Just next door to Bel Ami is the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), a treasure trove of art-related ephemera, artists’ writings, audio-visual recordings, and more. Where: Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (709 North Hill Street, Upstairs Suite 104-8, Chinatown, Los Angeles) The Dividual Installation view of The Dividual at Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), 2022 (photo by Alex Delapena, image courtesy Los Angeles Contemporary Archive) Playfully self-described as “vaguely Asian,” the art/fashion collective expands upon their sculptural and installation practice in Import Imprint to explore the in-between-ness of Asian identity, from porcelain to globalized modes of production, with humor and incisive wit. Where: Bel Ami (709 North Hill Street, Upstairs Suite 105, Chinatown, Los Angeles)ĬFGNY, short for Concept Foreign Garment New York or Cute Fucking Gay New York, makes their Los Angeles debut in Chinatown’s Bel Ami (even creating new tags marking a temporary change of name to “CFGLA”). CFGNY: Import Imprint Installation view of CFGNY: Import Import at Bel Ami, 2022 (photo by Josh Schaedel, image courtesy the artists and Bel Ami, Los Angeles) Here, the trans artist sheds some of the mechanisms of distance like the sexiness, humor, and critique that characterized so much of her work under the moniker of Puppies Puppies to reveal more of herself as Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo. Though the exhibition may seem cryptic at first - with ceremonial offerings arranged on the ground, a stream-of-consciousness artist statement overtaking an entire wall, and the green-lit gallery installation suffused with the overwhelming smell of earth - Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo) is surprisingly direct, and vulnerable. Where: Hannah Hoffman (2504 West 7th Street, 2nd Floor, Westlake, Los Angeles) Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo) Installation view of Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo) at Hannah Hoffman, 2022 (photo by Paul Salveson, image courtesy the artist and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles) Videos of Forti weeding in her garden - the camera lingering ever-so-achingly on the movement of her hands - are woven together with writings, drawings, ephemera of the artist’s early performances, and readings of the exhibition’s eponymous poem, to create a kind of choreography that reflects on the totality, and the utter profundity, of Forti’s life and work. The inimitable, the legendary, and the iconic Simone Forti has no doubt been the subject of countless exhibitions, but rarely does one feel as gentle of an embrace as An Other Pretty Autumn.
Where: The Box (805 Traction Avenue, Downtown, Los Angeles) An Other Pretty Autumn Installation view of An Other Pretty Autumn at The Box, 2022 (photo by Fredrick Nilson Studio, courtesy The Box, Los Angeles)