Top Ten Paintings from ALAC 2019
Art Los Angeles Contemporary, the International Contemporary Art fair of the West Coast, held from February 13–17, 2019.
Top Ten Paintings from ALAC 2019
by Katie Kirk
Art fairs are an amazing one-stop-shop to see a ton of great art art from around the world. They can also end up leaving you with major brain-drain and feeling like you spent way too much time at a shopping mall. Luckily, Art Los Angeles Contemporary, now in its tenth year, is a decently-sized fair that can be walked through in less than a few hours. As usual, myriad ways of making were presented, from the digital prints of Matthew Stone to Wang Hao’s cement paintings. There were also a few artist-run booths like Awhrhwar (Los Angeles) and RUSCHMAN (Chicago).
There were several pieces that lingered in my mind beyond the fair. Nasim Hantehzadeh’s, Cloudy Day, at the Gildar Gallery booth, is a punchy, large-scale piece. Her work always teeters between landscape and bodies giving the viewer lots of tangled figures to unpack. Presented next to her small-scale notebook drawings, it was satisfying to see the work pushed all the way into painting, a departure from her usual large-scale drawings.
Aubrey Ingmar Manson’s, The Capitalist Class, at the Awhrhwar booth, was a definite reprieve from the sterliness of the fair. Made of napkins, cardboard, and house-paint, the piece feels warm, clunky, and handmade at the same time. The painting features proletariats being grown in a garden with the money-hungry capitalists gleefully floating above passing money between their mouths. You can easily get distracted by the piece’s materiality, making it a quiet irony for the many exchanges going on at the fair.
Until next year, ALAC! Here’s my top-ten list of the 2019 fair:
Nasim Hantehzadeh at Gildar Gallery
Cloudy Day, 2019
Oil and oil stick canvas
85 x 72 in (215.9 x 182.9 cm)
Image courtesy of Gildar Gallery
Jonathan Ryan at The Landing Gallery
III, 2018
Oil, sand, and charcoal on canvas
18 x 14 in
Aubrey Ingmar Manson at Awhrhwar
The Capitalist Class, 2018
Napkins, cardboard, house-paint
49 x 47 x 4 in
Image courtesy of the artist
Jorunn Hancke Ogstad at VI, VII
Untitled, 2019
Textile dye on unprimed cotton
80 7/10 × 57 1/10 × 1 1/5 in (205 × 145 × 3 cm)
Image courtesy of Christian Tunge and VI, VII, Oslo.
Didier William at Anna Zorina Gallery
Godforsaken Asylum, 2017
Wood carving
60 x 48 in (152.4 x 121.9 cm)
Image courtesy of Anna Zarina Gallery
Mari Eastman at RUSCHMAN
Woman with Wolves, 2018
Acrylic, oil, graphite, and glitter on canvas
9h x 12w in.
Image courtesy of the Artist and RUSCHMAN, Chicago
Rema Ghuloum at Odd Ark LA
Shade, 2019
Oil, acrylic, and Acryla-gouache on canvas
16 × 12 in (40.6 × 30.5 cm)
Image courtesy of Odd Ark LA
Adam Beris at Ochi Projects LA
Landscape, 2019
Oil, acrylic, googly eyes on linen
65 x 55 x 3 inches
Image courtesy of Ochi Projects LA
Ryan Fenchel at The Landing Gallery
The Adept, AWESOME !!!, 2018
Oil and acrylic on canvas
40 x 40 in
Kristen Van Deventer at Regards
Sirens, 2018
Oil on linen
19 x 23 1/8 inches
Image courtesy of Regards