This month, Los Angeles is brimming with overdue retrospectives of influential artists and illuminating showcases of previously unseen work. A Richard Mayhew survey at Karma highlights the subversive elements beneath the bucolic surfaces of his abstract landscapes. The Broad presents Yoko Ono’s first solo museum show in Southern California, and a two-venue presentation of Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’s ceramics and drawings proves that the 96-year-old artist is still very much at the height of her creative powers. Meanwhile, the California African American Museum explores the musical output of celebrated photographer, filmmaker, and writer Gordon Parks, and Chris Sharp unveils a recently rediscovered collection of Joe Brainard’s matchbook miniatures. At Jeffrey Deitch, an exhibition of Celeste Dupuy-Spencer’s devastating, glorious paintings serves as a posthumous memorial for the artist, who tragically died a week before the show’s opening.
Chris Sharp Gallery, 5538 Santa Monica Boulevard, East Hollywood, Los AngelesThrough May 23
Joe Brainard was a master of collage and assemblage, piecing together bits of popular media and overlooked detritus to create playful, poetic compositions that far exceed the sum of their parts. His second solo exhibition at Chris Sharp features a collection of collages and paintings on matchbooks made by the late artist in 1975, on public view for the first time. From a still life with a postage-stamp sandwich and a solitary butterfly hovering over a golden flower to a pair of matches playing out a poignant scene of queer love, these miniature worlds highlight Brainard’s innovative wit and creative use of the matchbook’s formal limitations.
Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaThrough May 30
Richard Mayhew called his lyrical paintings teetering between landscape and abstraction “mindscapes” — reflecting the psychological depths beneath their richly hued surfaces. Mayhew emerged from the Abstract Expressionist scene of 1940s and ‘50s New York City, but he also held the 19th-century landscape painters of the Hudson River School in deep reverence. For Mayhew, landscape was fertile ground for addressing America’s history of colonial exploitation, and his moody, luminous canvases offer expansive representational possibilities within the genre, such as his own African-American, Shinnecock, and Cherokee-Lumbee roots. Understory spans more than six decades of his practice, from 1960 — the year he left New York to study color theory in Europe — to 2023, one year before his death at the age of 100.
Jeffrey Deitch, 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaThrough May 30
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer depicted contemporary scenes with all the profundity of history painting. Her subjects ranged from the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, against which she was fervently outspoken online, and intimate self-portraits in which her unflinching gaze meets ours. The works in Burning in the Eyes of the Maker hold nothing back, painted with a ferocious intensity that matches the violence and anguish portrayed therein. “Painting, for me, is participation in the aliveness of life,” she wrote in the press release for the show. Dupuy-Spencer tragically passed away on April 10, a week before this exhibition opened. The show is presented as a memorial to her remarkable life and work.
Pacific Design Center Design Gallery, 700 North San Vicente Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaThrough July 3
The late Harry Fonseca’s art centered on the Trickster Coyote, an alter ego spawned from the archetypal figure celebrated in Native dances throughout Northern California. Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu/Portuguese/Hawaiian) honored the coyote’s traditional symbolism while imbuing it with contemporary references — the figure can be seen sporting a leather jacket, posing as a beret-clad artist, or performing onstage in stars and stripes as a foil to Uncle Sam. Organized by Babst Gallery, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Coyote includes 30 paintings and prints, tracing the evolution of the coyote throughout the artist’s career. An accompanying exhibition of paintings by Deerstine Suehead (Nisenan/Maidu/Seneca) juxtaposes Fonseca’s work with that of an artist 50 years his junior who similarly melds Nisenan heritage with elements of modern life.
David Zwirner, 606 North Western Avenue, East Hollywood, Los AngelesThrough May 22
Marciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los AngelesMay 6–July 18
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess has been a dynamic force in the world of ceramics for almost six decades, blending a deft mastery of material with a playful, mischievous spirit. At David Zwirner, artist Shio Kusaka has organized a selection of Suarez Frimkess’s ceramics and drawings spanning the last four decades. These include funky, handbuilt, and gracefully wheel-thrown vessels adorned with images of cartoon characters or figures from Mesoamerican cosmology, many created in collaboration with her late husband and longtime creative partner Michael Frimkess. An accompanying exhibition at the Marciano Art Foundation showcases over 30 new drawings made since her husband’s death last year and the subsequent loss of her home and studio. Full of genre-hopping juxtapositions and moments of slapstick humor, these drawings reveal Suarez Frimkess’s resilience and determination to keep creating, in spite of and in response to tragedy.
MutMuz Gallery, 971 Chung King Road, Chinatown, Los AngelesThrough June 20
Devo was never just a rock band; it’s a versatile creative force whose output includes visual art, costume design, performance, and film. Formed by composer Mark Mothersbaugh and art students Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis at Kent State University in 1973, Devo has long combined music and visual art in what could be considered a conceptual project satirizing contemporary society. Devo: The First 50 Years is a photographic survey documenting the group’s influential aesthetics, including works by Bob Gruen, Chris Stein, Chuck Statler, Edward Colver, Moshe Brakha, Ruby Ray, and others.
Sprüth Magers, 5900 Wilshire Boulevard, Miracle Mile, Los AngelesMay 15–August 8
German powerhouse gallery Sprüth Magers opened its Los Angeles outpost in February 2016 — a month before Hauser & Wirth touched down here — in a former cafe on the Miracle Mile, across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In the decade since, scores of galleries from across the country and world have planted their flag in the city, and quite a few have shut down. Sprüth Magers, however, has remained a consistent presence, showing work by a broad selection of LA-based artists alongside those from Europe and elsewhere. Its longevity is not surprising considering that Angeleno artists have always been an important part of its program. 10 Years LA! celebrates the gallery’s commitment to the city and features nearly 60 artists from their roster, including John Baldessari, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jenny Holzer, Robert Irwin, Arthur Jafa, Analia Saban, Martine Syms, and Kaari Upson.
California African American Museum, 600 State Drive, Exposition Park, Los AngelesThrough September 13
Gordon Parks was a widely celebrated photographer, filmmaker, and writer, a creative polymath whose accomplishments were all the more notable considering that he worked at a time when it was nearly impossible for African-American artists to break into the mainstream. The Sound of Gordon Parks explores a lesser-known but vital part of his oeuvre: his work as a composer. Curated by Justen LeRoy and developed in partnership with Mario Sprouse, Parks’s longtime musical assistant and archivist, the exhibition features orchestral works, film scores — including one for his directorial debut, The Learning Tree (1969) — rare demos, and previously unheard works, presenting another facet of the artist’s prolific output.
The Broad, 221 South Grand Avenue, Downtown, Los AngelesMay 23–October 11
Music of the Mind is a seven-decade, career-spanning retrospective of the work of Yoko Ono, allowing visitors to interact directly with her expansive artworks. The exhibition includes her early “instruction” pieces from the 1950s, with short texts for participants to act upon, as well as materials from her anti-war activism of the late 1960s. Her pioneering performance works, such as “Cut Piece” (1964), in which audience members were invited to cut pieces of her clothing off, will be shown on film and video. More recent works welcome engagement from visitors, including “Wish Trees for Los Angeles” (1996), which was first shown at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica. In this iteration, museum-goers can tie wishes onto the branches of the olive trees in East West Bank Plaza. Organized in collaboration with Tate Modern, this traveling exhibition is notably Ono’s first solo museum show in Southern California.
