September 2019
Ernesto Neto at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
On View: September 14–November 2, 2019 As an adult, it’s not often that you are encouraged to unabashedly play. Ernesto Neto has made a career of creating artwork that invites participation and activates all of the senses: auditory, tactile, sensory, and immensely visual. This exhibition does nothing less. To fully integrate into this scenario, you will be offered a camouflage tree patterned hoodie and pants to wear as you lounge inside of Children of the Earth (shoes off!): an installation…
Find out more »December 2019
Jónsi at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
On view: November 16, 2019–January 9, 2020 When we think about creative disciplines, we often consider each field separately: We hear music, look at art, or experience a theatre performance. Yet in Hollywood, Sigur Rós’ Jónsi has created a sensory musical experience that fully encompasses the body. The main work, Whiteout, is a blank white space with two large benches that you can sit or lay on. Multiple speakers are hidden in the walls, creating a surround sound chorus of Jónsi’s…
Find out more »July 2020
Susan Philipsz at Tanya Bonakdar
At Tanya Bonakdar in Hollywood, eerie lullabies emanate out of steel barrels. Part of Susan Philipsz’s solo exhibition, “Sleep Close and Fast,” this sound installation includes recordings of Philipsz hauntingly singing tunes from thrillers such as “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Wicker Man.” The vocals sound vaguely familiar, yet simultaneously hard to place, instilling a sense of unease. Elsewhere, steel organ pipes play recordings of the artist breathing through the instruments, similar to the lullabies echoing out of steel vessels.…
Find out more »April 2021
Charles Long at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Immediately after getting my second Moderna vaccine, I stumbled into Tanya Bonakdar Gallery to see Charles Long’s “WORKLIGHT” before any side effects kicked in. The way the exhibition joins light, sound, and sculptural assemblages into a kind of futuristic set in which the viewer becomes a participant felt especially pertinent after my second jab. Light is cast onto small mirrors embedded in sculptural assemblages that meld rogue body parts, abstract forms, and found objects into cakey plaster constructions, resulting in…
Find out more »June 2021
Lisa Williamson at Tanya Bonakdar
The precision of Lisa Williamson’s wall works in a new solo show at Tanya Bonakdar is beguiling. Each work in “Amplifier” feels boldly precise, no line or color out of place. Her forms, which are made from aluminum before being delicately painted, contain a minimal gravitas—simple circles and lines feel weighty and profound. The artist’s painted surfaces are applied with care and intention to create a matte-finish that catches the light to reveal singular brushstrokes (the only reveal of the…
Find out more »September 2021
Amalia Pica at Tanya Bonakdar
Amalia Pica’s exhibition Accumulations and Overlaps, on view at Tanya Bonakdar, was made during the pandemic. The exhibition captures the clash of family, work, and leisure compressed into domestic space during that time. The main gallery houses Pica’s Stacker series, sculptures that mimic children’s stacking toys, with the wood bases of each stacker mimicking the height of a toddler. But from there, the familiar toy becomes co-opted by an array of household objects, stacked into haphazard yet beautifully balanced arrangements.…
Find out more »April 2022
Mark Dion at Tanya Bonakdar
Multimedia artist Mark Dion is known for his cabinet-of-curiosity installations, which often find him partnering with scientists or various cultural institutions through which he mines archives and archeological artifacts. In “Theatre of Extinction,” the artist muses on not only the extinction of plant and animal life, but our own impending human demise (fun stuff). Yet, despite the anxiety-laden subject matter, Dion’s penchant for aesthetically organized objects gives the exhibition a playful air. “Cabinet of Marine Debris – East Coast/West Coast” is…
Find out more »February 2023
Mark Manders at Tanya Bonakdar
In his fifth solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar, Mark Manders continues to invent new ways of bending time, space, and genre with “Writing Skiapod.” The show explores how language can become abstracted when reconfigured or placed in new contexts. Manders created his Notional Newspapers early in his practice and recently completed the project, which now includes every word in the English language. These aren’t “real” newspapers, but an undermining of them with words and images strung together in an incongruous…
Find out more »