I spent three days making casual rounds across the LA basin artscape.  The rewards made it seem a non-effort.  There are rich shows of abstract painting and then shows with the finest in exacting realism.  What is really represented is the joy of materials and beauty.  I enjoyed an art trip that was short on conceptual BS and slim-talent, garbage-assemblagists and high on the honored and respected techniques of painting and drawing. 
 
Miya Ando Stanoff at Bandini Art (Culver City through August 9).
This is flat work on metal with variation in surface and reflectivity.  They come to life in response to the ambient light - like the aluminum boxes of Donald Judd.  They are as formal about spatial composition as the seascape photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto
 
Steve Roden at Susanne Vielmetter (Culver City through August 2).  I don't really "go" for Roden's work.  He is most successful as a sculptor and this show is mostly paintings.  The reason to suggest seeing the show is because Roden is one of LA's artists to watch (fashion) and because his work is about using color in the translation of musical scores (think of the Synchromists of the early 20th century, Stanton Macdonald-Wright).  Roden's work is nervous and jarring and he uses color in a European shade of greys.
 
Matty Byloos at Sandroni.Rey (Culver City through July 19).  Byloos loves to paint and he is good at it.  A mixture of figurative and abstract, these paintings don't need to be rationalized with the meaning of their content.  This work reminds me of that by Richard Sedivy.
 
Yvette Gellis at Kim Light (Culver City through July 12).  Large paintings start with an architectural base and then take their dynamism from the broad/thick gestural abstraction that slathers across the surface.  They remind me of Karel Appel's jazz-responsive abstractions from the 1950's.
 
Jorge Pardo at Maloney Fine Art (Culver City).  Maloney is located behind but within Kim Light Gallery.  The installation of Pardo's inlaid table, fanciful Oriental lanterns, and wall paper is beguiling. 
 
D.J. Hall at Koplin Del Rio (Culver City through July 12).  Hall's thematic hook (brightly appointed women at leisure beside brilliant poolscapes) has not been politically mainstream.  This exhibition demonstrates Hall's tremendous technical skills and fine eye for composition and visual texture.  This is a mighty fine exhibition and is a strong inducement to see the 35 year retrospective of her work currently at the Palm Springs Art Museum (through September 14th).
 
Joe Clower at Cardwell Jimmerson (Culver City through July 26). I am thrilled to see this broad reprise of Clower work from the last 25 years.  He is a quintessential LA artist -even if he has been in Colorado for the last decade.  
 
Billy Reynolds at L2kontemporary (Chinatown through July 26).  This artist is a wacky formalist.  He makes clay figures which are used as models to be painted in the manner of still life.  Of course, he eviscerates, dismembers, reconstructs his creatures in the manner of Hans Bellmer with all the bizarre macabre of Joel-Peter Witkin.
 
Jasper De Beijer at Chung King Project (Chinatown through July 19).  This is interesting work.  The artist constructs 3-D scenes from cut paper.  He then lights and photographs the "paper theaters" to finally present the photographic image of his imaginatively constructed worlds.
 
Dennis Koch & Claudia Nieto at High Energy Constructs (Chinatown through August 2).  As a counterpoint, the work of these two artists successfully does what Steve Roden fails to accomplish. Using colored pencil heavily applied to paper, their abstraction is emotionally musical.  This is pure abstraction by two artists who use similar materials and motifs - two artists who otherwise don't know each other.
 
Marlene Dumas at MOCA-Grand (Downtown through September 22).  Dumas was born in South Africa but lives and works in Amsterdam.  She has spent her career's artistic focus portraying the figure.  This show is dynamite.  Spending time in front of a grid of her drawings is spellbinding.  She has a facility in rendering eyes that can bring personality and identification to a seemingly casual ink wash.  Don't miss this show.
 
Jeff Gillette and Valerie Jacobs at Bert Green (Downtown: closing).  While this exhibition is closing it deserves mention because of the quality of the work and the integrity of the gallery's continuing offerings.  Gillette starts by painting desert-scapes in plein-aire.  He then adds details that cause the final paintings to be surreal and sardonic.
Valerie Jacobs is an octogenarian whose decades of drawing, painting and rendering demonstrate that practice does indeed make perfect.
 
Anibal Catalan at Steve Turner (mid Wilshire: closing).  A single room has been transformed by a multiplanar, geometric light sculpture surrounded by wall graphics and geometric, abstract paintings.  The total effect exposes this artist's architectural roots.
 
Nathan Redwood at Carl Berg (mid Wilshire: closing).  I like this man's work.  This series of arabesque, flowing abstractions is bright and effortlessly confident.  There is enough form to intimate figurative surrealism as in William Wiley.  Redwood is one of LA's legitimate new claimants to the painter's throne.
 
Jennifer Steinkamp at ACME (mid Wilshire: closing).  The flowing projections of botanicals waving in an unfelt breeze are poetically beautiful and universally accessible across language and politics.  This artist deserves her fame and exploding exposure.
 
David Amico at Ace - Beverly Hills (through August).  Amico is the real thing - an LA based abstractionist with territory and integrity all his own.  This is a mighty fine painting show. He teaches at the Claremont College and it is comforting to know his energy is ever present in SoCal.
 
Gary Lang at Ace - Beverly Hills (through August).  I know and love Gary's work forever.  He has 3 new tondos that defy description they are so powerfully present.  Gary is a master colorist - having brought his long practiced "science" of color use into harmony with the meditative ritual of laying it down.  I am so very happy to see him again on public view in LA County.  I have always felt that Gary's sense of color is of this place.
 
Lawrence Gipe at Lora Schlesinger (through August 2).  The story of Gipe's trajectory through the art world/market is an insider-gossip tale.  I haven't, at this minute, figured out know how I feel about these recent paintings.  I have been his fan for many years.  I usually always feel rewarded when the opportunity to see his work presents itself.
 
Piot Brehmer and Robert Yarber at Samuel Freeman (Bergamot through July 5).  Brehmer seems, like Gerhard Richter, adept at painting realistically (portrayal of women) and abstractly with crystalline, night landing strips (landungen) that recall Peter Alexander's LA night, city-light horizons.  It is the abstract images that captivate here -particularly given they are hung near a solo Robert Yarber painting from 1993.  Yarber is infrequently seen and even just one is cause to rejoice
 
Astrid Preston at Craig Krull (Bergamot through July 12).  Astrid is an art machine.  She works ceaselessly and for this prodigious effort never seems at a loss for new territory to explore.  This exhibition is no exception.  It is beautiful in every aspect of its broad reach.  She has recently been seen in San Diego at Lux and the San Diego Museum of Art.  This gallery exhibition offers a comprehensive view of her current interest in negative-space focused landscape painting.  Astrid is another of LA's terrific artists.  I keep waiting for an LA museum to look in its own backyard to demonstrate this mastery found at home.
 
Al Held at Cal State University Long Beach (Long Beach through August 9).  Held is a hugely important American painter.  He died over two years ago.  CSULB owns several of his paintings and has used their holdings as the focus in fleshing out this exhibition.  It is a good show - a bit slim.  The 1985 painting "West End" is magnificent.
 
'Twas a mighty fine LA art tour.  Traffic was light and transit easy, if expensive.  Get out and see art.  Then talk about it with your friends.  No use being passive when your participation is so vital.
 
Have fun,
Doug Simay 6/28/2008