961 onward, highlighting his advocacy for environmental awareness and the possibilities for the transformation of society, as well as his latest experimental works, created in 2014. The exhibition title comes from Metzger’s groundbreaking 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised’ wherein he proclaims an urgent need to redefine our understanding of nature in relation to the environment. Metzger explains that the politicized term ‘environment’ creates a disconnect from the natural world, manipulating public perception to obscure pollution and exploitation caused by wars and industrialization, and that it should be renamed ‘Damaged Nature.’

New York-based artist Firelei Báez has achieved wide acclaim over the past decade for her rigorous paintings, drawings and immersive installations that explore the influences of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Conjuring forgotten narratives, Báez carefully fills history’s lacunae with joyful rebellion. In her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth since joining the gallery in 2023, Báez presents new large-scale canvases, drawings and her first-ever bronze sculpture at the gallery’s Downtown Arts District center in Los Angeles. Complex and layered, Báez’s work depicts fantastical hybrid figures and reimagined worlds. Employing beauty to reprocess the enduring effects of violence and trauma, Báez challenges traditional representations of history, nationality, gender and race. United by common cause, the paintings incorporate a wide range of subjects including art history, science fiction, anthropology, pop culture, folklore and fantasy. ‘The fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it’ is a reference to the work of Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant, a key figure in shaping theories informing the Caribbean’s influence on the global stage. Drawing inspiration from Glissant’s text, ‘Poetics of Relation’ (1990)—from which the title directly quotes—Báez navigates the tensions between identity and place, using Glissant’s concept of opacity to explore modes of resistance, namely the ability to navigate the world freely within a refusal of being fully understood—both to others and to oneself. Báez considers mythology an important tool, ‘a way of correcting the past and projecting a different future.’ Growing up in the Dominican Republic, the artist heard local folk stories about a mythic femme trickster called a ‘ciguapa’ who was known for her elusiveness. While such lore was shared to discourage unruly and wild behavior, Báez has embraced the ciguapa in her work as a figure of endless possibility. Ever-morphing and multiplying, her composite creatures are often depicted with human legs, a coat of delicate fur and backwards facing feet so that she remains traceless and ultimately unknowable. In the ciguapa, Báez explores the body as a living archive, a shape-shifting repository of meaning and history, whose continuous transformation is inherently defiant.

‘And Then Came the Environment’ presents a range of Gustav Metzger’s scientific works merging art and science from 1961 onward, highlighting his advocacy for environmental awareness and the possibilities for the transformation of society, as well as his latest experimental works, created in 2014. The exhibition title comes from Metzger’s groundbreaking 1992 essay ‘Nature Demised’ wherein he proclaims an urgent need to redefine our understanding of nature in relation to the environment. Metzger explains that the politicized term ‘environment’ creates a disconnect from the natural world, manipulating public perception to obscure pollution and exploitation caused by wars and industrialization, and that it should be renamed ‘Damaged Nature.’

In conjunction with Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Roberts Projects presents Betye Saar’s monumental altar assemblage, Mojotech. Created in 1987 during the artist’s residency at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this installation-based work is a testament to the fusion of contemporary technology and the mystique of ancient spirituality.

Southern California’s iconic art event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with over 800 artists, 70 exhibits, and 1 amazing theme:Art Meets Science. This “collision” will explore the intersection of art and science, past and present, with organizations presenting exhibits on topics such as ancient cosmology, Indigenous science fiction, environmental justice, and artificial intelligence.

L.A. Louver presents the debut American exhibition of a new body of work by Los Angeles-based architect and artist Thom Mayne. Investigating the philosophical intersections of impermanence and materiality, Mayne demonstrates how technology – at the frontiers of computer language and object-creation – can reframe and readdress timeless questions at the essence of artmaking.

Electric light emerged as an artistic medium in the mid-20th century, as artists engaged with new technology, mass media and industrial materials. The exhibition Plugged In: Art and Electric Light illuminates these themes through 11 works produced between 1964 and 1970, all drawn from the Museum’s collections. This focused group includes Andy Warhol’s controversial White Painting (1964), its nude female torso subversively activated by ultraviolet light; Dan Flavin’s stark fluorescent installations made from commercial materials; and Allen Ruppersberg’s Location Piece (1968), an “environmental sculpture” that envelops the viewer in unnerving ambient light.

Examine Getty’s much-loved painting, Irises by Vincent van Gogh, from the perspective of modern conservation science. This exhibition shows how the artist’s understanding of light and color informed his painting practice, and how conservators and scientists working together can harness the power of light with analytical tools that uncover the artist’s materials and working methods. Lastly, this exhibition reveals how light has irrevocably changed some of the colors in Irises. A painting we thought we knew so well has suddenly become quite unfamiliar.

Caldwell founded the KAOS network in 1984, and the exhibition traverses time, geography, history, and memory through Caldwell’s diverse practices of photography, film, video, music, performance, community design, and interactive media.

Christina Ramberg (American, 1946–1995) is best known for her stylized paintings of fragmented female bodies. In her work, she develops a visual vocabulary of fetish objects from hands, torsos, shoes, and locks of hair. Over time these images become increasingly abstract, eventually reduced to a set of simple geometries. The first comprehensive retrospective devoted to Ramberg in almost 30 years, the exhibition presents approximately 100 works including paintings, quilts, and archival ephemera.

Mapping the Infinite: Cosmologies Across Cultures, created in collaboration with scientists at the Carnegie Observatories and the Griffith Observatory, presents a group of rare and visually stunning artworks from different cultures and time periods to explore the variety of human attempts to explain the universe’s origins, mechanics, and meaning. Nearly every ancient culture has seen the heavens as a mirror of cosmic structure and process, and ancient measurements of time were directly influenced by the movements of heavenly bodies.Mapping the Infinitereveals how, as religions evolved, cultures conceived of and depicted cosmic deities and concepts of time and space through works of art and sacred architecture. The exhibition illuminates this history of cosmologiesaround the globe from the Stone Age to the present, from Neolithic Europe to the present day and including Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, South and Southeast Asia, East Asia,the Islamic Middle East, the Indigenous Americas, Northern Europe, and the United States.

The ancient land of Thrace, (comprising present-day Bulgaria and parts of Romania, Greece, and Turkey), was home to a tribal culture renowned for their skill as warriors and horsemen, as well as for their wealth in precious metals. Thracians produced superb gold, silver, and bronze works used in aristocratic pursuits, such as warfare, horsemanship, and banqueting. This exhibition features many objects that were discovered in Thracian lands during modern times, shedding light on this little-known culture and its interactions with Greece, Persia, and Rome over the course of two millennia (about 1700 BCE–300 CE).

Explore 30 years of music history, from blues, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll to hip-hop and alternative music, through the lens of photographer Jay Blakesberg. Featuring more than 150 photographs shot on film between 1978 and 2008, RetroBlakesberg captures three decades of pivotal moments in music history. The dynamic exhibit showcases multiple genres and iconic musicians, ranging from Snoop Dogg, B-40, and Bob Dylan to PJ Harvey, Pearl Jam, and the Grateful Dead. Renowned photographer Jay Blakesberg was originally inspired by the Grateful Dead, whom he followed around the country as a teenager, capturing their live shows with his camera. Inspired by his experience, he moved from New Jersey to San Francisco to become part of the city’s vibrant music scene, which he’s photographed for more than 30 years. RetroBlakesberg reflects his remarkable body of work, from live performances to portraits to album and magazine covers.

Pace is pleased to present Overview Effect, an exhibition of new paintings by Loie Hollowell, at its Los Angeles gallery. On view from November 9, 2024 to January 18, 2025, this will be the artist’s first solo presentation in Southern California, showcasing six of her largest works to date, each measuring eight by six feet, along with two new, intimately scaled, multi-part nipple paintings. Overview Effect follows Hollowell’s solo exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut—her first museum survey and first museum presentation on the East Coast, now on view at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute for Contemporary Art through March 9, 2025—and her recent show at Pace’s New York gallery, Dilation Stage. Her upcoming exhibition in LA takes its title from what astronauts describe as the “overview effect”—the experience of seeing Earth from space. From that vantage point, the planet becomes a unified whole without borders or boundaries, a single system of which humanity is a tiny part. In her new Overview Effect paintings, Hollowell gives viewers a bold first impression: searing our retinas with the force of bright color, extreme lighting, symmetry, and strong geometries that take on larger-than-life proportions. Stare for a while, and you will feel the paintings’ lasting effects as afterimages linger over your field of vision and leave a psychic mark. The limited palette in this body of work, based on primary colors and their combinations, suggests something basic and elemental floating in the cosmic soup.

With snowy peaks and rock formations spanning through eight countries, from France and Switzerland in the west to Austria and Slovenia in the east, the Alps have long captured the imagination of artists, being Europe’s largest mountain range. This focused exhibition highlights the different ways in which later 19th-century artists explored and depicted the Alps, particularly Giovanni Segantini’s monumental pastel Study for “La Vita” depicting the Alpine peaks that ringed his home in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland. Themes include the joys and difficulties of working outdoors and the connections between the land and its inhabitants. This exhibition is presented in English and Spanish. Esta exhibición se presenta en inglés y en español.

With snowy peaks and rock formations spanning through eight countries, from France and Switzerland in the west to Austria and Slovenia in the east, the Alps have long captured the imagination of artists, being Europe’s largest mountain range. This focused exhibition highlights the different ways in which later 19th-century artists explored and depicted the Alps, particularly Giovanni Segantini’s monumental pastel Study for “La Vita” depicting the Alpine peaks that ringed his home in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland. Themes include the joys and difficulties of working outdoors and the connections between the land and its inhabitants.

Artists: JOJO ABOT - Whitney Bedford - Tony Berlant - Rebecca Campbell - Richard Diebenkorn - Gajin Fujita - Vanessa German - David Hockney - R.B. Kitaj - Heather Gwen Martin - Michael C. McMillen - Alison Saar - Matt Wedel

Lisson Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition by multi-disciplinary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, marking his first show in Los Angeles in over a decade. The presentation, titled Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form, showcases Sugimoto’s investigation of the visible and invisible world through the forms of photography, architecture, sculpture and the written word. At its core is the American debut of Brush Impression, Heart Sutra (2023), accompanied by iconic photographs from the artist’s Sea of Buddha series and a new mathematical model based on Kuen’s Surface.

Louis Stern Fine Arts present a series of rarely seen works by Doug Ohlson (1936-2010), created during 1969 and the first half of the 1970s. The paintings, consisting of brilliant orbs of brushed and aerosol paint that hover on richly colored backgrounds, represent a transitional phase in the artist’s career. Acting as a vehicle for his developing investigations of chromatic relationships, these process-based works facilitated Ohlson’s changing focus to color as his primary subject matter.

“Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West” is an invitation to see the world as Raqib Shaw sees it. The London-based artist, known for his opulent and fantastical works, blends Eastern and Western influences to create mesmerizing paintings that merge fable, history, and autobiography.

Babst Gallery presents Sun and Its Living Shadow, a solo exhibition by Sophia Flood featuring paintings and works on paper.

Sean Kelly presents Europa / America, Candida Höfer’s first solo exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery, curated by renowned architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of the Los Angeles-based firm Johnston Marklee. Inspired by German-Prussian architect Erich Mendelsohn’s 1929 publication, Russland Europa Amerika: Ein architektonischer Querschnitt (An Architectural Cross Section), Johnston and Lee have selected fourteen photographs taken by Höfer between 1993 and 2015. Through Höfer’s carefully composed photographs of interior spaces primarily intended for entertainment, study, and worship, Europa / America explores sites that convey social significance in North American and European society. This novel grouping reveals a compelling impulse throughout Höfer’s oeuvre: to capture how architecture illuminates the cultural histories of a particular time and place.

Perrotin Los Angeles presents artist Leslie Hewitt’s solo presentation New Waves. This is the artist’s fifth solo exhibition with Perrotin and her first at the gallery’s Los Angeles location.

Perrotin Los Angeles presents artist Iván Argote’s solo presentation Impermanent, the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with Perrotin and his first at the gallery’s Los Angeles location.

Rele Los Angeles presents Occurrence: The Art of Nature Meets Science, as part of Southern California’s PST ART, the largest art exhibition in the nation. Curated by the gallery’s Jac Forbes—an ardent nature and art enthusiast—'this show explores the unique interplay between nature and science through the lens of contemporary art'. Occurrence brings together three visionary artists whose works harness the power of natural materials, inviting viewers to reflect on the transformative connections between organic beauty and creative expression.

David Zwirner is pleased to present Pearl Lines, the gallery’s first exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist Walter Price (b. 1989) since the announcement of his representation earlier this year. Price is known for his richly vibrant paintings and drawings, which bypass strict allegiances to representational or abstract modes. His canvases and works on paper not only experiment freely with color, line, and space, but also reveal emphatic shifts in perspective, suggesting scenes and imagery that the artist ultimately leaves for viewers to absorb and contemplate on their own.