Favorite Art 2018
Happy New Year! In 2017 we started to take part in the art world tradition of inviting artists to share their favorite art/art experiences. We shared these on the Settlers + Nomads Instagram page, and in 2018 year we were more organized and started earlier so we have more faves to share. Thanks to everyone who contributed! I’m posting a few selections here from Las Vegas artists Krystal Ramirez and D.K. Sole. Please visit our Instagram page for more entries, including Marcus Civin’s “Favorite Art Subject: The (Supposedly) Largest Natural Quartz Crystal Sphere in the World” and Catherine Borg’s most powerful protest photo from the March for Our Lives in Washington D.C. Thanks to Mikayla Whitmore, our Insta curator, for collecting and posting!
Krystal Ramirez Favorite Art
Beatriz González, The Sisga Suicides, 1965
My two favorite shows this year were “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985” at LACMA, examines the practices of women artists working in Latin America and the United States, featuring the 120 artists and collectives representing fifteen countries. The exhibition presents the first account of radical and feminist practices by Latina artists. And Beatriz González at Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Madrid. In The Sisga Suicides, two young religious fanatics in love drown themselves in the Sisga Dam to keep from falling into the sins of the flesh. González collected images from print media; portraits of suffering Colombian society: faces of the disappeared and horrific killers.
Beatriz González at Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Madrid. Photo Krystal Ramirez.
Beatriz González at Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Madrid. Photo Krystal Ramirez.
D.K. Sole Favorite Art
Ali Fathollahi, from In Between at Left of Center Gallery in North Las Vegas. Photo D.K. Sole.
Ali Fathollahi & Nanda Sharif-pour: “In Between” exhibition at Left of Center. One of my favourite developments in Las Vegas art has been the transformation of Fathollahi and Sharif-pour's work from paintings and wall-mounted assemblages into space-infesting environments. In Between was them at their best, an introspective revolution that changed the Left of Center galleries into a succession of symbolic dreams.
Bowl With Abstraction of Unfurling Datura Bud, from Decoding Mimbres Painting: Ancient Ceramics of the American Southwest, at LACMA. Photo D.K. Sole.
“Decoding Mimbres Painting: Ancient Ceramics of the American Southwest,” at LACMA. I liked the ungainly enthusiasm of this curation, the silent footage of supersized blossoms untwisting grossly above us as we passed in wonder between the bowls. Tony Berlant and Evan Maurer have a theory about Mimbres imagery, one that they want to share; to their credit they presented it as an imaginative exploration backed by scholarship, not as a proven fact. The work itself was a series of marvels. The object in this picture was listed as Bowl With Abstraction of Unfurling Datura Bud.
Pope.L's Rebuilding the Monument (chicago version/the vitrine problem/three of three) at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Photo D.K. Sole.
Some of the artists whose solo exhibitions I liked this year were: Pippa Garner, Mary Heilmann, Suellen Rocca, Sean Slattery, Wolfgang Tillmans, Pope.L, Geta Brătescu (who died three months ago but she was alive when I saw her show in March), B. Wurtz -- and Peter Fend, if you count his talk at the Barrick as a solo exhibition. I didn't want to bring the Barrick into this because I work there (therefore, bias), but I'm including Fend because I think everyone should try to hear him talk anywhere if they get the chance. He is punk.The picture is a detail from Pope.L's Dieter Roth-ish Rebuilding the Monument (chicago version/the vitrine problem/three of three) at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.
See more artists’ favorites here.
Posted by Wendy Kveck