DON'T MISS THESE ART EXHIBITS IN LOS ANGELES THIS FALL

Henry Taylor, "Untitled," 2021, 
 Image and work courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Photo by Jeff McLane.

The arrival of fall marks the start of "Art Season" in Los Angeles, when new exhibits open at museums and galleries across the city. It's also the last chance to check out exhibits that are closing to make way for the upcoming works on view. From Picasso and Warhol to local artists, read on for the best of the fall Art Season in LA.

"WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: IN PRAISE OF SHADOWS" - THE BROAD (NOV. 12, 2022 - APRIL 9, 2023)

Opening on November 12, William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows is the artist's first monograph presentation at The Broad and his first major exhibition in Los Angeles in two decades. Featuring more than 130 works spanning 35 years of the celebrated South African artist’s practice, this landmark exhibition includes all 18 works from The Broad collection with substantial loans from across the United States and South Africa.

Curated by Ed Schad, the exhibition is organized both thematically and chronologically throughout the museum’s first-floor galleries. A highlight of the exhibition is The Broad collection’s 30-minute five-channel video and multimedia installation The Refusal of Time (2012). In addition to key drawings, sculptures, prints, and tapestries featured at The Broad, the artist’s 11 Drawings for Projection films will be on view, as well as a series of films that reflect on early cinema. Important early works rarely or never before seen in the United States show Kentridge’s long-lasting political engagement, upholding artistry and the creative act as its own form of transformative knowledge.

To coincide with In Praise of Shadows, the world theatrical premiere of Houseboy, a production of the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg directed by William Kentridge, will take place at the nearby REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) from November 17–20. Tickets to Houseboy are now on sale at the REDCAT website.

"HENRY TAYLOR: B SIDE" - MOCA (NOV. 6, 2022 - APRIL 30, 2023)

Spanning 30 years of Henry Taylor’s work in painting, sculpture, and installation, B Side celebrates a Los Angeles artist renowned for his unique aesthetic, social vision, and freewheeling experimentation. Opening at MOCA Grand Avenue on November 6, B Side is the first large-scale museum exhibition in the artist's hometown.

Taylor’s portraits and allegorical tableaux are populated by friends, family members, strangers on the street, athletic stars, and entertainers. In his paintings on cigarette packs, cereal boxes and other found supports, Taylor brings his primary medium into the realm of common culture. Similarly, the artist’s installations often play upon art historical tropes and modernism’s appropriations of African or African-American culture. Taken together, the various strands of Taylor’s practice display a deep observation of Black life in America at the turn of the century.

THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY

"Judith F. Baca: World Wall" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
Celebrated Chicana artist Judith F. Baca began her collaborative, portable mural World Wall: A Vision of the Future Without Fear in 1987. An ambitious, utopian, and international project, World Wall is rooted in the philosophy that in order to achieve world peace, we must first be able to envision it. Baca painted the first four 10 x 30 foot canvas panels; as the work traveled abroad between 1990 and 2014, artists and community groups from Finland, Russia, Israel and Palestine, Mexico, and Canada contributed five additional panels, employing figurative and symbolic visual vocabularies to depict a vision of the future without fear.

All nine panels will be shown at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary in an enveloping installation - it's the first-ever complete presentation of this monumental project. Pointing to the legacies of both the Chicano arts movement of the 1970s and Mexican muralism movement of the 1920s, this timely exhibition considers the visionary role of activist-artists in imagining a peaceful future for us all.

"Lonesome Crowded West" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
"What should a picture of the West look like today?" The artists featured in Lonesome Crowded West: Works from MOCA's Collection respond to this question from a multiplicity of perspectives - tracing the contours of the American West through individual stories and collective histories, and through reflection on climate and the tension between the built and natural environment. Speaking with a plurality of voices, they ask not so much what the West means, but rather what it is, and what it can mean to be in.

"Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
Featuring a selection of recent single and multi-channel films and videos, Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody is the first solo museum presentation of the work of Los Angeles- and New Orleans-based artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley. Employing a collaborative and research-based approach to filmmaking, Bradley explores the space between fact and fiction, addressing themes such as race, class, familial relationships, social justice, southern culture, and the history of film in the United States.

"Tala Madani: Biscuits" (through Feb. 19, 2023)
The first North American survey of Iranian-born artist Tala Madani’s paintings and animations, Biscuits gathers 15 years of the artist’s incisive work. The exhibition highlights the often-absurd socio-cultural dynamics enacted within Madani’s art and, more broadly, the potent and combustible relationship between art history and global history.

LA PLAZA DE CULTURA Y ARTES

Margaret Garcia, "Night on Figueroa Street," 2022.

Courtesy of the artist.

"Arte para la gente: The Collected Works of Margaret Garcia" (through June 11, 2023)
Now on view at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Arte para la gente, The Collected Works of Margaret Garcia is a retrospective exhibition with more than 75 artworks by pre-eminent Chicana artist Margaret Garcia. The exhibition features Garcia’s vast body of work, which captures and encapsulates her culture, family, community, and urban life in Los Angeles and beyond. As an elder in the Los Angeles Chicana/o Art Movement for the past five decades, the Boyle Heights native has championed and advocated for women, community, and individuals who are marginalized by society. By revering the people, neighborhoods, and local landmarks of her pueblo through her colorful portraits and landscapes, Garcia celebrates the subjects that have inspired her art and the creation of its ever-evolving community.

"Hostile Terrain ‘94" (through July 9, 2023)
Hostile Terrain ‘94: The Undocumented Migration Project is a multimedia exhibition that records the journeys and testimonies of undocumented migrants and their families who attempt to cross the U.S.–Mexico border. The exhibition includes photographic narratives of border crossers, found objects left behind by migrants in the desert, videos, an interactive story-recording studio where the public may share their personal immigration stories, and a 20-foot long participatory wall map of the Arizona/Mexico border.