Best Art Exhibits Coming To Los Angeles In 2016
Art is everywhere in Los Angeles. Whether it be street art, an independent gallery or a full on billion dollar museum exhibit, there is no shortage of art in LA. And it keeps coming. Last year, there were some really great exhibits like Louise Nevelson's “Lithographs from the 1960s,” Magdalena Fernández's videos and light installation and The Getty Center's “In Focus: Animalia,” a photography exhibit of exotic animals. But with 2016 still in the early months, there's a lot of art to look forward to. Check out these upcoming exhibits.
Catherine Opie: O
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Hammer Building, Level 3
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 857-6000
www.lacma.org
Dates: Through September 5, 2016
The photographic work of Catherine Opie has been known to raise controversy, and well as a person's temperature. Her latest exhibition, titled "O," is of the same vein. The LACMA is showing the O Portfolio for the first time in its entirety in Los Angeles, portraying sadomasochistic scenarios during her involvement with the San Francisco bondage community. The portfolio contains sexually graphic images, but as Opie states, they are more about intimacy.
Related: Best Street Art In Los Angeles
Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 857-6000
www.lacma.org
Dates: Through April 17, 2016
In this film and video installation at the LACMA, Diana Thater changes how we experience the way physical and optical images are experienced. Using light, color and scale, Thater breaks down the barriers of how how we normally see images. Even the architecture of the gallery plays a part in creating a new construct of her subjects of man and nature. The collection also includes some of Thater's earlier works of animals post Chernobyl and her days spent in Claude Monet's garden in France during the 90's.
Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium
Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
(310) 440-7300
www.getty.edu
Dates: Through July 31, 2016
Robert Mapplethorpe's body of work has stood as a source of inspiration for artists of all kinds. Whether it was his honest self portraits, his gritty photos of cultural icons, nudes or still life, Mapplethorpe always managed to stir the pot of passion, obscenity, controversy and pure brilliance into a spectacular portfolio. The Getty and the LACMA have joined together in displaying "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium." They have divided the vast collection of photos, drawings, collages and polaroids that span from the 1970's into the 90's, each highlighting different aspects of Mapplethorpe's unique and complex legacy.
Don't Look Back: The 1990s At MOCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art
250 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 626-6222
www.moca.org
Dates: Through July 11, 2016
"Don't Look Back: The 1990s" at MOCA is a collection of work and installations divided into six themed categories: Installation: The Outmoded, Noir America, Place and Identity, Touch, Intimacy and Queerness, and Space, Place, and Scale. Artists include Catherine Opie, Cady Noland, Sarah Sze, Paul McCarthy and others. From an installation of a dinosaur-themed bedroom, to the obsolete, to the culture of violence and the macabre, to society's countercultures to art of mass and scale, the "Don't Look Back: The 1990s" shows us the decade where many artist of the decade found inspiration and how it still influences them today.
Nick Brandt: Inherit The Dust
Fahey/Klein Gallery
148 N. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323-934-2250
www.faheykleingallery.com
Dates: Through Mid May
East Africa is home to many majestic animals such as rhinos, elephants and lions, just to name a few, and Nick Brandt has been photographing them since 2001. He has become alarmed at the rate massive demolition and destruction is eating away at the land where his magnificent subjects had once roamed. “Inherit the Dust” is Brandt's dirge to the animals and the natural land of East Africa. Taking his existing photos of the animals, Brandt transferred them onto giant panels and placed them at the same location they were taken years earlier. The contrast of a bull elephant amidst a garbage dump, a giraffe in a quarry, a lioness next to a railroad and many other powerful images of wildlife versus development is as bold as it is heartbreaking.
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