"A new series of intimately scaled pastel on paper scenes investigating the dreamlike logic of a young mind reaching for order among the big world’s mysteries is currently on view at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. These are paired with examples of Daniel’s large-scale, supremely saturated pattern studies — the better to catch through-lines in his inventive palette and intuitive compositional motifs, even between narrative and non-figurative works."

"Drawing a parallel between Iraq and subduction zones as sites of collision, Sora’s works ruminate on the forces that feed the chaos and instability of the country. Echoing the way in which earthen matter is recycled post-collision, Sora contends that society, too, engages in cyclical processes of regeneration, rebirth, and replenishment."

"Three fine solo shows of paintings offer personal perspectives as unique as the artists who created them: Laura Krifka, Evita Tezeno, and Nancy Evans.Tezeno’s work is a delightful, vibrant mixed-media swirl of collage and acrylic. 'My Life, My Story' is reminiscent of a quilt, a layered narrative of family life in which the textured mediums also convey the stories. Krifka’s 'Still Point,' is a beautiful tribute to light, the human body, and the human heart. With domestic settings framing lustrous images, her stunningly accomplished work pulls at the heart and reaches the soul. Nancy Evans focuses on a celestial landscape rather than a human one in 'Moonshadow.'"

"Tezeno creates scenes of everyday life that have a timeless quality. They could be images of now, or from the past. While representational, they have a folk art quality so they appear simple, yet complex simultaneously. The works are composites filled with an array of different materials. Whoever these figures may be, they round out Tezeno’s story and illustrate a vital community."

Laura Krifka carefully constructs intimate narratives that deftly employ the power of the gaze. This new series delves into psychological realms of the self, navigating the relationship between shifting identities. Krifka holds multiple moments in each painting, both acknowledging and mourning the loss of a former identity, while at the same time relishing the radicalization of change.

"In Fleurs du mal, Evans moves from American Modernism to a post-apocalyptic version of American Regionalism, unsettling, ravishing and surreal.  Within its potent symbolism, many American myths collide.  Evans infuses Fleurs du mal with a poetic sense of ruin and devastation, but also with the possibility of renewal."

Moonshadow brings together the artist’s series of Moon paintings, painted between 2014 and 2020, for the first time. In a departure from her abstract practice, and a long career that encompasses performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, and sound elements, Evans’ cosmic paintings take inspiration from the sublime forces of nature which the artist has experienced throughout the course of her life in California, from her upbringing in California’s expansive and fertile Central Valley, to the raw and rugged Pacific Ocean coastline, and the high desert landscapes of Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley.

Land and Image: Chris Engman is a twenty-year survey of the artist’s work spanning from the early 2000s to 2022. After years of documenting records of actions, elaborate processes, landscapes, installations, and sculptures, Engman has become a master of Trompe-l'œil (or deceiving the eye), an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create an optical illusion. Engman's photography, at first glance, appears normal, but when given a second look, viewers can catch on to the delusion and begin to question the perceived image. 

Double Horizon is an immersive three-screen video installation that envelopes the viewer in artist Lia Halloran’s portrait of Los Angeles. The video footage was shot from cameras mounted to a plane piloted by Halloran as the artist was learning to fly. The flipped and mirrored footage presents the city and surrounding natural areas as kaleidoscopic abstractions, reflecting the artist's experience of her home city altered by the new scale and perspective offered by her flight experiences. 

Mana Contemporary proudly presents Borderlands, the new commission of a large-scale site-specific wall drawing by artist Hugo Crosthwaite for the exhibition Land of the Free. Over the course of two weeks, Crosthwaite will improvise and create a new composition that explores the notions of migration, refugees, and borders. The galleries will be open during this period, and visitors are welcome to witness Crosthwaite’s creative process as he paints on the gallery walls. At the end of the exhibition, following the artist’s directions, the wall drawing will be painted over, resembling the transient conditions of borderlands. 

Expanding on her ongoing architectural interventions inspired by her native Puerto Rico’s built environment, Edra Soto's newly commissioned sculpture Casa-Isla | House-Island considers the idiosyncratic architecture and designs of lower- and middle-class homes, redeploying those elements in architectural representations. The horizontal shapes floating on the water allude to the topography of the island of Puerto Rico and a notion of the house as a vessel. In this sense, the work becomes a reflection on states of isolation and the idea of homes as topographical spaces that contain private histories.

The National Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition celebrates excellence in the art of portraiture. As the realization of a gift made by Virginia Outwin Boochever to the Smithsonian, both the competition and this exhibition demonstrate the power of one individual to make a transformative impact. The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today presents 42 portraits selected through an open call that garnered more than 2,700 entries from artists working across the United States and Puerto Rico. Karetzky's painting Toast, 2019 is currently on view in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery for The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today exhibition through February 26, 2023.

"Occupying the opposite pole of painting are the socially engaged works of Karla Diaz at the Los Angeles gallery Luis De Jesus (Booth 5.03). Diaz’s deep, color-saturated canvases tell personal stories of migration from Mexico to the United States, as well as preserve folklore from her heritage."

"Several paintings subtly capture sunrise or sunset, the fading light visible in the painting’s background. Sink or Swim pictures a dim and banal kitchen sink that looks out to a lavish private beach. The fantasy always remains at a distance, trumped by the real. Everything But depicts a similar kitchen sink set into an unremarkable Formica countertop, but rather than peer out over a landscape, the sink looks out into a mirror that reflects the entire scene back at us, giving the viewer the uncanny ability to see what would be behind us in the painted scene."

Here’s a shortlist of recommended booths: global powerhouse Perrotin; iconic-to-cool NYC dealers Kasmin and Karma; European bastions of important discourse Hales Gallery, London, and Kerlin Gallery, in from Dublin; and L.A. outposts of cool Anat Ebgi, Louis Stern Fine Arts, Night Gallery, Luis De Jesus, and Various Small Fires (L.A., Seoul), which also unveils a permanent Dallas space timed to the opening of the fair. (We’ll be catching up with VSF’s Esther Kim Varet in the coming weeks for an in-depth profile.)

“'I love to capture the strength and vulnerability of young people in Cuba,' he adds. Inspiration, then, can spawn from the smallest of interactions to the more allusive, like when an artist expresses themselves through their mediums, 'especially when an audience is tuned in to them'. It’s this energy between people that Gabriel seems to be most intrigued by."

"Artist Jackie Milad is motivated to memorialize her Honduran and Egyptian heritage as she considers the importance of authorship and dissemination of history. “JACKIE MILAD: Birth” consists of four large scale works that combine painting, drawing and collage on hand-dyed canvas, making visual references to creation myths of Ancient Egypt and Mayan civilization. Via “disparate” imagery, Milad contemplates her own mixed-cultural upbringing as well as the complexity of history-making."

Equally lovely are the gilded, fantastical images of Harris’ A Season in the Wilderness. Infused with light and a sense of magic, Harris shapes boldly hued visuals myths both mysterious and captivating. With gold leaf elements that mirror that of Byzantine icons, Greenfield’s “A Survey, 2001-2021″ creates powerful paintings that subvert negative stereotypes about Black people and culture. Like Bey and Harris, a fierceness in palette matches passion for his subjects, serving as a framework for a message of pride, hope, achievement and sacrifice.

"This was an era of dispossession, displacement, and diaspora for Mexican America and also a century marked by violence, deportation, and large-scale erasure that sought to disappear Latinx people from history. It's an era when Laxtinx people were 'always on the edge of erasure,' as Gonzales-Day puts it, though the photographic archive he's collected promises to keep us from oblivion."

“This body of work is really meant to honor the invaluable work that female astronomers contributed to their field," Halloran said. "Without these discoveries we would be nowhere near where we are now in terms of being able to measure and understand the universe.”