April 2023
Billy White at Shrine
During icebreakers, we often ask each other who we’d invite to dinner, dead or alive, celebrity or otherwise. For multimedia artist Billy White, it’s not just one person, but many. And it’s not a dinner, but a picnic, where everyone is welcome. At Shrine, White’s unfussy mastery shines through in the expressive faces of his eclectic picnic guests, who range from American rapper DMX to Costa Rican artist Francisco Zuniga. Others include his childhood heroes like Elvis, Joe DiMaggio, Mr.…
Find out more »July 2023
Ross Simonini at Shrine
To view Ross Simonini’s paintings is to dive into a bespoke world of characters that operate by their own logic. Rendered in muted blues, oranges, and reds, his paintings depict playful characters that swirl together, each taking an idiosyncratic form — errant floating head, blobby worm man — and staring nonplussed at the viewer with a dopey smile. Simonini fills the canvas with these creatures, which puzzle-piece together into lively, teeming masses. To call the playful paintings child-like would be…
Find out more »November 2023
Cohort: LA Abstraction in Conversation at SHRINE
For a newcomer to the city, the L.A. art scene can feel dominated by its academic institutions (I experienced this as a new transplant to the city in 2013 after finishing my MFA in another state). This was an experience curator Thea Smolinski also shared upon moving here from NY as she noted how the L.A. institution an artist had gone to would often be uttered in the same breath as their name. In Cohort, Smolinski gathers a group of…
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